Sideswipe: February 26: Living with the self-righteous flatmate
25 Feb, 2021 04:00 PM
3 minutes to read
Smell identity kit
The most interesting use of police dogs concerns scent identification, a method analysed by Dutch and other researchers, but adapted by the unique paranoia of the Stasi. As early as 1973, the
Stasi began collecting smell samples of a large number of citizens. Sometimes this was done with a special chair that the subject was asked to sit on during a visit to the police station. The chair had a dust cloth on top of the seat that was clamped into place by a removable frame. The subject had to sit in the chair for 10 minutes, and after the interrogation was over, the dust cloth was removed and stored in a glass jar. Sometimes Stasi officials did not bother with being subtle and merely told subjects to put a cloth under their armpits. The cloth was carefully handled by tweezers in an effort not to allow contamination by other human scents.