What an idiot -- from New York City station WPIX:
PIX EXCLUSIVE: Confidential Police Docs Found in Macy's Parade Confetti Spark Investigation
Something far more concerning than marching bands, balloons, cheerleaders and clowns was at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Confidential personal information is what some paradegoers found among confetti tossed during the world's most famous parade. That information included social security numbers and banking information for police employees, some of whom are undercover officers.
Ethan Finkelstein, who was home from college on Thanksgiving break, was watching the parade at 65th Street and Central Park West, when he and a friend noticed a strip of confetti stuck onto her coat.
"It landed on her shoulder," Finkelstein told PIX11 News, "and it says 'SSN' and it's written like a social security number, and we're like, 'That's really bizarre.'
It made the Tufts University freshman concerned, so he and his friends picked up more of the confetti that had fallen around them.
"There are phone numbers, addresses, more social security numbers, license plate numbers and then we find all these incident reports from police."
One confetti strip indicates that it's from an arrest record, and other strips offer more detail. "This is really shocking," Finkelstein said. "It says, 'At 4:30 A.M. a pipe bomb was thrown at a house in the Kings Grant' area."
A closer look shows that the documents are from the Nassau County Police Department. The papers were shredded, but clearly not well enough.
These were cut in a horizontal line -- shredders since the last ten years all use crosscut. If the Police Department didn't have a cross-cut shredder, why didn't they contract out to one of the secure paper disposal companies out there -- they have trucks with hamermills on them. The paper is turned into pulp on the spot, not just shredded. Somebody's got some 'splainin to do...
