How much control is necessary for a society to function and how can the example of the Stasi help us understand today’s situation with policing, surveillance and big data? The Ministry for State Security of the GDR, the Stasi (1950-1990) is known as one of the most effective and repressive secret police agencies of our time. Stasi collaborators permeated GDR society and in addition to exerting psychological trauma on people under investigation, this vast network of informants collected over 111 kilometers (69 miles) of documents (written notes, photos, slides, flim and sound recording). Social control existed on the other side of the border too, with intelligence agencies in the FRG collecting data on citizens.
In 1987, Mario Röllig attempted to flee the GDR to Yugoslavia, but he was caught at the Hungarian border and brought back to Germany, where he landed at the infamous Stasi-prison Berlin- Hohenschönhausen. In German with English subtitles.
Capitalism? The outside world? LIsten to Jonathan Zatlin, PhD, professor of history at Boston University, discuss what the Stasi was protecting East German citizen from.
Were East Germans ever worried that their Western News were actually fake news? If so, were there any major instances where the government interfered with the Western broadcasts?
To what extent does the example of the police state created and sustained by the Stasi in East Germany help us understand today situation with surveillance?
Donald Zoffel of Mt. Lebanon HS in Pittsburgh, PA, asks General Consul in NY David Gill: Could there exist a government that protects its citizens without the need for control? If so, how would that look like?
