China and the Houston Consulate kerfuffle

Skeptic Ginger

Nasty Woman
Skeptic Ginger
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Feb 14, 2005
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At first I couldn't figure out what was going on because the news reported it as China burned papers at the consulate so Trump was closing it. Can't people in consulates or embassies destroy their own papers?

But then it turns out Trump ordered the consulate closed then the Chinese burned the papers. Well d'uh, what country wouldn't have crap to get rid of before closing their embassy or consulate?

Trump's trying to say they were burning evidence of their hacking and tech spying.

Trump isn't helping matters.
 
It's the norm for a consulate/embassy to burn sensitive documents when closed. Still, they most likely were stealing vaccine info.
 
Stacyhs said:
It's the norm for a consulate/embassy to burn sensitive documents when closed. Still, they most likely were stealing vaccine info.
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Most if not all the vaccine info is in the public sphere. In addition, the Chinese are well along developing their own vaccine version.

And why wouldn't it be, China immediately published the virus' genome at the beginning of this.

No one company can possibly produce enough vaccine for the 9 billion people on the planet. There is not monetary gain keeping the vaccine information secret. A Pfizer spokesperson said as much a couple days ago. I'm not finding a good link but it was a spoken fact.

Their goal is to eventually have a very good vaccine to market.

It's not like they are footing the R&D bill. The US government gave them ~2billion.

US signs contract with Pfizer for COVID-19 vaccine doses
The Trump administration will pay Pfizer nearly $2 billion for a December delivery of 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine the pharmaceutical company is developing, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced Wednesday.

The U.S. could buy another 500 million doses under the agreement, Azar said. ...

Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE announced separately that the agreement is with HHS and the Defense Department for a vaccine candidate the companies are developing jointly. It is the latest in a series of similar agreements with other vaccine companies.
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The whole hacking thing which includes Russia's own work appears to be more political than scientific.
 
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I've seen some programs in which even fairly thoroughly shredded material was reconstructed. Can't remember the details, but as I recall some bank in Europe accidentally shredded a zillion bucks' worth of checks or something, and hired a massive team to come and piece the bits back together.

Anyway, I guess burning is pretty effective. It sounds as if the Chinese were burning stuff in response to the threatened closing, whereupon the US used the burning as a reason for closing. uhhhh....

Anyway, off we go again. I suppose a war with China would take attention away from other stuff like pandemic incompetence and secret police invasions and Confederate nostalgia.
 
The best way to destroy documents is to fly a jet into the building next door. And F the chi-coms.
 
Puppycow said:
Shredded documents can be pieced back together, at least in principle. Burning is how you make sure.

In fact, they now have computer programs that can help.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16036967
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I suspect that with "AI" now being very cheap it would be a doodle to train a system within a few months that can patch together scans/photos of individual shreds of paper.
 
It's not like in the movies. "Shredded documents" aren't long strips of paper you can cartoonishly scotch tape back together like Penguin in Batman 2.

If you're using even a normal business class shredder, to say nothing of anything actually designed for sensitive or classified information, what you have when you are done resembles paper powder as much as anything else.
 
JoeMorgue said:
It's not like in the movies. "Shredded documents" aren't long strips of paper you can cartoonishly scotch tape back together like Penguin in Batman 2.

If you're using even a normal business class shredder, to say nothing of anything actually designed for sensitive or classified information, what you have when you are done resembles paper powder as much as anything else.
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They'll have been using one of those $9.99 made in China ones.
 
For large volumes of documents, wouldn't burning be faster anyway? Once you have the fire going strong, just shovel them in. Seems easier than feeding fleets of shredders.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
For large volumes of documents, wouldn't burning be faster anyway? Once you have the fire going strong, just shovel them in. Seems easier than feeding fleets of shredders.
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That's one good thing about Navy ships, the Pulper. Basically a cross-cut business shredder mixed with a... giant toilet. Shreds it into tiny pieces, mixes it with seawater, agitates it for a few minutes to the point that it's just wet mush, then pumps it over the side. Huge capacity, no mess.

And the best part was it was always how we got rid of normal paper trash, so if you were a Russian or Chinese ship following in our wake hoping to scoop it up and somehow reconstitute it, good luck finding the classified stuff in between the cereal boxes and porn magazines. We even had a policy in place that you could only shred X amount of classified stuff, then you would dump a bag of normal paper trash in, repeat.

https://p2infohouse.org/ref/09/08892.pdf
 
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As it's Texas, perhaps they were multitasking by disposing of documents while having a barbecue.

I don't own a shredder myself, but when I dispose of important papers I clean out my fridge at the same time. Anybody who goes to the effort of piecing together torn up papers soaked in pickle juice, ancient salsa, and old hoisin sauce deserves whatever criminal gains they achieve from it.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
For large volumes of documents, wouldn't burning be faster anyway? Once you have the fire going strong, just shovel them in. Seems easier than feeding fleets of shredders.
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Maybe, but there's always a risk with burning in that if you throw a stack in, it can take a very long time for the fire to reach the center of the inner papers. If you're not paying attention, you can end up with lots of pieces that are still readable.
 
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