[sam4ritan]

there are still a lot of destroyed documents being stored around the world (say, from the StaSi for example). I would love to see this applied on them. It migjt shed some light on things supposedly lost to history.

[08-15]

Do you actually think these documents remain destroyed for technical reasons? Of 90.000 official and 200.000 unofficial employees of the Stasi (secret police of the German Democratic Republic), a whopping 20 have been convicted. Do you think that's because the powers that be couldn't do better?

The official excuse is that whatever the Stasi did was lawful at the time. The same logic would have made the Nuremberg Trials impossible, but it wasn't applied. That's not an accident.

[yiyus]

Some way to fix the image would certainly help, but you still need to find a way to scan all the parts and put them in the right direction.

Moreover, some of those documents may have been destroyed for very valid reasons.

[diggan]

Sliding a bit off topic but what would be a valid reason for them to have been destroyed? Other than masking history, which I'm sure is valid for some, for most it's not a great thing.

[throwanem]

The internal security agencies of repressive governments are very good in general at collecting people's secrets for use as weapons. There's no potential for harm that I can see in destroying such information, and considerable potential for harm in recovering it.