ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Espionage, Intelligence, and Security Volume ...

Document DestructionIndustrial shredders. By contrast, the shredders at a facilitysuch as that of American Document Security Corporation(ADS) in Brooklyn, New York, are capable of chewingthrough 20 tons (18.14 tonnes) of documents an hour.Clients of such companies range from law and consultingfirms to investment banks, hospitals, and many others.Though document shredding is probably as old as theconcept of written documents, shredding by machinedates back to the 1920s, when an American inventordeveloped the first shredder from a Bavarian noodle cutter.Today’s shredders are far more efficient than thoseused even in 1979, when the students who took over theU.S. embassy in Teheran, Iran, were able to piece togetherdocuments shredded by embassy personnel.Some shredders are known as disintegrators. Oftenused for destroying CD ROMs, circuit boards, and otheritems containing computerized data, these chop up materialsinto a fine dust that can be sifted through a screen atthe bottom of the machine. Another variation on theshredder, inasmuch as it destroys documents by purelyphysical (rather than chemical or electromagnetic) means,is a hammer-and-mill device, which beats paper quiteliterally to a pulp.SOMAT (soluble materials), or shredded documents, are loaded intodisposal bins at C.I.A. headquarters in Virginia. ©ROGER RESSMEYER/CORBIS.individual vulnerability to identity theft or invasion ofprivacy involves those intent on misusing individuals’private records.Forms of Document DestructionThe best methods of document destruction take place onan industrial scale. The document destruction industry,which primarily serves corporate clients, is estimated togenerate $1.5 billion a year in revenue. Whereas onlyabout two dozen companies nationwide were in operationin the early 1980s, by 2002 that number had risen toabout 600.Document shredding, which particularly came to nationalattention in the wake of the Enron debacle, is onlyone of many methods of document destruction, though itis the one most frequently used. As a report in the WallStreet Journal noted, “For routine destruction work, manycompanies use shredding services because even heavydutyoffice-model shredders tend to choke on anythingthicker than about 50 pages—and can be stopped dead intheir tracks by a binder clip.”Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and SecurityBurning and other methods. Paper that has been put throughindustrial shredders and hammer-and-mill devices oftenis recycled. Waste-to-energy plants burn paper waste attemperatures as high as 2,200° F ( 1,204 °C).For burning documents on a smaller scale—especiallydocuments for which security is an extremely highconcern—a burn box may be used. Actually, the purposeof the burn box is not to destroy documents per se, but todestroy documents discovered by the wrong people. Insidethe box, a sturdy metal container, is a volatile chemicalmixture attached to a tamper-sensitive switch. If someoneopens the box in an unauthorized manner, the chemicalsturn the pages to ash.A focus on security. An intriguing variety of documentdestruction can be used for electronic media such as CD-ROMs, hard drives, floppies, and so on. This is a degausser,which applies electromagnetic energy to rearrange particlesof information. Used either in the form of a stationarybox or a hand-held wand, a degausser removes informationpermanently, leaving the storage device free to beused again.No matter how advanced the technology, however, itis only as reliable as the individual who operates it. For thisreason, security concerns are as much a motivator todocument-destruction companies as they are to the firmswho hire them. ADS, for instance, equips its trucks withalarms, and tracks them on a global positioning system toensure that documents are not stolen en route. Its employeesare bonded, and must undergo background checksprior to employment. Some 30 security cameras are in343