Shredded Secret Police Files Being Reassembled

An anonymous reader writes "German researchers at the Frauenhofer Institute said Wednesday that they were launching an attempt to reassemble millions of shredded East German secret police files using complicated computerized algorithms. The files were shredded as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and it became clear that the East German regime was finished. Panicking officials of the Stasi secret police attempted to destroy the vast volumes of material they had kept on everyone from their own citizens to foreign leaders."

Uh-oh

[Profane MuthaFucka (574406)]

East Germany is fucked now.

Re:Uh-oh

[tezbobobo (879983)]

You could be right. Apparently, according to a radio report I heard some months ago now, this program and evidence has been in place for some time and the reason they haven't done anything is because of intese political pressure.

Intense political pressure?

[Anonymous McCartneyf (1037584)]

So, who is pressuring the Fraunhofner(sp?) Institute not to do this? Did Germany's Communist Party gain seats last election?

Re:Intense political pressure?

[macshit (157376)]

So, who is pressuring the Fraunhofner(sp?) Institute not to do this? Did Germany's Communist Party gain seats last election?

Er, what do you think happened to people who were part of the former power structure in east germany?

Based on what I've heard from someone who lived in east germany at the time, there was a mad scramble to gain advantage when east germany fell, and despite some sort of attempts to hold the "bad guys" to account, there were many cases of things not quite working they way they were supposed to -- e.g. people successfully hiding their past, and even worse, people cynically using the system to gain personal advantage (e.g., denounce your [innocent] neighbor, grab his property in the confusion).

As a result, there are almost certainly many people in positions of power in germany today who would rather like to keep details of the east german past hidden.

Re:

[slashbob22 (918040)]

So, who is pressuring the Fraunhofner(sp?) Institute not to do this? Did Germany's Communist Party gain seats last election?

IIRC there has been a lot of pressure (political or legal) by those who could be implicated. I believe many of these records contain information on civilian informers who could now be Politicians and other influential people who wouldn't want this information to come out.

The guys they kept tabs on? ;-)

[PaulBu (473180)]

besides former Stasi collabporators/agents/etc. (as pointed out by several posts above mine), I bet (if East Germany intelligence was as good as it was supposed to be) there might be some Western leaders as well who would not like their secret files to be made public...

Paul B.

Stasi files

[harmonica (29841)]

there might be some Western leaders as well who would not like their secret files to be made public...

No "might" necessary, there are Western leaders and others who don't want their Stasi (secret police) files public. Former West German chancellor Kohl successfully sued to keep his files under wraps.

That's for the simple reason that those files often contain the most private details of what the Stasi had assembled using bugs and other means. Besides, nobody can easily check what is true and what they might have falsified in those files. After all, we're talking about a totalitarian regime which shot people trying to leave the country illegally.

However, all that doesn't mean that there won't be investigations if German authorities find something interesting in those files. So some people do have to fear that their past surfaces, but not from publication of the files.

Movie recommendation on the topic: this year's Best Foreign Language film at the Academy Awards, The Lives of Others [imdb.com].

Re:

[demon driver (1046738)]

The old East German SED, became the PDS after re-unification

Not quite - the PDS emerged out of the SED after most of the SED's hard core leaders were thrown out or went by themselves. And yes, the PDS/WASG did gain seats last election - but apart from an early statutory phrase there's not a whiff of communism left in it. They've actually decided to declare commitment to private enterprise and market economy, and politically their positions are more like what the then moderately left-wing Social Democrats, one of Germany's two big mainstream parties, used to represe

Re:

[eneville (745111)]

East Germany is fucked now.

in soviet russia file shreds you!!

Jigsaw Puzzle

[biocute (936687)]

Maybe someone could create an online jigsaw puzzle game, and let the internet people reassemble those docs.

Re:Jigsaw Puzzle

[ricklg (162560)]

Maybe a new distributed computing project--STASI@Home?

Re:Jigsaw Puzzle

[BluBrick (1924)]

STASI@Home is hardly a new project!

