STASI METHODS USED TO TRACK G8 OPPONENTS
In a reminder of methods used by the East German Stasi secret police, German authorities are collecting human scents to trace activists they believe may try to violently disrupt the G8 summit in June. It’s proving highly controversial, and there’s no scientific evidence that the method is infallible.
The good thing about living in a country governed by a constitution and the rule of law is that you usually know what to expect. Fritz S. was pretty sure what was going to happen when investigators from the federal prosecutors’ office stood on his doorstep at eight o’clock in the morning in Hamburg’s St Pauli district.
House search, seizure of files, having his particulars taken down, the 68-year-old left-wing radical had seen it all before. As an anti-nuclear activist he had been investigated a number of times, after attacks on nuclear waste transports, for example. But the visitors who came knocking Wednesday before last wanted something quite different this time — his smell.