The embassy , Bunsen Burner seemed really poorly managed…no one was on the same page even though we ( he ) followed all their protocol …and their hours of operation were not even close to being able to handle a crisis or emergency for anyone , citizen or not. Lesson learned was to have copies at home and don’t rely on federal agencies to help you out .
Yes, copiers are shipped off and often the hard drives are NOT wiped. This can be a huge security issue and is not often mentioned anywhere. I admit, I do have my bank copy checks before I deposit them, but that’s probably not the best idea for whomever wrote the checks.
Yikes. That’s not very reassuring! Although I would not ever expect an embassy to help me get a copy of my passport if I don’t have at least some proof of its existence, e.g., via an electronic copy.
Wow. And here I was so pleased with myself for copying the contents of my wallet at work! That’s actually very interesting as I work at a mortgage company and we routinely copy sensitive documents. Why do copiers have hard drives anyway?
We have our own copier at our office so I don’t worry about that.
Rockvillemom, apparently, you are not the only one asking the question! 
http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/why-photocopiers-have-hard-drives/
And:
Wow. The things I learn on CC. Our copiers at work do scan and print at the same time - so they clearly have a hard drive. Oh well.
I had to get a replacement passport years ago in Italy and remember it being very easy. But I had a copy of the passport. Embarassingly it turned out the front desk of the hotel had it. I had no memory of not getting it back from them. They returned it to me the day we checked out. We travel with copies of passports and also send scans to the eamil.