Daily Dose of Dust
Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
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Thursday, February 05, 2004
Chilling stuff
Remote-operated cameras hidden in hollowed-out logs, school satchels and watering cans. Glass jars containing personal-ID body swabs, to be used by groin-sniffer dogs. Kombi-style Barkas B1000 prisoner transport vehicles with net curtains over the windows. Letter-opening machines. Wire-tapping devices. Bulky "microbugs". More hidden cameras
All five floors of Ruschestrasse 103 are filled with spooky surveillance equipment. Until 14 years ago, this austere, archetypically modernist building, hidden among similar anonymous boxes in the eastern suburb of Lichtenberg, was one of the most feared in Berlin. Which is really saying something.
It was the headquarters of the Ministry for State Security, otherwise known as the Stasi, the secret police force, which during its 40-year existence amassed files on some six million people, imprisoned more than 250,000 and arranged for the disappearance of countless others.
· Ministry for State Security [ courtesy of NicMoc: What remains true, as the region embarks on it present transition, is that it is still an endlessly fascinating place, caught bristling in its own tensions between the possibilities of the future and the shackles of the past]