zlacker

>>joelg+(OP)
As a grad student, I remember shooting the bull with Minsky and Hillis (1983). The CIA had offices across the hall and we were discussing how we might grab one of their bags of shredded documents and use a computer to piece together all the fragments by hashing the pattern of edge fragments on each piece.

>>mckoss+Uj
Which later became a real-life DARPA Challenge (solved).

http://archive.darpa.mil/shredderchallenge/

And, come to think of it, a variation was in the novel Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge.