From: "Peter Capek (TL-863-6721)" <capek@watson.ibm.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 93 14:38:39 PDT
To: CYPHERPUNKS@toad.com
Subject: Medium destruction
Message-ID: <9310012138.AA12841@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


I have no firsthand knowledge, but a friend who was into this a few years ago
told me that the following is used for NSA's "best stuff" on paper...

     First, it is shredded.
     Then, it is burned.
     Then, the ashes are soaked in acid
     Then the acid is allowed to evaporate and the resulting mass is formed
          into bricks.
     The bricks are dumped at sea at a classified location which is changed
          weekly.

Maybe he was putting me on, but...

A few years ago, the American embassy in (I think) Teheran was invaded by
mobs of locals.   They apparently managed to get hold of a lot of classified
documents which had been shredded in the minutes before they managed to
break in.  But a few months later, there appeared in the New York Times
reconstructions of a few pages of the original material, based on a lot of
tedious labor.  So, maybe the procedures above aren't excessive...