Tools and Weapons: The Promise and The Peril of the Digital Age

by Brad Smith

The once top-secret military compound had been part of the headquarters of the Stasi, short for State Security Service. The Stasi served as East Germany’s “shield and sword,” ruling over the country with repressive surveillance and psychological manipulation. By the time the Berlin Wall fell, the Stasi employed almost ninety thousand operatives backed by a secret network of more than six hundred thousand “citizen watchdogs” who spied on their East German coworkers, neighbors, and sometimes their own family.1 The Stasi accumulated a staggering number of records, documents, images, and video and audio recordings that if lined up would stretch sixty-nine miles.2 Citizens who were considered flight risks, threats to the regime, or asocial were detained, intimidated, and interrogated at Hohenschönhausen from the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War.