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."

Comments

They do make non-crosscut shredders

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Scrap paper

[MichaelSmith]

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.