Secret police records in former East Germany are subject to an unusual degree of transparency, because many of them were seized and subsequently made public aft

Secret police records in former East Germany are subject to an unusual degree of transparency, because many of them were seized and subsequently made public after the wall fell. We don't really know what the archives of western states would show if subjected to comparable scrutiny (to the limited extent those archives were made available, e.g. in Switzerland, they show an appalling amount of surveillance, though a comparatively limited amount and degree of repression).