11 December 1999. Thanks to TS.
Source:
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/vorab/0,1518,56060,00.html
Christiane Schulzki-Haddouti writes of our inquiry about the cryptosystem used: The SIRA files were not really encrypted. But they were difficult to read because of the old machines. So it was more of a technical decryption. I had an short article about it in Telepolis:
http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/te/1800/1.html
Der Spiegel Online, December 11, 1999
According to the German magazine Der Spiegel the Gauck Department of Berlin made a spectacular discovery in its archives: an electronics specialist proceeded to further decrypt a database of the so-called Sira-tapes of the former East German intelligence service (HVA). A portion of the Sira tapes had already been decoded in January, 1999.
The tape, which has be read completely now, contains the complete F-22 file of the HVA archive, consisting of 63,035 data sets with the cover names and service periods of all HVA agents which have ever been in service (about 47,000 since 1950). According to a first review by managers of the former Stasi archive, by 1989 approximately 15,000 agents had been in active service. Security experts estimate only 1/3 of all agents has been unmasked until today.
According to Der Spiegel, the tape contains as well a complete list of surveillance targets, i.e. ministeries, parties and circles which had been under systematic surveillance. The Gauck department informed the German interior ministery and the Chancellor about its findings.
The F-22 file is part of archives which the American CIA intends to return to the German government in spring 2000 - but only as a partial copy. The tape decrypted in Berlin, however, is more extensive, reaching until December, 1989, while the American tapes end in 1988.
[More information on the SIRA archive at: http://www.snafu.de/~bstu/hva-sira/index.htm]
Thanks to MA.
The Associated Press
HAMBURG, Germany (AP) - Experts have broken the code of two magnetic tapes from the former East German secret police containing data on more than 15,000 agents, major German weekly magazines reported Saturday.
The tapes have information on 63,000 spy operations run by the so-called Stasi, including the aliases of agents who spied in West Germany and East Germany, the reports said. The reports, released early by Der Spiegel of Hamburg and Focus of Munich, are to appear in the magazines' Monday editions.
The decoded information goes up to Dec. 23, 1989, two months after the fall of the Berlin Wall. At the time, initial investigation shows, about 15,000 Stasi agents were still active. Only about a third have been identified, Der Spiegel reported.
According to Focus, the decoded tapes also reveal some 1,500 targets in the West that were systematically spied upon, including federal ministries, companies, political parties and associations.
The newly decoded data is a part of the so-called ``Sira Tapes'' that the German government office for administering Stasi records already partially decoded in January. A copy of the data is included in Stasi records that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is to return in part to the German government in the spring, the reports said.
For years, Germany has been seeking the return of records that the CIA allegedly spirited out of the country after the fall of East Germany's communist government in 1989. Focus reported in June that President Clinton assured German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder that the files would be returned.