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    Shredded police documents found in Macy's Thanksgiving day parade confetti

    Shredded police documents found in Macy's Thanksgiving day parade confetti

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    Parade (Flickr)
    Parade (Flickr)

    The endless streams of confetti that rained down during this year's Macy's Thanksgiving day parade was more than just your average bits of torn paper — according to New York news station WPIX-TV, parade-goers found that shredded police documents from the Nassau County police department were mixed in with the usual confetti. The shredded documents apparently contained plenty of sensitive info that was easily identifiable, including social security numbers, license plate numbers, incident reports, and even names of detectives — some of which were found to be undercover. While all of the confetti has likely been swept away by now, it's still a rather surprising mis-step for an agency in which you'd expect security to be of the highest concern.

    Macy's couldn't confirm or deny whether it had used shredded police documents in the parade, saying only that it uses "commercially manufactured, multicolor confetti, not shredded paper." The Nassau County police department said that it is "very concerned about the situation," and also said it will be "conducting an investigation into this matter as well as reviewing our procedures for the disposing of sensitive documents." Regardless of how it happened, we'd expect that Macy's will be a lot more careful with its confetti next year, and that the Nassau police department will take better care of its sensitive documents in the future.