At the end of October, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) launched its Shredder Challenge contest. The objective: create a system for reconstructing shredded papers, then demonstrate it by piecing together five documents, the shredded remains of which were posted on the contest’s website.

Although the contest had a December 4th deadline, the “All Your Shreds Are Belong to U.S.” team correctly reassembled all five documents with two days to spare.

The San Francisco-based team, which beat out approximately 9,000 competitors, used “custom-coded, computer-vision algorithms to suggest fragment pairings to human assemblers for verification.” Members of the team spent approximately 600 man-hours developing algorithms and otherwise working on the challenge, completing everything within 33 days. Because it was able to reconstruct all five documents posted in the contest, the team was able to claim the complete prize of $50,000.

DARPA hosted the contest both to develop methods of reading shredded documents left behind by enemies in war zones, and to identify ways in which U.S. shredded documents could be read by other parties, so that countermeasures could be developed.

So, when you’re through shredding – burn!



  1. Mac Guy says:

    Runner-up award was given to Hillary Clinton and her Whitewater staff…

    • IT Guy says:

      Dontcha love Republikan time warps?

    • hyperkineitc says:

      > Runner-up award was given to Hillary Clinton and her Whitewater staff…

      From wikipedia:

      “A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation did result in convictions against the McDougals for their role in the Whitewater project, but the Clintons themselves were never prosecuted, as three separate inquiries found insufficient evidence linking them with the criminal conduct of others related to the land deal.”

      “The Clintons lost between $37,000 and $69,000 on their Whitewater investment”

      Selective memory or propaganda parrot? Either way, you don’t seem to let the facts get in the way of your inane blathering.

  2. #3- bobbo, OCCUPY DVORAK: what if "we-all" number our own posts and post seriatim ourselves? says:

    I think all you have to do is cross shred it one more time. Its amusing how fast you can reconstruct a one or two page document. Fun for puzzle enthusiasts anyway.

  3. The DON says:

    I shred, then mulch and mould into a brick, then burn as fuel.

    And this is just an effort to prevent identity fraud 🙂

    I still have long lost relatives from Nigeria trying to contact me though

  4. msbpodcast says:

    I cross-cut shred, wet with bleach and then mulch my paper waste.

    I’m not paranoid. They, you know, them ARE out to get me.

    Its not easy being The Most Trusted Man In Nigeria,

    • Dallas says:

      Soak in cat urine to be doubly sure. Don’t be fooled.

      • msbpodcast says:

        I want to dissolve the ink/toner in acid. I could care less about what the resulting goop smells like.

        Doing the pasting in a freezing cold environment takes care of the smell anyway.

        I lived in Canada and still live in Noo Joisey so I know whereof I speak. 🙂

  5. LibertyLover says:

    $83/hour. Not a bad payback.

  6. Bert says:

    or simply store your documents using the tool at http://www.manifesto.net.au

  7. Micromike says:

    I don’t see any difference between the corrupt Democrats and the corrupt Republicans. Together the 2 of them have ruined the best nation on earth. I don’t care if the pres. is one or the other he has wars going in Africa, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan and has illegal secret operations going on in at least 75 countries. Committing murder by remote control is routine white house business and you guys quibble over what party Obama owes allegiance to. He damn sure doesn’t think he owes anything to the people who elected him.

    I voted for Obama and think he is running neck and neck with George W. Bush as the most corrupt and murderous president ever.

    I want a new government that obeys the Constitution! Neither party offers that.

    • orchidcup says:

      Both parties are controlled by the Rothschild – Carnegie – Mellon – Rockefeller – Windsor etc. coalition. Some conspiracy theorists call these rulers The Illuminati.

      Conspiracy theorists may or may not be wrong about occult practices and the so-called Illuminati, but those details do not matter.

      The fact is, the history of humanity has not changed since the middle ages, when royal dynasties arose and exerted control over religious, educational, and financial institutions, and then the modern industrial dynasties joined them to create an unholy alliance of aristocrats.

  8. Micromike says:

    Oh yeah, the shredder story. Nice of these young guys to make it easier for the government to snoop on us.

  9. deowll says:

    Cross cutting just raises the anti. Burning on the other hand does work. Soaking a few pounds with a water glue solution should make it rather hard to do much with. In fact you could do an in house recycle and make some sort of paper out of it.

    I just shred, spread, then till into the soil. The worms eat it after which you aren’t going to read it.

  10. KMFIX says:

    Burn / Blend is the best shredder…

  11. pwuk says:

    Eat it, saves going to McDonalds

  12. Publius says:

    >to develop methods of reading shredded documents left behind by enemies in war zones

    …in domestic USA on political dissidents aka terrorists, per BART, NYPD, Oakland PD, LAPD, Austin PD, and Co.

  13. Glenn E. says:

    This is so much propaganda BS. The North Koreans solved this problem decades ago. When they pieced together shredded documents from the captured spy vessel, the USS Pueblo. The US Navy was only using the straight cut shredders, then. Not the diamond cut, which probably would have been impossible to unscramble. So who is DARPA kidding with this “challenge”? If people can do it, manually. I’m not surprised some computer software can do it.

    Now it would be far more useful if this could be used to read damaged ancient documents, like the Dead Sea scrolls. But would we trust software approved by a government, to give us the truth about matter religious, that might effect gov’s powers?


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