German political spies mistook a random Berlin woman and got her fired

This is particularly dangerous where people share names. There are cases where someone is made liable for debt because they share the name of someone else. In one case I am aware of, someone was made liable for their father's debt due to the shared name and former shared address.

When I read this kind of thing I am immediately put in mind of the Stasi who ran such harassment campaigns. Some proportion of those must have been misdirected. But with the end of the Cold War, the spy agencies seem to have been fumbling for something to do and that generally means spying on their own people and policing the internet.