Talk:Secret files scandal

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An entry from Secret files scandal appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 19 March 2007.

[edit] Information recorded

Can we have some information on the kind of information held in a typical file? 10% of the population is a large proportion to keep intelligence on, and I would have thought it would greatly exceed the membership of political groups outside the mainstream, for example. Were most of the entries brief, in that case? What qualified you for having a file if the bar was below membership or dealings with an organisation under surveillance? The Stasi relied on large networks of informants for their widespread coverage of the East German population, so does this mean there are many thousands of ordinary Swiss citizens who reported on the supposed subversive activities of the people they knew in order to build this vast archive? Was there a social effect when people got hold of the files that had been kept on them and inferred from the information recorded the identities of those who had provided it? It would be great to have some of this in the article. 79.68.202.189 (talk) 06:52, 21 December 2007 (UTC)