This week has been full of work on this project, including research in the BStU reading room, and making photographs at the archives at the former headquarters and the Stasi Museum. Today, for the first time, I visited The Memorial to Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, a large former prison complex which includes a former Stasi detention and interrogation center. Berlin-Hohenschönhausen began as a Nazi barrack camp for prisoners of war during WWII. After the fall of Nazi Germany it was used by the Soviet NKVD (the secret police) as a camp for interning political prisoners and former Nazis.

The facility was taken over by the GDR Ministry for State Security (MfS) in 1951. For nearly 40 years the MfS used part of it as a secret (it was not located on official city maps) detention and interrogation center. Here, over 10,000 political prisoners were detained and subjected to physical and psychological torture to gain information in preparation for sentencing by the courts.

The MfS staff who worked here were trained at the “Stasi University” (Potsdam) to destabilize and destroy the personality of their prisoners. Their methods included sleep deprivation, isolation, and other harassment that left the prisoners psychologically damaged. They also made references to prisoners’ loved ones, spouses and children, in order to coerce confessions and encourage cooperation.

The methods for social isolation were particularly effective. Prisoners were often kidnapped and placed in a cage inside a van disguised as a delivery vehicle. The vehicle would drive around endlessly to disorient the prisoner and then arrive at a special closed-off garage in the detention center.

Once inside the buildings an elaborate series of electronic circuits controlled red and green lights in the hallways to direct the flow of prisoners and make certain they would never have the chance to encounter one another.

This last note offers an important comparison to today’s social networks and surveillance capitalism methodologies. In social networks, the organization benefits from the flow of information between participants. They want to stimulate their users to interact and continue generating profit by using the site, producing data, and viewing ads. The Stasi’s torture of political prisoners, on the other hand, intentionally removed all stimulation and human contact. The sensory deprivation and isolation that prisoners experienced in their cells dehumanized, weakened, and prepared them to to give up information the Stasi wanted.

Our information society has transformed the way we think about private information. While we freely give it up in exchange for social capital, companionship, and the serve the impulse to communalize our experiences, it does not mean that the social networks and corporations who deal in that data are not responsible when our information is misused. The recent revelation that the U.K. defense contractor turned data dealer, BAE, sold cyber-surveillance tools to Arab states is proof of this. BAE peddled their sophisticated total surveillance system, with a generic yet telling name, “Evident” (a marketing variation of “criminal evidence”?) to six Middle Eastern countries previously criticised for repressing their citizens. These countries can now use the tool to scour the internet for sites, blogs, and social networks for information on anyone they consider an opponent. A former BAE employee put it like this:

“You’d be able to intercept any internet traffic,” he said. “If you wanted to do a whole country, you could. You could pin-point people’s location based on cellular data. You could follow people around. They were quite far ahead with voice recognition. They were capable of decrypting stuff as well.”

Digital information is inherently insecure. It’s easy to surveill, copy, and duplicate by design. Equally, it is easy to reimplement a surveillance software system that is designed to be sold to do so. The Stasi was a terrible organization, but their work was generally confined to the GDR. There was collaboration across the USSR satellite police organizations, but their work wasn’t on a global market. Looking back at the Stasi provides this evidence; The employees and stockholders of any company that benefits from the sale of such a system to inflict human rights abuses are as guilty as the Stasi employees who worked in the offices and never directly inflicted damage. Surveillance capitalism isn’t just about the profit generated by social network ads, it includes the manufacture and sales of systems like Evident, and all those who derive profit from such decentralized institutions.

Heißluftgebläse. Credit: Museum in der Runde Ecke

The next artifact in my list is the “Heißluftgebläse”—a hot air blower constructed by the Stasi for opening envelopes and packages sealed with rubberized self-adhesive tape. Unlike the various steam methods the Stasi employed, which only worked on water-based glues and could potentially damage the contents of letters, this machine was used to focus hot, dry air directly to the flap in order to soften and release the adhesive.

Like other “hacked” machines constructed for postal surveillance the Stasi Operative-Technical Sector fashioned this blower using off the shelf, reused, and hand-made parts. In this case, they adopted a commercially-available vacuum cleaner to force air through a heating cartridge and down a steel tube towards a platform where workers laid envelopes. At the end of the tube there is a metal apparatus that could be used to focus the hot air and gently pry the envelope flap open. Impressively, the Runde Ecke index states this method be used to open up to 150 letters per hour.

Heißluftgebläse. April and July Credit: Wikepedia user Appaloosa

I’m particularly interested in the different representations of this machine. In these two photographs, both posted by the same Wikipedia user in 2008 just months apart, it appears there were two separate machines on exhibit. This is suggested by comparing the scratches on the base and stand. Yet, while they are clearly different, they are strangely positioned in exactly the same location—an exhibition at the Museum in der Runde Ecke which contains objects found in the Leipziger district administration for state security (BVfS)—with other obvious differences. In the 22 April photo (left) the vacuum cleaner is still attached, showing how the machine was originally used. But in the 27 July image the vacuum and tape have been removed. Was it needed for cleaning in the museum? Where could it have gone? There are additional small differences that point to these being distinct machines, the most noticeable of which is that a different bracket is holding the heating apparatus.

It’s thanks to deviations like this that the telling of the story of Stasi postal surveillance continues to evolve. Aesthetic decisions that seem inconsequential—like a museum staff member replacing the device with the yellowing tape with the one that doesn’t look as disheveled—change how we are able to perceive the past. Here, those moments which make the economic and material constraints the Stasi OTS experienced while hacking and iterating across their analog surveillance devices become less clear. While, thanks to the BTsU we are fortunate to be able to dissect and interpret the methods of the Stasi, it is not possible to collect everything. This unfortunately obscures the parallels with our 21st century hacker culture that, like the Stasi, have grown into immense organizations intent on perfecting and perpetuating their power through surveillance.

1. Heißluftgebläse zum öffnen von gummierten selbstklebenden Briefen (Inventory no. 00020). Objekt- und Fotodatenbank Online im Museum in der Runden Ecke. Accessed June 13, 2017.
2. BStU. Die Stasi und das Postgeheimnis. Accessed June 10, 2017.

Credit: BStU

Since hot steam could damage sensitive contents like photographs, the Stasi used the C-83 (“Cellophan 83”) “cold steam” generating device to open those letters. Produced in Hungary, the C-83 used a special film (cellophane) stretched over a tray filled with distilled water. Up to 25 letters could be placed on the film, flaps down, so that when the water in the tray was heated to 50ºC the “cold steam” diffused through the film and dissolved the glue on the envelope flaps.

The procedure was time-consuming because cold steam dissolved the glue at a much slower rate than the hot steam method. Once the glue started to soften, workers had could only lift the letters off the foil for a short time in order to carefully open them using a special spatula.

Credit: BStU

It is unclear if this is an original mass-produced device or is a product modified by the Stasi OTS. It is constructed of painted sheet metal, cast plastic, and other materials that suggest it was primarily constructed in a factory, though it is possible the Stasi made modifications to assist in letter-opening.

Credit: Museum in der Runde Ecke

Credit: Museum in der Runde Ecke

Credit: Museum in der Runde Ecke

1. Kaltdampf-Öffnungsgerät zum öffnen von Briefen (Zellofanbodengerät) (Inventory no. 00006). Objekt- und Fotodatenbank Online im Museum in der Runden Ecke. Accessed June 13, 2017.
2. BStU. Die Stasi und das Postgeheimnis. Accessed June 10, 2017.