Re:Jigsaw Puzzle

[quigonn (80360)]

Ich jedenfalls heiße unsere neuen ostdeutschen Überlords willkommen.

Re:Jigsaw Puzzle

[by Anonymous Coward]

The researchers want to see the pieces reassembled into the original documents, not into a crude version of goatse.cx.

Re:Jigsaw Puzzle

[urbanradar (1001140)]

Maybe someone could create an online jigsaw puzzle game, and let the internet people reassemble those docs.

Yes, because bored people surfing could re-assemble documents much faster and more reliably than computers ever will. And let's not forget that the entire internet should be able to freely read detailed documentation on the private lives of ordinary people, many of which are still alive today. Perfect idea!

Re:

[CmdrGravy (645153)]

Duh ! You do realise the documents are written in German don't you and I haven't seen anything written in German on the web so far so who's going to be able to read it ? Who actually uses German nowadays !

Re:Jigsaw Puzzle

[CmdrGravy (645153)]

Gosh really ! Next you'll be telling me the Germans have a well developed and world renowned sense of humour too ?

Trust?

[JackieBrown (987087)]

"Many important documents are slumbering in these sacks"

And they will just re-shred the private, personal stuff, correct?

Re:Trust?

[shaitand (626655)]

Exactly, why is these guys having the information any better than German secret police? Most of this information is probably private and better off lost.

Re:Trust?

[kestasjk (933987)]

Oh no, we'll be invading the privacy of some dead/near-death OAPs! And we should shred Mozart's letters too, what would Mozart say if he knew we were reading his letters about ####ing his cousin?!

Dead people don't care too much about their privacy; they're dead. Ask yourself "will I care about my privacy after I'm dead?" If you said yes you probably don't understand what death means.

Re:Trust?

[by Anonymous Coward]

If I were dead, I may not care about my personal information that would have affected me if I were alive. Though my personal information that may affect my family and friends who are still alive is another thing.

Re:Trust?

[shaitand (626655)]

'Oh no, we'll be invading the privacy of some dead/near-death OAPs!'

We are talking about East Germany, not Nazi Germany. There could be dirt on people in their twenties in those files.

Re:

[bgarcia (33222)]

We are talking about East Germany, not Nazi Germany. There could be dirt on people in their twenties in those files.

Considering East Germany was annexed in 1990, you're talking about secret files on three-year-olds.

"Today, little Horst pooped in his pants, and didn't tell anybody."

Re:

[autophile (640621)]

We are talking about East Germany, not Nazi Germany. There could be dirt on people in their twenties in those files.

(BTW, reunification occurred in 1990).

Researcher 1: We've put together the first document!
Researcher 2: Hmm, it's about some kid named Hans, age 4.
Researcher 1: Wow, Hans ran an underground printing press urging... what does this say?
Researcher 2: ...urging a more Western approach towards toilet training?
Researcher 1: And he demanded access to Barney.
Researcher 2: That would send anyo

Re:Trust?

[shaitand (626655)]

You know what else I love? I love the way they are the vile communist evil secret east german police who spied on their citizens and foreign leaders. Yet our own wonderful friendly giant FBI keeps every scrap of information it gathers on private citizens and the CIA does the same for foreign leaders. Hell, our own secret police (the NSA) probably does both.

Re:Trust?

[timmarhy (659436)]

because you know, the american agencies don't torture or abduct people... oh wait a sec! they do!

Re:Trust?

[owlnation (858981)]

And as a matter of fact, not all the Stasi files are in Germany. The CIA swiped a significant number of them when The Wall fell. They returned some of them, but still retain quite a few.

So yes, I agree, evil / trust is a merely question of perspective.

Re:Trust?

[shaitand (626655)]

According to whom? The NSA isn't supposed to do police stuff. The last time I heard of the NSA publicly commenting on what they do or don't do was when a congressional oversight committee was convened to investigate whether they have been wiretapping citizens without warrants. The NSA's only comment to the oversight committee was that subjecting itself to oversight would risk national security. They didn't turn over paperwork or show up for the hearing.

