Surveillance story which amuses me: some
Western journo in East Germany in the 80s —
possibly Timothy Garton Ash — is talking on
the phone to an EG acquaintance, not abt
politics but abt literature. The Stasi snooper
assigned them is so irritated by the
pretentious and ill-informed line that the
conversation is taking that s/he interrupts
the chatterers to put them right, on some key
point of cultural fact.
Surveillance itself is primarily about
boredom: the problem lies with the reporting
and interpretation of the "intelligence"
gathered. This is all shit: mainly because it
has to remain secret, and thus can never be
checked against reality. The Stasi
encompassed abt half the population, so
probably had some VERY smart foax working
for them: however they did not foresee the
ending by mass walk-out of their own state,
presumably the one event above all they
were employed to prevent, or at least give
advance warning of.
― mark s, Sunday, 23 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link