Stasi radio monitoring department, hard at work, 1980s

Cory Doctorow 6:49 am Sat Jun 25, 2016

Here's a small gallery of the East German secret police's 26th Division, hard at work during the 1980s.

At the time, the Stasi — "Ministry of State Security of the GDR" — ran the most invasive domestic surveillance operation in world history, with one in 60 people in the German Democratic Republic working as a Stasi officer or informant. The NSA later surpassed the Stasi's domestic surveillance capacity, though through much more labor-efficient means — they employ less than one spook for every 10,000 people surveilled and manage to spy on the entire planet.

На фронтах "Холодной войны": Штази за работой [История и современность]

On the fronts of "Cold War": the work of the Stasi

[Past and Present/Livejournal]

(via From Deco to Atom)

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