Computers piece together millions of shredded Stasi documents

[SmoochyTX]

Found via BoingBoing

A moving and intriguing Wired feature tells the story of the activists, hackers and engineers who are working to un-shred millions of hand-shredded secret files that the East German Stasi ripped to pieces in the run-up to the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The secret police panicked when they realized that they were about to lose their tight rein on power and shredded as much as they could -- but they had collected more files than any other bureaucracy in the history of the world, and they couldn't shred fast enough. So they assigned a detail to go into the basement, into a secure, copper-lined computing room, and hand-tear the most sensitive documents, all day long, millions of them.

The full article at Wired.

Ulrike Poppe used to be one of the most surveilled women in East Germany. For 15 years, agents of the Stasi (short for Staatssicherheitsdienst, or State Security Service) followed her, bugged her phone and home, and harassed her unremittingly, right up until she and other dissidents helped bring down the Berlin Wall in 1989. Today, the study in Poppe's Berlin apartment is lined floor to 12-foot ceiling with bookshelves full of volumes on art, literature, and political science. But one shelf, just to the left of her desk, is special. It holds a pair of 3-inch-thick black binders ? copies of the most important documents in Poppe's secret police files. This is her Stasi shelf.

The Wired article is a must read. It's absolutely amazing how much "stuff" they're dealing with.

 

[TallBill]

Originally posted by: SmoochyTX
Found via BoingBoing

A moving and intriguing Wired feature tells the story of the activists, hackers and engineers who are working to un-shred millions of hand-shredded secret files that the East German Stasi ripped to pieces in the run-up to the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The secret police panicked when they realized that they were about to lose their tight rein on power and shredded as much as they could -- but they had collected more files than any other bureaucracy in the history of the world, and they couldn't shred fast enough. So they assigned a detail to go into the basement, into a secure, copper-lined computing room, and hand-tear the most sensitive documents, all day long, millions of them.

The full article at Wired.

Ulrike Poppe used to be one of the most surveilled women in East Germany. For 15 years, agents of the Stasi (short for Staatssicherheitsdienst, or State Security Service) followed her, bugged her phone and home, and harassed her unremittingly, right up until she and other dissidents helped bring down the Berlin Wall in 1989. Today, the study in Poppe's Berlin apartment is lined floor to 12-foot ceiling with bookshelves full of volumes on art, literature, and political science. But one shelf, just to the left of her desk, is special. It holds a pair of 3-inch-thick black binders ? copies of the most important documents in Poppe's secret police files. This is her Stasi shelf.

The Wired article is a must read. It's absolutely amazing how much "stuff" they're dealing with.

Cant wait till the article is in the magazine version. For some reason it's easier for me to read it then online.

 

[mh47g]

Originally posted by: TallBill

Originally posted by: SmoochyTX
Found via BoingBoing

A moving and intriguing Wired feature tells the story of the activists, hackers and engineers who are working to un-shred millions of hand-shredded secret files that the East German Stasi ripped to pieces in the run-up to the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The secret police panicked when they realized that they were about to lose their tight rein on power and shredded as much as they could -- but they had collected more files than any other bureaucracy in the history of the world, and they couldn't shred fast enough. So they assigned a detail to go into the basement, into a secure, copper-lined computing room, and hand-tear the most sensitive documents, all day long, millions of them.

The full article at Wired.

Ulrike Poppe used to be one of the most surveilled women in East Germany. For 15 years, agents of the Stasi (short for Staatssicherheitsdienst, or State Security Service) followed her, bugged her phone and home, and harassed her unremittingly, right up until she and other dissidents helped bring down the Berlin Wall in 1989. Today, the study in Poppe's Berlin apartment is lined floor to 12-foot ceiling with bookshelves full of volumes on art, literature, and political science. But one shelf, just to the left of her desk, is special. It holds a pair of 3-inch-thick black binders ? copies of the most important documents in Poppe's secret police files. This is her Stasi shelf.

The Wired article is a must read. It's absolutely amazing how much "stuff" they're dealing with.

Cant wait till the article is in the magazine version. For some reason it's easier for me to read it then online.

I thought I was the only one that had that problem...

 

[dabuddha]

Why wouldn't they just burn all the documents instead of shredding them?

 

[K1052]

Originally posted by: dabuddha
Why wouldn't they just burn all the documents instead of shredding them?

According to the article they were worried about tipping people off that the HQ was destroying records and risk being overrun.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Originally posted by: dabuddha
Why wouldn't they just burn all the documents instead of shredding them?

No, they were all commies.
Commies are all afraid of fire!

Very interesting article OP. It might be interesting to see what they were trying to hide. Probably lots of evidence of crimes against humanity

 

[Mo0o]

This reminds me of "The Lives of Others." Great movie, you guys should check it out

 

[Nitemare]

Wouldn't burning them be a hell of alot faster?

 

[Linflas]

Originally posted by: Nitemare
Wouldn't burning them be a hell of alot faster?

At headquarters, agents had been more discreet than their colleagues in the hinterlands. Burning all those files would tip off angry Berliners that something was up.

 

[Lounatik]

I remember back in 1979 when the Iranians overtook the U.S. embassy, they spent a few years actually reconstructing all of the mechanically shredded docs, by hand. I think they pieced most of the stuff together,too.

Peace

Lounatik

 

[sdifox]

I guess they saw Blade and decided to copy the vampires.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: dabuddha
Why wouldn't they just burn all the documents instead of shredding them?

According to the article they were worried about tipping people off that the HQ was destroying records and risk being overrun.

They also probably never thought that some day there'd exist sophisticated computers that would be able to reassemble millions of snippets of paper.

If governments did things "right" nowadays, all records could be kept electronically, allowing for much easier data "loss" to occur. Need to purge numerous databases? I'm sure you could write a script that'd do multiple data overwrites of hard drives to clean up any old information. Fortunately, people tend to be sloppy.
Want to do it even better? Use 256-bit encryption for all sensitive files, THEN overwrite everything multiple times. Anything recovered would look like random data, and would be useless anyway.