E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSAt least they recycle. Along the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade route in New York on Thursday, long, white strips of confetti blew into the crowd. On one was a Social Security number. Other strips fluttered about – and on them were bits of information – some seemingly trivial, others possibly sensitive.
Ethan Finkelstein, 18, told WPIX that a strip landed on his friend’s jacket at West 65th Street and Central Park West. Finkelstein, a New Yorker, is a freshman at Tufts University near Boston.
“It landed on her shoulder, and she looked and it and it says, SSN and there’s a number that’s written like a Social Security number,” Finkelstein told WPIX. “And we’re like, that’s really bizarre.”
There were phone numbers, license plate numbers of undercover detectives – even information about former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s motorcade as he left Hofstra University, where he and President Barack Obama sparred at a town hall debate.
A partial seal on one of the confetti strips indicated that the records came from the Nassau County Police Department.
"The Nassau County Police Department is very concerned about this situation," police spokesman Insp. Kenneth Lack said in a statement, according to Newsday. "We will be conducting an investigation into this matter as well as reviewing our procedures for the disposing of sensitive documents."
Also of note: The confetti, a Macy's official told WPIX, is not official Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade confetti, which is more festive – although just about anything might be more cheery than a shredded police report.
More content from NBCNews.com:
- Military vets battle over who had it harder
- Video: Drones, armored cars for cities, towns — is US safer?
- Sandy-hit families see homes robbed over holiday
- Worker seriously hurt in State Department fire
- Video: Teen sentenced to 10 years of church for manslaughter
- Ex-teacher loses license over massages by students
Leave a Comment:
A lot of public and private establishments send off sensitive documents to bonded shredding companies. If that is the case here, lol, somebody is about to lose their bond!
I have dealt with a number of these shredding companies over the years. Every single one I have seen uses cross cut shredders s that all that there is left is tiny pieces of paper, not strips. The shredders that turn things into strips are mostly old, low end shredders. My guess is the Nassau Police have some old equipment that has not been updated to increase security. Probably some cops who were headed to the parade got a couple of bags of shredded paper to throw a confetti not realizing that they could accidentally disclose some sensitive information in doing so.
I guess you can see a little bad or negativity in anything , if you look hard enough for it .
Even with cheap shredders you put the paper in lengthwise, not sideways. That way no readable strips are produced.
Sea Quester - Exactly what do you see in this that's NOT bad or negative?
Gil - Readily available software will reassemble shredded strips in a heartbeat. That's why I use a confetti cut shredder. The pieces are even big enough to hole a single whole letter.
Joe Arpaio would find a way to turn them into bologna sandwiches and claim they meet the daily recommended amount of fiber.
Myth Busters would see if they could break a car window.
And my cats would play in the pile for an hour then fight over who gets to sleep on it.
Cross-cut or strip shreadders is not the real point here. The matter of concern deals with the fact that clearly the police department dissiminating this readable and highly sensitive material should have known better than to dispose of it in such a manner.
how many people out there grab a bag of shredded paper for packing, or something for your kids....someone probably got stupid...really stupid
I'll bet not many. The point of shredding is to destroy information you don't want anybody else to see. If you care enough to shred it, you probably don't bag it up and send it to someone else to try to piece it back together. What this police department staff did was way beyond the threshold of stupidity.
fck shredding ,i rather just burn it if its not to be seen by others to see
ha! if the nassau county police dept wanted those records destroyed ,they should have just left them at NYPD evidence storage facility in brooklyn , it got completely destroyed and flooded out by hurricane Sandy ,tons of evidence got destroyed :P
The shredded documents must not be shredded very well if someone can gather that much information from it. I'd say some of the fault lies with those Police Departments for not requiring the documents to be shredded in a manner that they are unreadable. Isn't that the point of it anyways!
and we want THE GOVERNMENT running health care?
Yes, the majority of the country clearly does. As do I. As do the majority of the populations in the other 29 of the world's 30 most wealthy, industrialized nations. Good luck in another four years, though. :D
If you open the door wide enough - most anything will fit.
The use of "The Government" by the radical Right - is designed to allow the uninformed, the ill-informed ... to appear as if they have a valid complaint.
When you say "The Government"; which one are you talking about?
local?, Town?, Village?, City?, County?, Metropolitan?, Regional?, State?, National?, Federal?
Complaint: Can you at least be more specific.
You don't trust NOAH... do you trust the weather forecasts? Thats government? do you ride on Airliners - thats Government - Federal Government, those are the folks who keep planes from running into each other, like when you go visit your relatives. Do you trust FAA? How about flu, Flu shoots - National government puts out those reports. Every buy clothes, Food, Meat, Cars... thats regulated by National standards, FDA, DOT -etc. When you buy ammo for your hand gun, rifle - etc, How do you know you are getting what you paid for? Yup - government standards certify the diameter of the cartridge, the amount of powder, they test to make sure it will be the correct caliber - so you don't have too.
