After the Iranian Revolution and the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, Iranians enlisted local carpet weavers who reconstructed the pieces by hand. The recovered documents would be later released by the Iranian government in a series of books called "Documents from the US espionage Den". The US government subsequently improved its shredding techniques by adding pulverizing, pulping, and chemical decomposition protocols. Modern computer technology considerably speeds up the process of reassembling shredded documents. The strips are scanned on both sides, and then a computer determines how the strips should be put together. Robert Johnson of the National Association for Information Destruction has stated that there is a huge demand for document reconstruction. Several companies offer commercial document reconstruction services. For maximum security, documents should be shredded so that the words of the document go through the shredder horizontally (i.e. perpendicular to the blades). Many of the documents in the Enron Accounting scandals were fed through the shredder the wrong way, making them easier to reassemble. In 2003, there was an effort underway to recover the shredded archives of the Stasi, the East German secret police. There are "millions of shreds of paper that panicked Stasi officials threw into garbage bags during the regime's final days in the fall of 1989". As it took three dozen people six years to reconstruct 300 of the 16,000 bags, the Fraunhofer-IPK institute has developed the Stasi-Schnipselmaschine ('Stasi snippet machine') for computerized reconstruction and is testing it in a pilot project. The DARPA Shredder Challenge 2011 called upon computer scientists, puzzle enthusiasts, and anyone else with an interest in solving complex problems, to compete for up to $50,000 by piecing together a series of shredded documents. The Shredder Challenge consisted of five separate puzzles in which the number of documents, the document subject matter and the method of shredding were varied to present challenges of increasing difficulty. To complete each problem, participants were required to provide the answer to a puzzle embedded in the content of the reconstructed document. The overall prizewinner and prize awarded was dependent on the number and difficulty of the problems solved. DARPA declared a winner on December 2, 2011 (the winning entry was submitted 33 days after the challenge began) – the winner was "All Your Shreds Are Belong To U.S." using a combination system that used automated sorting to pick the best fragment combinations to be reviewed by humans.
after the iranian revolution and the takeover of the us embassy in tehran in 1979 iranians enlisted local carpet weavers who reconstructed the pieces by hand the recovered documents would be later released by the iranian government in a series of books called "documents from the us espionage den" the us government subsequently improved its shredding techniques by adding pulverizing pulping and chemical decomposition protocols modern computer technology considerably speeds up the process of reassembling shredded documents the strips are scanned on both sides and then a computer determines how the strips should be put together robert johnson of the national association for information destruction has stated that there is a huge demand for document reconstruction several companies offer commercial document reconstruction services for maximum security documents should be shredded so that the words of the document go through the shredder horizontally (ie perpendicular to the blades) many of the documents in the enron accounting scandals were fed through the shredder the wrong way making them easier to reassemble in 2003 there was an effort underway to recover the shredded archives of the stasi the east german secret police there are "millions of shreds of paper that panicked stasi officials threw into garbage bags during the regime's final days in the fall of 1989" as it took three dozen people six years to reconstruct 300 of the 16000 bags the fraunhofer-ipk institute has developed the stasi-schnipselmaschine ('stasi snippet machine') for computerized reconstruction and is testing it in a pilot project the darpa shredder challenge 2011 called upon computer scientists puzzle enthusiasts and anyone else with an interest in solving complex problems to compete for up to $50000 by piecing together a series of shredded documents the shredder challenge consisted of five separate puzzles in which the number of documents the document subject matter and the method of shredding were varied to present challenges of increasing difficulty to complete each problem participants were required to provide the answer to a puzzle embedded in the content of the reconstructed document the overall prizewinner and prize awarded was dependent on the number and difficulty of the problems solved darpa declared a winner on december 2 2011 (the winning entry was submitted 33 days after the challenge began) – the winner was "all your shreds are belong to us" using a combination system that used automated sorting to pick the best fragment combinations to be reviewed by humans