According to reports from NAID, Iron Mountain and Recall are forming a new trade group for docuement destruction called the Association for Information Protection (AIP). This group will issue competing certifications programs to the AAA certification offered by NAID. It will be interesting to see if NAID can maintain their influence without the nationals.

Two news stories came out this week about local shredding services in Tennessee and Florida. It is a credit to the security of shredding services that they receive so little press. More business would be able to stay out to the press if they called a shredding service instead of letting their documents pile up and then dumping them in the trash when the job is too big to do with those disposable office shredders.

German researchers have announced that they were launching an attempt to reassemble millions of shredded East German secret police files using complicated computerized algorithms. Some 16,250 sacks containing pieces of 45 million shredded documents were found and confiscated after the Berlin Wall was torn down. Reconstruction work began by hand 12 years ago but 24 people have only been able to reassemble the contents of only 323 sacks. The project was halted due to the slow progress. Putting the machine-shredded documents together requires analysis of the script on the surface of the fragments. The institute has already had success putting together similarly destroyed documents for Germany's tax authorities

Paper should not only be shredded but then the shreds should be pulped into new paper. This is the process used by all shredding services.

A scary video of what is in the trash at a branch of Chase Bank in New York.

After records with social security numbers were found in a dumpster at the Maine State Records center, Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said the center is now shredding this information. The center holds 60,000 boxes of records with files that contain names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers. They also have informed all state agencies to no longer use full Social Security numbers on request forms, but to use only the last four digits.