Posted on 05/21/2017 4:28:24 PM PDT by nickcarraway
LIVING IN EAST Germany during the Cold War meant being watched. By your government. By your neighbors. And even, at times, by your own family. The East German secret police, one of the most intrusive and oppressive spying operations ever assembled, collected millions of files on people it suspected of being enemies of the state.
The German Democratic Republic dissolved in 1990 with the fall of communism, but the documents assembled by the Ministry for State Security, or Stasi, remain. This massive archive includes 69 miles of shelved documents, 1.8 million images, and 30,300 video and audio recordings housed in 13 offices throughout Germany. Canadian photographer Adrian Fish got a rare peek at the archives and meeting rooms of the Berlin office for his series Deutsche Demokratische Republik: The Stasi Archives. “The archives look very banal, just like a bunch of boring file holders with a bunch of paper,” he says. “But what they contain are the everyday results of a people being spied upon.”
The Stasi arose in 1950 following the birth of the German Democratic Republic in 1949. At its height in 1988, the all-seeing, all-powerful agency employed 91,000 people and a network of 189,000 unofficial collaborators who supplied detailed information on citizens. Following its dissolution on January 13, 1990, the German government preserved everything the Stasi had gathered. Anyone who grew up under East German rule can submit a request to peruse the archive, something more than 2.9 million people have done since 1991.
Fish has always found Cold War Germany fascinating and spent four months in Germany in 2015 photographing historical sites throughout the country. He hassled an archive employee long enough to get a tour of the archives office in Berlin. Fish spent an afternoon photographing endless rows of manila file folders and film canisters, and visiting Stasi offices and break rooms with typewriters and wood-paneled walls. “The technology is anachronistic, and it looks kind of stylish, but these are the lounges where decisions were made to shatter lives,” he says. “It’s very creepy.”
The photos are a reminder that threats to personal privacy are nothing new. Long before Wikileaks and fear of election hacks filled the news, citizens worried someone was watching. The physical space taken up by the Stasi archives is staggering, but also chilling. Makes you wonder how many miles of shelves today’s hacked information would require.
Deutsche Demokratische Republik: The Stasi Archives is showing at the Loop Gallery in Toronto until May 14.
I find it intensely humorous to imagine this being shown in Toronto of all places, if ever there was a city that was a perfect fit for the Stasi ... well Ottawa gives them a run for their money.
The physical space taken up by the petabytes of data unconstitutionally collected by our government may not be as staggering, but is just as chilling as it is being chilled in Utah.
> The East German secret police, one of the most intrusive and oppressive spying operations ever assembled, collected millions of files on people it suspected of being enemies of the state.
> This massive archive includes 69 miles of shelved documents, 1.8 million images, and 30,300 video and audio recordings housed in 13 offices throughout Germany.
If that’s “one of the most intrusive and oppressive spying operations ever assembled”, what does that make the U.S. “intelligence community” that makes records of every electronic communication, every photograph ever uploaded to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social network services, and spies on everybody who dares to cross them, right up to the President of the United States?
This is before computers were mainstreamed into ordinary office environments.
If they had computerized based communications systems back then the East German communists could have tapped everyone’s communications and then perform search and filter functions based on certain word patterns ...... wait a minute.
Not sure why Utah makes it any worse than Rhode Island or North Dakota, isn’t it going to fall into the same hands anyway? Or is this some accusation that the Mormons will get hold of it.
Really, if I wanted to fear a bunch of polygamous control freaks, I would fear the Uniparty, not the Mormons.
Oh, that’s different.....
Did he visit Merkel’s office?
Certainly a lot was going on before the PA, but in addition to usurping the rights of U.S. citizens, it gives our federal government official carte blanche to do pretty much anything it wants to to ANY citizen, as long as THEY classify it in the category of 'homeland security.' Enactment of the PA was a YUUGE coup for the deep state.
Now the BBC is turning in people to the commenters employers if they think your comments do not match their lofty ideals.
BBC is the new Stasi.
Stasi files...Been there...Been done by those...
the 69 miles of documents reminds of the Nazi’s obsession with documenting everything. Maybe a Germanic trait?
FTA: “The archives look very banal, just like a bunch of boring file holders with a bunch of paper,” he says. “But what they contain are the everyday results of a people being spied upon.”
Sounds like google and facebook. Remember the German lady asking Zuckerberg to help. Just what kind of help? Facebook doing the job of Stasi?
The Stasi existed for 40 years. It collected between 900 million and a billion pages of data. The NSA does that every two days now.
Just for perspective. The Stasi were pikers compared to modern USA intel agencies. We don’t like t think it, but we like in the most intrusive and invasive government ever known to mankind. The Stasi only dreamed about the kind of info the NSA collects on all Americans.
Our government learned very well.
Thank you GWB. And thank you Abraham Lincoln for other things.
Sounds like Facebook.
Or that database that Obama and Maxine Waters compiled on every voter in America.
“...LIVING IN EAST Germany during the Cold War meant being watched. By your government. ...”
Sorta like the last eight years living here...
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