Stanton McCandlish says:

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Does anyone know of an AFFORDABLE shredder that really destroys documents by cutting them into confetti, rather than the easy-to-reassemble strips that the typical shredder does?

Yeah, it's called fire.

Fire is, of course, an optimal solution, and those of us who live or work in a building with a fireplace or incinerator would do well to use it. However, its hard to spend every day burning things, and besides that, many of us live and work in urban areas where fireplaces and other places you can burn large numbers of papers are rare. The question is thus not out of place. By the way, the standard method for destroying embassy documents in case of siezure (not done during the Iran hostage crisis) is reportedly Thermit grenades. (Thermit would likely reduce a filing cabinet to slag in moments.) Perry