She hated being called a spy, because that associated her with the Stasi, the secret police.
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The East German secret police, the Stasi, spied on him, using his friends and contacts as informers.
It is estimated that some 2m people were informants for the Stasi at one time or another.
Yet, as the Stasi itself eventually discovered, no system of surveillance can ever produce total knowledge of a population.
"When I think of the DDR, I always think of the Stasi -- the state security forces, " she says.
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In 1974, the then chancellor, Willy Brandt, resigned after a Stasi spy was found to be working in his office.
Most of the files kept in the Stasi's vast complex in Berlin's Normannenstrasse have become accessible to those deemed entitled to view them.
The German government of Hans Modrow nearly fell a few days ago over the reports that he was reinstituting the hated "Stasi" secret service.
Further up the guilt scale, in Berlin there are dozens of Nazi- and Stasi-related tours every day, and more than a million people visit Auschwitz each year.
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How does the German government propose to deal with the continuing threat posed to the West's technical secrets by the apparently still entrenched East German security service (the Stasi)?
Also featured is a KGB coat with buttonhole camera, and a camera used by East Germany's secret police, the Stasi, to photograph people through the wall of a hotel room.
As more Stasi files are made public it may turn out that the East Germans were also privy to intrigues in other European countries whose participants would prefer to remain secret.
The opposition she joined was tiny, mostly confined to a few parishes in the Protestant church, heavily infiltrated by the Stasi and weakened by the systematic exile of its leaders to the West.
What is more, the reunification of Germany presents special export control problems, given that the Chairman of the Volkskammer Commission to Control the Dissolution of the Stasi (East German KGB operatives and secret police) reported yesterday that at least half of the 2, 448 Stasi officers sent into German firms and institutions remain undetected.
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