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Confidential Police Documents Found In Confetti At Macy's Parade
cstacy writes "The Nassau County (New York) Police Department is 'very concerned' about reports that shreds of police documents (with social security numbers, phone numbers, addresses, license plate numbers, incident reports, and more) rained down as confetti in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The documents also unveiled the identities of undercover officers, including their SSNs and bank information, according to WPIX-TV. Macy's has no idea how this happened, as they use commercial, colored confetti, not shredded paper."
I think you'd need to ensure your sensitive documents were pulped, rather than simply shredded. Much harder to piece together paper machet'
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Throw crap all over to celebrate what.... yay we're job creators! someone has to pick all this shit up!
Or just a cheap way of deposing old paper(s)?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
First of all, I believe Macy's on this. Why would you try to save a few bucks by using recycled documents? They're not a pet store. Secondly, confetti is usually pretty small, so who was walking around piecing tiny bits of paper together in the middle of the parade? I guess it's possible but the whole thing just smells like your standard internet myth.
Ok, so if the documents were shredded, how was any useful information recovered? The story doesn't say. Hurrah for journalism. Assuming the documents were pieced together, that's a lot of painstaking work by people just standing around. The journalist uses the word "confetti" which does not mean "long strips of paper that were not crosscut shredded". Every shredder I've seen for the last decade has been a crosscut shredder instead of the old style. There's one in this office not ten feet from me that does crosscut shredding, and my Dad has one in his office too. These are the ordinary models that anyone can buy. So, were these police documents ribbons instead of confetti? The article doesn't say. Yet another proud day for journalism.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
"It landed on her shoulder," Finkelstein said, "and it says 'SSN' and it's written like a Social Security number, and we're like, 'That's really bizarre.'"
Finkelstein, a Tufts University freshman, said he and his friends were concerned and picked up more confetti that had fallen around them.
[cynical]
They were lucky not to be charged for "illegal appropriation of classified government documents" or something like that, like that poor sod who bought a used computer, found kiddie porn in it and duly reported it.
[/cynical]
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
SO, they didn't destroy the documents, and now they're upset about it. Maybe, just maybe, they need to do a better job of destroying sensitive documents.
Cross Shredder
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
Come on. Anyone with a shredder knows that even if it isn't very good, you have to really make an effort to put information that would cover several lines of a page together into something that is real. And paper flying through the air isn't one of those ways.
Heh... I'd just go with a high security shredder approved by the NSA. Chops your average 10 pt font letter into at least 4 pieces.
I don't read AC A human right
Shredding paper reduces average paper fiber length and thus also reduces the value of the paper as a recycled material. Also makes the paper take up more volume in transport. Additionally, if you don't trust your recycler to securely handle your intact paper, shredding the paper before you give it to them is a minimal improvement for the same reason shredding the paper before throwing it all over new york city wasn't very secure, and there was far more randomization there than shredding paper into a bucket.
So there's significant practical reasons to not shred the paper before shipping it out - increases costs, reduces value, minimal security improvement.
paintball
Need a shredder?
too much trouble to do a requisition and wait 6 months
go to Wal-Mart
Buy cheap
submit 'expense'
much easier.
Too lazy to empty the trash into the confidential bag?
Dump it out the window on the way out the door.
City will clean it up
Didn't have to 'walk the donut'
gain a pound for retirement
Was it a Police Officer mad at the department? A criminal who gained access and wanted to undermine the PD? Or was this truly some far fetched accident?
If you put a page printed in fine print in landscape, then a lot of text would be legible if put through a strip shredder. Even a cross cut shredder might not be enough to prevent the release of useable data in that case.
So the problem is a cheap strip shredder somewhere in a police station, and someone treating the shredded paper thoughtlessly.
(Not that this story might not be false, but it also could be true.)
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Not saying there's any validity to this story (it sounds like BS to me) but you can get shredders that shred to various standards. Fellowes sells shredders that are strip cut, cross cut, and micro cut (more or less makes powder). The reason is because the more intense the cut, the less amount of paper a given size of motor can handle. For example take three of their shredders, all with the same basic build and model number. The strip cut version can do 21 sheets at a time, the cross cut 14, the micro cut 10. Same motor, same general construction, only difference is the blade assembly.
It has nothing to do with size either. You can find large ones that are strip cut. Fellowes has a 35 sheet strip cut commercial model they sell (costs about $4k). The more you want the paper cut up, the more blades you have to have, thus the more resistance, thus the less it can handle at once.
As such businesses may choose the higher capacity, but less secure, shredders for some documents. They also cost less to buy.
That's also why micro cut shredders have never become all that popular. Their cost goes up again because of the more blades and they can't handle a lot at once.
Especially if the organizer of the parade claims they use commercial confetti, and bluntly, why shouldn't they, considering that it's one thing less to think about and it most certainly isn't one of the big numbers on the bill.
Can anyone see a snitch working in the cleaning crew responsible for cleaning out the shredded papers using the parade to hand some info out to his friends? He cannot access sensitive material, of course, and if he took home a few cubic meters of shredded paper someone might wonder what's going on, but grabbing it and dumping it out during the parade, nobody would notice.
All you need is a man in the cleaning crew for after the parade. Thinking of it ... all you really need to get this rolling is a company specializing in cleaning... Anyone looked into this?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Police in my state got into trouble once for printing out license and registration data and using the printouts as scrap paper in their front office, so if they had to write something down for a member of the public they might get somebody else's details on the back.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Like from police academy movie.
