A person I know studied in East Germany in the early 80s via a very limited exchange program. After the wall came down, she requested her Stasi file.
It was fascinating what was in the file - lots of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. For example, she was upset when the Challenger exploded, and this mystified the Stasi informers who had previously identified her as a pacifist (in their minds, the Shuttle was 100% military).
Similarly, she was trying to research what happened to a relative who had remained in Germany in the late 30s, and whether she had died of natural causes or been sent to the camps. The Stasi file was filled with speculations on the details of this "sleeper agent" with whom she was trying to establish contact.
All this to say that from the mindset of a spy, everything is spy-craft. Everyone's world-view shapes their interpretation of events and reality itself. Was the shuttle a military venture? Partly. Was it also a tool for science? Yup. But the functionaries who looked at her data in the heat of the cold war certainly couldn't see those distinctions.
For what it's worth, she was able to get her Stasi file, but has never been able to get a copy of her FBI file.
This might be a good way to explain my discomfort with online tracking.
Machines categorising you based on your behaviour, without your knowledge nor your consent. It's not so bad when it serves you ads (unless it sells alcohol to alcoholics), but there's no telling what similar algorithms would say about you in the hands of a rogue government. They can find vulnerable people, people who hate certain people [0], people who talk to certain people or hold certain ideas.
What makes it even more terrifying is that machines can categorise people much faster, based on a much broader set of information. It's not just informants and paper reports, but computers processing and connection millions of data points.
I'm bringing all of my data together[1], and the result is a graph of every place I've visited, every conversation I've had, everything I looked up, every book I've read, every transaction I've made, every video I've watched and everyone I've talked to. There's even more data about me in the wild, and if you combined it with other people's data, you could figure out even more about my every move.
It's a good thing that the Stasi was a few decades early.
There's a beautiful song by Vienna Teng called The Hymn of Acxiom[1][2] that covers this nicely. It's in the form of a hymn sung by the data collecting machine itself. It starts off like a message of love and reassurance, but the reassurance unravels as it goes on, until finally we reach the double meaning of it all: "Embrace you for all you’re/your worth"
Somebody hears you
You know that inside
Someone is learning the colors of all your moods to
(say just the right thing and) show that you’re understood
Here you’re known
Leave your life open
You don’t have to hide
Someone is gathering every crumb you drop
These (mindless decisions and) moments you long forgot
Keep them all
Let our formulas find your soul
We’ll divine your artesian source (in your mind)
Marshal feed and force (our machines will)
To design you a perfect love —
Or (better still)
A perfect lust
O how glorious, glorious:
A brand new need is born
Now we possess you
You’ll own that in time
Now we will build you an endlessly upward world
(reach in your pocket) embrace you for all you’re worth
Is that wrong?
Isn’t this what you want?
This is one of the strangest and most amazing art pieces I've experienced. Perfectly captures our time, both in technology used to produce the song and the meaning of all the words
I hold that we still have not imagined (not even in science fiction) the horrors totalitarian governments are now capable of in a fully-networked, computer-brokered society.
I work on it on and off. Sometimes I'll work on it full time for a few days, and sometimes I'll leave it untouched for months. I started it in late 2019, IIRC.
One other funny detail is that most of the Stasi file was handwritten notes in pencil. The vast majority of it was crap. It seems that a lot of her associates were obligated to report on her to the Stasi, but either couldn't or didn't want to give any details that would be harmful to anyone.
Much of it was along the lines of "[fellow student] says [subject] was disinclined to denounce rent-control as a counter-revolutionary ploy during a late-night discussion with [other student]." or "[room mate] overheard [subject] calling her family in the US, and did not hear any overt discussion of politics."
The Stasi was, especially in the end, exponentional invasive. Meaning they approached allmost anyone in any slightly important position and put pressure on them, to work with them to report on their collegues. (In the end, there were 90 000 of them, with a population of only 16 million).
"you help us (and socialism) and we help your career - or you decline and good luck with your career, or
the carrer of your partner. Your children ..."
The results were mainly those worthless reports.
But if you were on the hook once - they could pressure you into more, if they really were interested in your peers and not just routine surveillance of everyone.
But could you live with knowing you send one to prison for telling a bad joke about the government?
So many still declined, to work with them and suffered the consequences.
In either case, the massive surveillance was well known, it was assumed that everything you say loudly - got recorded.
For an amazing movie (not documentary) about the Stasi, watch "The Lives of Others". It is chilling because you see this institution and how it effects people through the eyes of one of the people responsible for doing the spying.
"Erich Honecker gets up in the morning, goes to the window and says: Good morning dear sun!
The sun replies: Good morning dear Erich.
At noon, Erich says: Good day dear sun!
A good day to you, dear Erich.
In the evening before sunset Erich wants to greet the sun again: Good night dear sun.
...
no reply
Again: Good night dear sun!
still no reply.
But dear sun, what is wrong, why are you not answering anymore?
The sun:
"screw you, I am in the west now."
A reference to the people, who managed to escape into the west and no longer had to fake friendliness with the system. And the way the joke is told in the movie and the reactions towards it, are also telling a lot of the spirit of the time.
but has never been able to get a copy of her FBI file
This can be confusing because there are various bewildering options, some of which are slower (or outright ineffective for personal records) than others but getting FBI records is comparatively straightforward once you've navigated the maze. I did it a few years ago and they sent me a CD's worth of stuff, plus a note of things they had not sent me or had redacted with instruction on challenging their decisions on these.
I'm not positive, but I seem to recall she said that she requested files, but just got back a folder of redacted sheets only showing a few dates and her name scattered throughout.
I wonder how much of that was just regular Stasi bureaucrats trying to keep their job. If everyone on their watchlist was a potential spy, then maybe their bosses stay scared enough to keep them employed? Or maybe that was the metric they used for promotions, and it inevitably became a target, resulting in a massive inflation of potential "spies" within the bureaucracy.
Anyone who is interested in this stuff should watch The Lives of Others (2006). It is unfathomable just how deeply entrenched Stasi was in every affair of citizens in East Germany. No organization in history has perhaps been as effective as them at spycraft, at least of their own people.
Hey, my mother was in almost exactly the same situation and has been talking to people about it. They should get in touch, although I'm not sure how to do that.
It was fascinating what was in the file - lots of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. For example, she was upset when the Challenger exploded, and this mystified the Stasi informers who had previously identified her as a pacifist (in their minds, the Shuttle was 100% military).
Similarly, she was trying to research what happened to a relative who had remained in Germany in the late 30s, and whether she had died of natural causes or been sent to the camps. The Stasi file was filled with speculations on the details of this "sleeper agent" with whom she was trying to establish contact.
All this to say that from the mindset of a spy, everything is spy-craft. Everyone's world-view shapes their interpretation of events and reality itself. Was the shuttle a military venture? Partly. Was it also a tool for science? Yup. But the functionaries who looked at her data in the heat of the cold war certainly couldn't see those distinctions.
For what it's worth, she was able to get her Stasi file, but has never been able to get a copy of her FBI file.