I don't recall there being much media coverage after that, it just sort of went away.

Re:Trust?

[Shihar (153932)]

That's because you're only a "bad guy" if you lose.

No you are the "bad guy" if you have to build a fucking wall around your nation then station it with mines and machine guns to keep people in it. Last time I checked, western Europe and the US never had to build a fucking wall to keep people from fleeing their nation in terror.

Seriously people. Get a fucking grip and get over the moral relativism. It was bad. East Germany didn't throw build the Berlin wall for shits and giggles. People were not dancing in the street when it come down (on both sides) because it was the sad end of a merry social experience.

Israel, the US/Mexican border etc

[Colin Smith (2679)]

The Berlin wall ran *right* through the centre of Berlin. Through the middle of houses even. How else would you enforce a national border like that other than with a wall? Go see what's left of it some time.

The wall itself wasn't to prevent people fleeing in terror, not initially anyway, but to prevent economic migration of people from the increasingly poor east to the wealthier west. My partner, an East German, reckons the ignorance and hyperbole about East Germany is laughable.

 

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Um, no. The retention of the assembled file allows you to request your STASI file. When you do the personal information pertaining to others, except STASI and their informers, is blanked out.

People aren't too concerned about the privacy aspects of the German government retaining the STASI files. They are no longer being maintained and, more importantly, no longer being acted upon. If you can't find a job in unified Germany it is because of economics, not because of your friend/neighbour/teacher's mutterings

Human efforts?

[RealGrouchy (943109)]

Some 16,250 sacks containing pieces of 45 million shredded documents were found and confiscated after the reunification of Germany in 1990. Reconstruction work began 12 years ago but 24 people have been able to reassemble the contents of only 323 sacks.

Bah, just distribute them among nursing homes and tell the seniors it's a jigsaw puzzle.

They'll have it assembled before you can say "Matlock"!

- RG>

shredding is so last week....

[Original Replica (908688)]

why didn't they also burn them if they really wanted them gone? C'mon they could make a person vanish, but they can manage to successfully destroy paper?

Re:

[Anonymous McCartneyf (1037584)]

The Berlin Wall and the East German government fell really fast and suddenly--there wasn't much time for the Stasi to clear out its office. The Stasi had to shred the papers anyway (imagine someone liberating a whole document from a bonfire) and didn't have time to arrange a controlled burn for all those papers.

Iranian Revolution

[by Anonymous Coward]

The Iranian revolutionaries did the same thing to CIA documents in the embassy. The re-assembled documents are available at www.memoryhole.org

Re:Iranian Revolution

[delirium of disorder (701392)]

The Iranian revolutionaries did the same thing to CIA documents in the embassy. The re-assembled documents are available at www.memoryhole.org

I think you mean http://www.thememoryhole.org/ [thememoryhole.org]

In Soviet Russia

[biocute (936687)]

Secret police reassembles shredded researchers?

Why do this, you ask?

[u-bend (1095729)]

I think that the pursuit of historical documentation and a better understanding of a strange and dangerous period of the near past should justify the project alone. As someone who grew up as an American in that neck of the woods, pre and post Soviet demise, it's going to be really interesting to see what they find.

Hmmm...

[It doesn't come easy (695416)]

[...]vast volumes of material they had kept on everyone from their own citizens to foreign leaders[...]

Wonder if the purpose is to find out what East Germany was doing for posterity's sake? Or might the purpose be for some future use?

Re:Hmmm...

[owlnation (858981)]

But since the main reason files were shredded was to hide the identities and crimes committed by state employees and ordinary people who spied against their neighbours and caused them to be tortured and killed, this has the potential for explosive consequences.

Yes, it does indeed. Note that nearly one person in every four in East Berlin was Stasi, or an informant of some sort. However, very few have ever been identified. There will, for certain, be currently prominent or influential people listed in those documents who spied for the Stasi.