All day, every day - you trust the government. But for some reason you turn around and say something silly.
Obviously - if you post online... you must trust some parts of "The Government"?
You trust money? .. you expect the next guy will trust the money you pay your bills with - aren't you trusting "The Government"?
I suspect that the shredding was contracted out to a private business, reasonable. Do we want a for-profit organization to handle government services?????
Annual overhead cost for US Government run Medicare - 3%
Annual overhead cost for private insurance company United Healthcare (profit + costs) - 30%
Yes, I would like to see 27% of healthcare funds going for healthcare, rather than for a second yacht for some CEO that hit bonus by denying treatment to kids. Nothing reasonable about the current suituation, even for a woman in nyc.
Beowolf;
When we refer to "government" in a negative way, it is in reference to government where government does not belong. Specifically those areas which were never intended, such as making it a social program beauracracy and distributor of wealth.
James Madison wrote in Federalist 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.”
If Madison and the founding fathers were to see what had become of their form of government, they would roll over in their graves.
Totally off topic.
Actually yes.. I would really prefer the government to run health care. Doctors are paid far to much, currently you get people who become doctors only for the cash. You are treated like @!$%#, they have no idea what they are doing. They prescribe medication that is not needed, only for the bonus they get from drug companies. Some doctors are bigger crooks than the Government will ever be. Miss-practice is one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Doctors kill more people, than gun violence.
the government does ok with TRICARE, CHAMPA, and KidsCare...etc...I have not seen any situations like this with those entities.
HIT (healthcare Info tech) take extreme measures to make sure nothing like this ever happens....not only that...but very little is ever printed on paper...with the training I have, I know this would not happen in a usual setting. I do think you can put your mind at ease a bit...but always be aware.
@Takamineman:
James Madison and the rest of those so-called "founding fathers" are so out of touch with todays United States in many respects. That is why we've had to Amend that old document repeatedly. As an example, you do not refer to the "founding mothers" because women were held in disregard and as being insignificant when it came to political decisions of that day. They were only good enough to sew together flags.
reasonablewomannyc
and we want THE GOVERNMENT running health care?
Right on!!! Because regular people never do the stupid things that government people do.
AeNonyMou5,
First of all, your post sounds like pure angry paranoia. And your solution is what, "replace all these lousy greedy doctors with government run health care?" Hello. Won't you still go to "the doctor?" I want single payer, government run healthcare, too, but for NONE of the fictitious reasons you imagined.
@Beoweolf You totally nailed it but unfortunately it will only fall on deaf ears. Without the Gub'mint in all those things we would be a third world country. Correction, we wouldn't be as good as a third world country. Chaos would reign supreme. As far as the argument that business would regulate itself: how many business's get fined for not going by the gov regs? If someone believes business will self police; I also have beach front property in Wyoming to sell! Good luck with that we need less Gub'mint thingee.
Most police departments have contracted independent companies to shred or burn their records in need of destruction. So, don't assume that the fault lies with the police department.
OFF TOPIC: Want health insurance? Get a job! I don't want government run health care because I want to seek/get treatment when necessary...not be made to wait until cancer has spread all over and is no longer operable before the government's death squad votes to disapprove treatment because it will not help at such a late stage....go figure! Check with some of your friends that have moved from countries WITH socialized medical programs specifically to come to the USA to GET AWAY from it and get BETTER medical options by having their own medical insurance.
What Mark-1925471 said. BTW, what do misplaced police reports ending up as confetti have to do with health care! Leave it to a republi-cant to compare apples to automobiles. Can you tell us why you believe this? Can you make an intelligent argument against Obama care? Or are you just repeating what you heard on Faux News or the Lush Dimbulb radio show. Come on, give me facts please. Have you even read the affordabel health care act? So stop ranting and defend your position with facts not BS.
Some people can use any opportunity or story to criticize the federal government. What does one thing have to do with the other. I am sure whoever shredded the documents will not be running healthcare. How about everytime we see a story about a woman doing something stupid we write, and thats why we shouldn't let women have jobs and thats why they don't deserve equal pay or thats why they shouldn't make decisions about abortions. There are plenty of stories about stupid things people do but to expand it to include a whole group of people lumped together to criticize them is just foolish.
That assumes one is healthy enough to be able to work & at a job that will offer health care as a *benefit*.
The US is the only *developed* nation that ties its health care to the ability to hold a job, & that job best be with an employer who's willing to partially cover your emergency appendectomy, your wife's childbirth, your kid's vaccinations & viruses, etc.
At least w/ PPACA, your kid doesn't get cut loose from health care as soon as he gets off the schl bus for the last time. There are no jobs for teenagers that come w/ health care, unless you live in West Virginia & want your kid down in a coal mine.
