Privacy Rights and the Rights of Political Victims: Implications of the German Experience

Three forces collide when security police files surface: the right to privacy, the right to state security, and the right to access information. In the case of the East German "Stasi" files, communists tried to destroy them, West German archivists and politicians tried to restrict them for decades, and dissidents tried to open access to them. A unique solution, pushed into law in 1990-91, has now stood the test of time. Fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the formula devised by Joachim Gauck is a tested model for balancing the conflicts between transparency, privacy, and security.