Piecing these together is going to make a lot of people very nervous - as indeed it should.

Shredding not safe anymore?

[erice (13380)]

This could be a little disturbing, if it works. How long before the technology trickles down to the identity thief around the corner? We are now told to shred everything. What happens when shredding is not enough?

Re:Shredding not safe anymore?

[bitingduck (810730)]

This could be a little disturbing, if it works. How long before the technology trickles down to the identity thief around the corner? We are now told to shred everything. What happens when shredding is not enough?

I crosscut shred everything, then I put it into the worm composter for the worms to eat. I then feed the worms to pet ducks, and twice a year feed the ducks to guests. I send the guests on camping trips to grizzly country with slabs of bacon for pillows. By the time the bears are done there are only homeopathic traces of the original information from the documents.

Re:Shredding not safe anymore?

[nietsch (112711)]

I guess part of the documents you have to dispose of are the guest lists of your twice yearly duck-fest?

It would only be homeopathetic if you follow the correct diluting procedure: bang the container 10 times on a leather cushion to mix, throw away the contents and fill with new alcohol. So you'd have to let your guests eat the duck, beat them up with a leather cushion, make them give up their stomach content, fill them with alcohol and beat them up again. Rinse lather and repeat for more potent medicine...

Iran Tackled the Same Problem

[Comatose51 (687974)]

Did anyone else read the Wired Article about how the CIA got some Americans out of Iran using a fake cover story about producing a Sci-Fi movie in Iran [wired.com]? After the Iranians took our embassy during their revolution, they hired a bunch of rug weavers to reassemble our shredded documents according to article. Wonder how successful they were...

Rainbow's End

[ObjetDart (700355)]

Reminds me of that somewhat bizarre subplot in Vinge's latest novel "Rainbow's End" where there was a big project to digitize all the university libraries, and some guy came up with the fastest way to do it: just throw all the books into a giant shredder, and then gave lots of cameras taking pictures of every last bit from every andle as it comes blowing out the other end...then re-assemble it all in a computer.

Seemed a little far-fetched to me, even for Vinge.

Das Leben der Anderen

[fishbowl (7759)]

If you get a chance to see Das Leben der Anderen ("The Lives of Others", http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/ [imdb.com]), definitely do not miss it. It is a slightly fantastic conflation of plausible events tied together with a story about fictional characters, but it is said, by people who lived in DDR at the time, to be chillingly accurate (though not without problems, it's a movie after all.)

I'd certainly enjoy hearing from anyone who lived in the DDR, who has seen this film; particularly if they had personal interaction with the STASI.

The same files in different hands

[chicago_scott (458445)]

I hope that the people reassembling the files don't misuse them in the same way that the East German government did. Wouldn't it be better to permanently destroy the files since they shouldn't have been compiled by the East German government in the first place?

Stasiland by Anna Funder

[hedley (8715)]

I was curious on the Stasi after enjoying the recent(USwise) release of the "Lives of Others" It won an academy award. Anyway, Funders book covers this topic of the sacks of shredded documents. The statistics were rediculous and 100's of years would be needed at the rate they were getting through the sacks. Kindof like the Blechley park people, recruitment seeks special skills, in this case, people who enjoyed board puzzles were hired.

The book is a good read, this systematic control they had on a society from cradle to grave produced some very odd people and behaviours.

Check out the film also.

Hedley

read stasiland

[Cederic (9623)]

People have been manually trying to recreate these files for years. Automation is the obvious next step, albeit not necessarily a simple one.

One use for them is trying to track down people that 'disappeared'.

The book Stasiland which mentions these efforts is superb, well worth reading.

ooooohhhhh, *complicated* algorithms

[icepick72 (834363)]

using complicated computerized algorithms.

But are the computer algorithms also "pretty"?
Are they heavily "optimized"?
Or "lazy heuristic" algorithms?
Maybe they're inauspicious and pink