"That half-destroyed paperwork is a tantalizing secret." The Stasi fostered a pervasive and justified paranoia. And it generated an almost inconceivable amount of paper, enough to fill more than 100 miles of shelves. The agency indexed and cross-referenced 5.6 million names in its central card catalog alone. Hundreds of thousands of "unofficial employees" snitched on friends, coworkers, and their own spouses, sometimes because they'd been extorted and sometimes in exchange for money, promotions, or permission to travel abroad. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Stasi tried to destroy its records. Now, with the help of computer science, the "billion-piece puzzle" is finally coming together. The article is an interesting update on the one featured in this 2003 Metafilter post . [more inside]
posted by amyms on Jan 30, 2008 - 29 comments

In 1934, the FE Dzerzhinsky labor commune in Kharkiv began manufacturing a rangefinder camera that copied the German Leica. Though production has long ceased, FED rangefinders are still widely used and collected today. But the FED and its manufacturer have a tarnished history - some of which is due to a work force comprised of children and criminals, and some owed to its namesake: Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police (NSFW).
posted by katillathehun on Sep 27, 2007 - 10 comments

Recovering the files of the Stasi
A group of German scientists has developed a computer scanning system that will be used to reconstruct millions of files torn up by the East German secret police after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
posted by Irontom on Nov 18, 2003 - 18 comments