Try getting diagnosed with cancer or badly injured in an auto accident & see how fast your employer will find a way to dump you, because you are no longer an asset but a liability, now that you need to be off work for months or can only work limited hrs or require reasonable accommodation to do so.
There is no *death squad* in PPACA.
Seriously? That's your *reason* to oppose it? Made-up nonsense?
We have death squads (if that's what you'd like to call them) in our current system. It's when your private ins co denies you treatment.
They will & they do....all the way from little things like making you pay $1500 for root canal out of pocket b/c they determined after the fact that your dentist should've just yanked that abcessed front tooth
or you should've taken the risk of dying of septicemia over something as trivial as an infected tooth by ignoring its incredible pain....& all the way to big things like determining your cancer treatment istoo expensive for them*unnecessary* b/c you're going to die anyway.1st, would you ppl PLEASE LEARN the definition of *socialism*? It's naught more than a meaningless meme at this pt b/c almost no one knows what it really means, they just heard this *buzz word* on Fox.
Hate to break it to you, but practically no one from developed countries wants to live in the US anymore, & the lack of health care is the prime reason.
Why do you think there's such an uproar over the influx of
brown blackblah ppl from 3rd world countries emigrating to the US? It's better for them. They have no health care systems at all, or extremely poor ones.Ppl from Europe, not so much. They're not immigrating in the droves they once did. The US spends 17% GDP on health care. The highest % in Europe is 9%. They're doing it
less @!$%#ed upmore efficiently ¬ anywhere near as profit-drivenless expensively than the US.Do you think there's a wall around the US & no one else in the world sees what's going on here? They know our Congress is a joke & some of our citizens are bat@!$%# crazy frothing at the mouth *patriots* screaming that the sky is falling & someone's coming for their guns & Bibles. We scare them b/c of this sm but vocal contingent. They don't want to come here.
If I could afford it, I'd emigrate to the UK (that's *England* for all you folks who don't realize the UK is made up of 4 countries plus a huge Commonwealth that incl Canada & Australia, plus poor neglected New Zealand that is much nicer than Australia). Y'all are ripping the US apart w/ all this mindless shrieking.
And just as an aside, what happened to all those ppl who said if Obama won a 2nd term they were on the next flight to Australia, Canada, or England,
all places w/ the dreaded *socialized medicine*,hmmm?Too lazy to speak anything but English? I hear Somalia has no gov't interference in anything & they like guns there. Nothing to offer English-speaking nations that you were refused permanent residency, then?
Y'all wear the red white & blue only when you can get your own way. Pffft.
He's derailing. Alas, we fell for it.
I don't see what the big deal is w/ the confetti. The chances of *sensitive information* having been discovered & used for nefarious purposes seems to have been about zero, as there's no report of that occurring.
scar_tissue, thank you. That was so well said.
A previous employer of mine used a shredder truck service. An employee stood and watched as the papers went in. Everything was cut and then cut and then cut- there was nothing left to read. That was the whole back end of the truck- you got to see your documents actually shredded.
That is what we have at my job. The truck comes, one of our coworkers goes out and watches and when it is done she comes back inside.
No surprise here. Sounds like someone sold the shredded paper to make a quick buck. Now they'll get sued for triple that. Maybe that is what is meant by trickle down economics. Let us do whatever we want until we do something really stupid. then you can sue us. ;)
BFD
As long as its not your social security number.
I used to work for a defense contract company. We had contract with most all branches of the military. I know for a fact that they did not shred their documents because they had me doing it once. They went into a trash can then to the dumpster. I was absolutely astonished by this fact because we built guidance systems for Apache helicopter. Along with most all the communication equipment that all military used.
They need to create a disclosure report and inform anyone that might be affected by this breach of private information. Although police departments typically feel that they are above the law, they should instead set an example.
I was the owner of a large property & casualty insurance agency for about ten years. State law mandated that we keep records for three years after a policy expired. Since we kept hard copies of everything and did not scan documents into a file management database, it created a hell of a lot of paper, three ten by ten foot mini warehouses full of it. When it came time to destroy the files I called a document destruction company and the backed a truck up to the warehouse door. The employye of the shredding company threw the documents into the shredder while I watched his progress. What emerged was unrecognizable, no bank account numbers, Social Security numbers, driver license numbers checking account or credit card numbers. The liability for careless handling of a client's personal information is pretty severe. I suppose a police department doesn't have to worry about privacy laws.
They do worry about the security of investigative operations. However this foul-up occurred, it will be corrected if they ever hope to get cooperation from other law enforcement agencies and prosecutors. Hopefully they will pay for the purchase and operation of really excellent micro crosscut shredders.
Don't know why it would matter too much. One line of anything can't be too explanatory. Though information from important things should be shredded, how common would it be to pick up confetti and be able to put a whole page of anything together? Not common or even possible, I would think. More nonsense conspiracy theories. See who we can get in trouble now.
