Now we can keep some real secrets

I used to work for the Commonwealth. On my very first day as a baby public servant, a man from security came to give my fresh-faced colleagues and me a lecture on the importance of maintaining security . We were told that it was our job to protect the information we'd be allowed to see. If we left secret or confidential files on our desk at night, someone would confiscate them and leave little pink slips telling us to collect them from the security office. I don't think there was an actual three slips and you'd become unemployed policy but I'm sure he thought there should be.

He then showed us photos of different types of cabinets to keep our secret documents in. They ranged from Class A which were lockable filing cabinets to safes with combinations we were instructed to guard with our lives. In the middle were metal cabinets with special "alligator" keys that had different serrations on either side of a gap. To this day, my worldly possessions have not been as well guarded as the most lowly confidential files were in that Department.

The final part of his chat was about destroying secret documents. He had little plastic bags containing the output of different sorts of shredder. He was very dismissive of the one cut shredder that simply turned your documents into ribbons because blind Freddy could put those pages back together. Two cuts, which led to squarish confetti was a bit better but best of all were the machines that made 1mm a side confetti. It would take REAL determination for someone to reassemble those secrets.

Sadly I rarely shredded anything although I did learn how to hide my secret files where security wouldn't find them.

Several years later I joined the New South Wales public service. I realised they were slightly less um paranoid about keeping secrets when I saw that our office shredder was the size of a lunchbox and only turned things to ribbons.

Not that I'm obsessed by shredding. I mean I wouldn't have shredded anything at all except that the cleaners would often take papers out of the recycling bins to line our rubbish bins (so the plastic bags lining them don't get dirty. Each day they throw away the dirty paper that would have been recycled... I don't understand either) and I kept finding personnel files and job applications and tenders from other floors in the building in my bin. Seriously...

Anyway, the point of all this is that yesterday we got a brand new confetti making shredder the size of a Great Dane that can shred a book in 10 seconds with a satisfying ripping noise. It has warning signs on it about not letting small childrn fall inside. I finally feel like someone is taking us a bit more seriously.