I suspect the police department used a document disposal company, and this company took advantage of an opportunity to supply some organization at the parade with paper and simply ignored the security requirements of their customers.<p>Given that the actual shredding job wasn't very good in the first place, the Nassa County Police should probably start looking for a new document disposal provider.
Could people who picked up pieces of confetti and stuck them together in order to decipher their contents be charged with a crime, similarly to how people have been prosecuted for "hacking" by retrieving information through trivial tinkering with public URLs?
Cross cut shredders people! NSA specifies:<p>“Maximum Particle Dimensions: 75% of the shredded particles shall have no edge dimension exceeding 5 millimeters in length. The remaining particles may exhibit edge dimensions between 5 and 12.5 millimeters in length.”<p>Better yet, shred then take it to a recycling center where it is pulped immediately. Or shred it then burn it if you are cold/don't care about carbon emissions!
In large organizations that out-source their recycling/shredding there are typically two bins: a wide mouth "Paper Recycling" bin and a small mouthed "Secure Shredding" bin. I wouldn't be surprised if an office worker saw the two bins and decided against feeding a huge stack of documents 20-at-a-time into the secure bin instead dumped the whole stack into the non-secure bin.
What's most perplexing to me is how/why shreddings from a police department in a suburban police department came to be used, considering the relative size of the NYPD. Unless the floats and everything relating to the parade were prepared on the island.
I am surprised that there isn't some form of corn-starch-based confetti that would dissolve in the rain, used in these parades. It would be cheaper than paper due to corn subsidies.