On Secure Data Deletion

During New York City’s 2012 Thanksgiving Day parade, sensitive personal data rained from the sky. Makeshift confetti, formed out of shredded police case reports and personnel fi les, landed on spectators who observed something peculiar about it: having been shredded horizontally, entire stretches of text, including names, Social Security numbers, and arrest records, were completely legible.1 It’s likely that the documents were shredded to securely delete the sensitive data they contained (and not simply to make confetti).