Paper and Digital Chatter

 For about twenty years of my military life....I worked in vaults and handled classified material.  Just in paper content and shredding/burning....I probably handled enough crap by myself to fill five tractor trailers with material.  

At one location, we had a closet area big enough to store about two-hundred grocery bags of plastic or paper.  About every two months, we'd have a group of three folks who'd get forced into hauling this to one central burn facility on the base.  You'd start the fire around 10 AM, and it'd take a good three hours of continued burn to be done.  Then you wasted an hour cleaning the ashes.  Your plus-up?  By 1:30 PM.....you were done and sent home.  Usually, you were dehydrated and your uniform had this smoke scent to it.  I should note, this was always a Friday job.  

But added to this burden, there was usually every six months....this effort to clear out the folders.  You'd go through three-hundred-odd folders (marked Secret or higher) and you'd rid yourself of old crap. 

What you did with the old folders?  Well....you threw them into a box, and they got re-used.  You might have a couple hundred of these stamped folders....with nothing in them.

So I look at this FBI chatter going on in the past day or two, and nothing makes sense.  They seem hyped-up about stamped but empty folders in the Trump raid....like they should not exist and something funny is going on.  No....the crap that was not useful to keep....got shredded or burned.  It's not rocket science.

Why are the FBI idiots like this?  I sat and contemplated this, and came to this logical 'ending'.  In the FBI world....shredding/burning is not their function.  They probably hire out some contractor group....a $15 an hour job....for Marvin, Woody and Delmar to come once a week....pick up their classified waste and dispose of it.  So they've never gone on a burn trip or wasted four hours shredding 700 pounds of paper garbage.

Looking at this whole discussion over achieves, the Trump material and discussion.....you come to this odd aspect.  Data is data, and typically....there are probably 15,000-odd copies of x-message around on literally hundreds of servers throughout the CIA, the White House, the Pentagon, etc.  To say that the message (one single message) matters when on paper?  No.....it's the digital copy that should matter and exist in the end.  It's been that way for over twenty years now.  We no longer live in a paper/plastic world.

Maybe there are some sixty to eighty year old government idiots around with paper on their mind, but at this point....the shred/burn gimmick is becoming less and less of value....because there's more digital than paper.