The information that can be gleaned from this incident may not be much, but the incident itself indicates a systemic failure to shred documents in a proper manner. In no way should those documents have been processed through a strip shredder. They should have been processed through a cross-cut shredder to approximately 1/8 inch x 1/4 inch or smaller pieces.
Your comment about "One line of anything can't be too explanatory" in and of itself was ignorant. The kid said he found a social security number. Trust me, with that information ALONE you can do major damage. I speak from experience as some idiot got a hold of mine back in 2008 and practically destroyed my credit. Identity theft is so out of control that it's not funny. Nowadays they only ask for the last for digits so if you have that, that's enough to do damage.
I don't think anyone would need a whole page. If you had my SSN alone ; which a child said he found: you could find out way more about me then I would be comfortable with not to mention steal my identity.
An SSN ALONE is of very limited value. Here is one 143-87-4235, now go have fun. If it is in combination with other information (even just a name) then the situation changes dramatically.
lol! someones head is going to roll. although there is no way the information can be gathered to make one complete case. Its shredded people come on go out and get a real crimnal!
It's not a matter of compiling a complete case. It's a matter of finding someones SSN and possibly stealing their identity.
Wow, political correctness has even made it to the street level...utility access cover... it's has been a manhole cover forever. "Ok, Tommy you run to the second utility access cover and I'll throw you the ball". LOL
poetic justice for drug cartel boses and violent thugs in new york ??? !!!!!!!!!
If they're going to shred such things, they ought to use cross-cutters - the kind that reduce paper to teensy squares instead of long strips. Then we wouldn't have such compromising of sensitive data.
Reminds me of what I had read about the Chinese after they had big disagreements with the Soviet Union way back when. Seems that the Soviets had been helping the Chinese with nuclear and other technologies. When they left, they shredded everything, but the Chinese, with time and manpower to spare, painstakingly reassembled all the shredded documents, shaving years off their nuclear weapons development.
I go one step better than shredding. I burn the old documents. Of course, it helps that I live out in the countryside. I guess you city dwellers can't do that.
So... what?
People are going to piece together confetti so they can read other's police reports?
Wouldn't... and COULDN'T!
What a great way to get rid of those pesky closet skeletons.
But what if those police records were active records? Think about that. For example in my town a couple court employees and cops were discovered pulling (trashing) arrest arraignment records. After pulling the records the arrest defendant wouldn't show up for trial and the court would have no knowledge of the trial and later when the so-call slip ups were discovered the charges against the defendant would be dismissed. Worse, when the court employees and cops who committed the crimes were caught they were never arrested and charged.
I see people commenting on the govnt taking over our health care. I've worked for the feds for 20 years. A fine example of how our health care will be is by looking at how our vet's get treated. We're screwed! Notice our senators & president opted OUT of this fine plan! Once again we're screwed!
WHAT THE F**K! I know we're all broke, but come on! We can do better than this!
Why is it that every time the public ask a question of the government, there has to be an investigation to uncover what happened. Nassau County Police know how they dispose of documentation, one phone call or a look at the org chart will reveal the culprit(s).
An investigation is just a new form of a cool off period that last just long enough for people to forget the question, and life goes on without any answers. We have to hold government accountable and stop living in the moment.
Hey!! Look At The Bright Side....
At Least It Wasn't "Made In CHINA"!!!!
You get what you pay for. The real travesty is that people think their information is secure for $29.00 you can find out anything from a Data Mine, even your military records.
Simply never give SS to anyone, go and look up what SS allows you to do, and we would have 1 % of the problem we have now.--AND that would be the 430,000 IRS lost last year!
I registered for college, and I refused (one of the worst places to give your SS #) and they pulled out a drawer with a registrant number made up of other numbers, it is that simple, Colleges know that is the law obviously!
Same thing with police (those with 2 month-2 years education (gunsliger school)), they wanted my SS number when I had to report a crime (so they can pile it up on you) and I went to the town board, and that police guy got fired--NEVER give your SS number to anyone except IRS, Job (for IRS reasons), bank (for IRS reasons) and to SS when you retire, no other reason.
The one who got SS number on Driver licence in NY MR. Bruno, is himself a huge liar and crook, so go figure why these criminals in the government think they are so wonderful to get SS on your car, so they can repossess it if you owe money!
Yes, all this started because a company stole 27 K off my credit card when I was sleeping on a motel. And another time when some one in a prison gave my tel credit card to the prisoners and robbed me for 11K, and bounced several checks on me due to auto pay system-- NEVER HAVE AUTO PAY!--NOT EVER!--When things go wrong, it is us that must correct everything!.
How do you improperly shred paper? Is it really that difficult? I guess you can find someone or some company that is inept at anything.
NO surprise about their concern....THEY got caught.