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Stasi scent profiling on protesters

Kate Connolly

Berlin: Stasi scent-tracking methods are being used to keep a check on selected protesters planning to demonstrate at next month G-8 summit.

Scent traces collected directly from everything from people's palm sweat to their vests and cigarette lighters have been made available to investigators so that sniffer dogs can detect potentially violent protesters, federal prosecutors have confirmed following reports in the German media.

``This has happened to several suspects,'' said Andreas Christeleit, a spokesman for the prosecutors. It is believed that most samples were collected during recent early-morning raids across Germany.

The revelations have immediately led to comparisons with the methods of the former East Germany's secret police, the Stasi, who habitually collected the scents of dissidents to identify suspects at a later date. It was thought that such chilling espionage techniques had been consigned to history.

But the news that similar methods are to be deployed at the summit in a democratic Germany has further angered activists already fuming over the construction of a barbed-wire fence around the venue, at Heiligendamm on the Baltic coast.

``[This is] another step away from a democratic state of law towards a preventive security state,'' said Petra Pau, a member of the Opposition Left party.

But according to experts it is as legal as collecting fingerprints.

A 68-year-old atomic energy protester from Hamburg, identified by police as a possible danger to the G-8 summit, reported how investigators knocked on his door at 8am and demanded scent samples from him. He said he was made to hold metal pipes in his hands — as palms give off an immediate scent — which were then sealed and marked with his name . —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

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