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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!
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.
"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.
Cross Shredder
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
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.
Also, not a proud day for reading comprehension. TFA states "shredded police documents mixed in with confetti". Other articles have photos and videos of the strips of paper which have complete lines of text.
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
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.
More likely simple stupidity. The local public utility district used to shred their documents and give them away to local horse farmers for use as bedding. Someone fed some customer data into the shredder the wrong way, and the stable it went to belonged to a local newspaper editor. Of course it became front page news, now the district has to pay to get stuff shredded and the horse breeders no longer get free bedding.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
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
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.
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.
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