[Cryptography] Magnetic media destruction question

[Peter Todd]

On Wed, Jan 07, 2026 at 12:57:43PM -0800, Christian Huitema wrote:
> It is certainly possible to put back together shredded documents from the
> confetti. The Islamic revolutionaries did just that in 1979. See for example https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Portal:Documents_seized_from_the_U.S._Embassy_in_Tehran.
> The top banner of that site says "A large number of documents, some already
> shredded <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_shredder>, were seized by
> Iranian Islamists <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamism> during their 1979
> occupation of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis>. They were pieced
> together and made public". I suppose that modern spies would take pictures
> of the confetti and feed that to a big computer instead of doing it
> manually.
> 
> The plausible defense is "shred then burn". As an individual, shred the
> documents, put the confetti in a pail, throw a match.

Paper is actually pretty hard to burn completely when it is densely packed, as
the ash from the burned paper tends to smother the fire. The best approach
could be to use a stip shredder. That would get you a bunch of loose strips
that don't pack together nicely, with lots of air. Thus allowing the paper to
burn completely.

-- 
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
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