To anyone wanting to know more about what it was like, I recommend watching The Lives of Others if you haven't already.
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
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Not sure if true, but a Romanian I was working with said that their phones were randomly monitored. At some point his mom and some friend was talking over the phone and they are like "when is the next bus for the town now again?" and the agent goes "they go every 30 minutes today" or similar into their phone call.
I believe that's an old joke from the period, though the Romanian Securitate did monitor people and phonecalls to an even greater degree than the German Stasi did.
Explanation: In the GDR, also known as East Germany, a strict Soviet-style regime was run. The country's secret police - the Stasi - were, in particular, renowned for just how thoroughly they monitored even ordinary citizens, bugging homes and gaslighting dissidents, employing both native Germans and Soviet KGB advisors.
This comic uses that, compared with the fact that Alexa (a modern voice-activated AI assistant for home use) and Alexei (a Russian masculine given-name) sound similar, to make a joke about asking the Stasi to play some music for them while they work.
I recommend visiting the Stasi Museum to anyone visiting Berlin. It's inside the preserved Stasi headquarters from back then, you can see some interesting gadgets they used to spy on citizens, very creative retro-tech used for terribly sinister purposes.
Oh, was it planned to post this on the 17th of June? Or just an interesting coincidence?
Just an interesting coincidence, I'm afraid! I'm time blind af, lol
@PugJesus ah, one of these ideas we all laugh at before someone says "actually alexa" upon which some say "obviously duh" and others think to themselves "hmmmmmm. well shit."