[edwardunknown]

Bullshit, 'the Stasi"? Go talk to somebody who lived in East Germany. And they catch people all the time trying to get bomb materials, how did you think they were doing it, luck? (In the case of the car bomb in Times Square you're right, it was dumb luck, the timer malfunctioned.) If the average person didn't freak out and start yelling retarded things like 'Stasi!' I'd say fine, maybe my fucking Facebook is worth people's lives but they do freak out and then they pass things like the Patriot Act, or worse. So to prevent mindless fear I say fine, scoop up whatever crap you need, if I want something kept secret I know how to do it.

[gaelian]

My partner grew up in East Germany and has told me of the Stasi and their activities. I note that the GP wrote 'we have a government surveillance program that literally surpasses the level of the Stasi' - emphasis mine, and I think this is a fair statement.

Also, on a meta-point, every time I see someone start their post off with the word 'Bullshit' on HN - and I see it quite often, like it's some sort of HN meme - I always think: gee, that post would have lost nothing from the exclusion of that first word and probably would have been a little more in service of promoting civil discourse.

[edwardunknown]

How old's your partner, I've known two people who escaped from East Germany and one from Romania. I asked them all about what it was like living there & how they escaped because of course I'm an asshole American and all I got was the thousand yard stare. When the Berlin Wall fell there were hundreds of divorces because they found out their spouses were spying on them. Bugging people's homes was routine. If you said anything against the government you were shipped off or executed. In the case of the Romanian guy I've never seen that kind of look on a man's face. In all three cases I feel terrible for even asking, and I won't be doing it again. Datamining your worthless Facebook page does not compare to what they went through.

[gaelian]

I have a general policy of not divulging exact personal details of friends or family on the Internet without their express consent. But suffice it to say she was old enough to understand what the Stasi did, and lucky enough to have not been directly affected by them as an individual, although some people around her were: interrogations, permanent disappearances, etc.

However, not everything was beatings, disappearances and terror. Believe it or not, East Germany wasn't all downsides. People were employed, general crime was apparently quite low, children felt relatively safe, children were given education (though indoctrination was certainly a heavy component), they were clothed and fed. While the standard of living sounded like it was relatively low across the board, it also seemed that this standard of living was more evenly distributed than might have been the case in some other places at the time. Obviously traditional Communism has borne out to be more or less unsustainable, and I won't be participating in any debate about Communism vs other dogmas, but I feel I would not be accurately conveying all that I've been told were I not to mention these counterpoints to the Stasi's behaviour.

One fascinating thing my partner has told me is that for some reason, the memories she has of East Germany before the wall came down tend to be in black and white, in her mind's eye.

As you retell, the Stasi were quite big on the human intelligence angle, but I doubt they would have had to resort to such measures would they have had access to the kind of communication infrastucture that is common in the developed world today. Such a system as the NSA et al have access to now, would have been a Stasi wet dream, I'd imagine.

[paganel]

> Bullshit, 'the Stasi"? Go talk to somebody who lived in East Germany.

I grew up as a kid in Romania, we didn't have the Stasi but we did have the Securitate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securitate), which were as bad if not worse. I would like to confirm that from half a Globe away what I'm reading about the NSA gives me the chills.

[flyinRyan]

They don't catch anyone! The only plans they intercept are their own fucking plans! Have you not noticed that every would-be "terrorist" they've caught was entrapped? That is, without the US government talking them into it and supplying the materials they wouldn't have done shit? Get your fucking head out of your ass, you're selling our freedoms to fight shadows.