Well, that's what happens when you outsource a significant privacy-related concern to someone outside of your internal domain: they might not shred it well enough or finely enough so that it is unrecoverable. Just look at the DARPA Shredder Challenge to see how much can be recovered from shredded documents.
Also, see the movie Argo for another example of the carpet-weaving approach to unshredding strip-shredded documents when you've got enough manpower.
There was a DARPA challenge competition just about the feasbility and ability to do this.
The problem is when they might not shred it well enough or finely enough so that it is unrecoverable. Just look at the DARPA Shredder Challenge to see how much can be recovered from shredded documents. The last challenge involved multiple cross-cut shredded documents mixed together.
.
Also, see the movie for another example of the carpet-weaving approach to unshredding strip-shredded documents when you've got enough manpower, even if you multiple documents mixed together.
If I had access to confidential police records, including undercover cops, and wanted to sell it, I might arrange a distribution method such as this.
It's a good thing that nobody with significant amounts of money has an interest in determining the identities of undercover cops.
The Wolfpack Project: BitCoin + Crowdfunding = Political Accountability
Or at least that's how the rest of the world does it...
I happened to be working in NYC in 1991 during the ticker tape parade for Stormin' Norman. People were straddling the windows and heaving out whatever paper they had. I saw entire reams of fan-fold computer paper being dumped out. The brought out snow plows to clean it up.
Some city, DA or police office with a crappy shredder might have been dumping out their own paper.
All these destruction plans ignore the obvious: why did you print it to start with? In my office suite we have ~15 printers and one medium size shredder. I see people print 20 copies of prestentations(in color), then notice an error and reprint the whole thing. People will print a 100-page PDF to skim it one time.
The Nassau County police have nothing at all to do with what goes on in New York city. Nassau County is on Long Island and is not part of NYC. The Parade is in Manhatten 30 miles from Nassau County. What is wrong with this picture?
Why not the possibility that someone got the doxs elsewhere and printed up their own new shiny copy, shredded it, took it to the parade, dropped it, and others found it?
Thus the list gets out and it looks like an accident?
Here's my theory:
NYPD decides, as many businesses do, to contract with an company for shredding. They ship their confidential documents off to this company and they get shredded. This way the NYPD doesn't have to buy a bunch of shredders and deal with internal shredder compliance.
The company doing the shredding decides that they're going to make an extra couple bucks and sell their shredded documents as "confetti". Someone in the purchasing office for the confetti company isn't looking to closely and makes the purchase. The shredded documents are shipped and then mixed into the confetti.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
1979 called and said that vertical strips are not good enough for shredding an embassy's secret documents either.
Apparently it did take a few months to reassemble all the shredded paperwork in Tehran though so it's still a bit more than a "keep out" sign designed to stop the honest.
You're going to want to spend a minimum of 800 dollars on a paper shredder. Any less than that and the quality is going to be so low you'll want to replace the damn thing within 5 years, but you won't be able to because your identity will have been stolen and your bank account emptied.
If you're serious about shredding, get something with carbide cutting heads and at least a .5HP motor. I have a Rawlings-Chamberlain MK220 AKA "The Silver Knight" .
It comes fully loaded with a dual rubber roller feeder and 6 layer hopper to separate different kinds of paper, wood, metal, etc.. I can shred a New York telephone book in under 15 seconds.
The built in milling computer lets me customize the shred pattern to meet any security needs. I prefer a 3mm parallelogram with bilateral fiber separation. You can't even make out individual characters on those things.
Send me an IM if you're serious about this. Welcome to the world of paper shredding. You're in for a hell of a ride.
s[thanks ArB]s
...by Sarah Stillman, I've come to the conclusion that cops are basically stupid.
Macy's did use confetti. Keep in mind, however, that they are a corporation and a corporation's primary purpose is survival, followed by maximum profit.
Perhaps the confetti they bought was from the cheapest source, and said source was not verified to be the most reliable one. Oops?
Stripped and shortened. I take no credit for the creative dialog. Just thought it was appropriate. Took out all the easy stuff.
Nope, first we start with a hummingbird-
Put that in a sparrow, stuff them both in a cornish hen, then put that in a chicken. Put all that in a duck, then a turkey, then in a bigger turkey.(Picture shows Michael Moore)
Put that in a penguin, stuff that in a peacock, then an eagle, shove it all in an albatross, then an emu, next comes an ostrich, then a leopard! Put all that in a pterodactyl, and then stuff it in a Boeing 747.
Do you work for Omni Consumer Products' PR department?
Pointless waste for a non-autocratic society I meant, not for those gaming the system. I don't think such things as soviet style infiltration of open political groups can be justified in a democratic state. Normal investigations work with open political groups - special political police and sting operations designed to justify the expense of undercover operations by engineering crimes and creating criminals on the other hand are a stupid waste of time - especially if the target is a bunch of pacifists!
This reminds me of the movie "Cops and Robbers" where the cops avoid being caught with the goods by shredding millions of dollars worth of bearer bonds and then throwing the shreddings out the window onto the ticker tape parade that just happens to be marching by.
Sounds like Guy Fawkes was partying pretty hard over the holiday weekend