Hacker News
points by rdtsc 14 hours ago | 0 comments
> The Germans knew to identify ex Stasi and their informants so they know who to beware of.

I thought it was quite the opposite: there were so many informants and records were shredded that it wasn't that easy to figure out. What was the mechanism for this identification? A public database records lookup?

[–] Zigurd 12 hours ago
It's worthy of a book length history: some records were shredded, and some undoubtedly lost forever, but German citizens occupied Stasi offices and preserved records. At least some of the shredded records were digitized and reconstructed. There are over 100 million pages of archived Stasi documents in German archives today.
[–] rdtsc 11 hours ago
Thanks for the context. I knew a little how people could review their own Stasi file but wonder how easily was for them to discover the mapping from the agent code names to people's names.

I found this blog https://zipser2018feb.wordpress.com/under-surveillance/ from someone who reviewed their Stasi file. They were visiting professor of German from University of Delaware. As a visitor from the "capitalist West" of course they had file on him.

He did discover the names of some of this informants https://zipser2018feb.wordpress.com/my-stasi-file/

> The file reveals that there were nine unofficial collaborators of one sort or another who reported on my GDR-related activities and gathered information on me for the Stasi. Three were writers: IME “Dichter” (Poet), Paul Wiens, a well-known, well-connected poet and communist party loyalist [...] Two informants were good acquaintances, a married couple I got to know while living in East Berlin: IMV “Kurt” and IMV “Julia.” [...] There is evidence that two American Germanists, “unofficial sources,” informed the Stasi about my GDR-related activities in the United States. Although they are unnamed, I was able to identify them from the information provided. The file also contains four surveillance reports (one stretching over a three-day period), which were authorized by the Ministry for State Security and prepared by Stasi operatives. In these I have a code name: “Adler,” eagle, the bird of prey.