Dear Editor:
RE: Shredding event secure, April 18.
The mission statement of Crime Stoppers Guelph Wellington (CSGW) is to “combine the best efforts of the media, the community and the police in the fight against crime…” and “…to promote awareness within the community and continue to educate our students and the public in making our community safer.”
The implementation of my proposal to Wellington North council in on April 2 – to investigate, discuss and establish a permanent shredding site for the community – would be a giant step in identity theft crime prevention.
The success of the CSGW shredding program, as detailed in Sarah Bowers-Peter’s letter to the editor of April 18, 2024, is commendable; but it is not comprehensive.
Bowers-Peter has invited me to attend the shredding event planned on Sept. 14 in Mount Forest, an event over four months in the future. Depending on CSGW for the shredding of my sensitive documents creates two problems: 1) continued accessibility to the documents and 2) the creation of a fire hazard in my home by having the extraneous paper stored there.
The suggestion that CSGW will extend event hours if the community requests this, does not resolve the issue as sensitive documentation accrues on a daily basis and requires ongoing, not yearly, attention.
With respect to fire safety, my concern is not fire safety at the event site but rather the fire safety in homes. Quantities of paper create a fire hazard.
Bowers-Peter iterated many of the dangers that accompany the use of fire as a paper purge. Curtailing the temptation to burn documents then becomes a fundamental reason for the municipality to consider a shredding site.
CSGW’s website states the last shredding event was Aug. 31, 2023 – over eight months ago. Each day the documents are in existence is a day of added risk for breach of security and privacy and as a fire risk.
The provision of a “secure destruction certificate to businesses with professional requirements for secure destruction” is secondary to the need for the ability of the general community to destroy its sensitive documents. The goal of a shredding site is for the education and use of the general public – not to fundraise or to fulfill a business requirement.
Crime Stoppers should realize that a shredding site for the community works in consort with their annual shredding event and their mission statement – not against it – and should find avenues by which to co-operate with the municipality in establishing this strategy as a crime prevention tool.
Wellington North has an opportunity to be a model of forward thinking in the protection and destruction of privileged information and to be a leader amongst municipalities.
Joy Lippai,
Arthur