Apparently the author is not aware that delivering a box of microfiche cards instead of a fat paper printout was a common practice back then. It had nothing to do with spooks.
You find that mentioned in Brooks's Mythical Man-month book: everyone working on OS/360 got a box of microfiche representing the current state of the OS, each morning. Without a terminal, how else would you look up what a system call actually did? Printing one copy of all the source, and then optically reproducing it to more acetate, was obviously more efficient than printing it hundreds of times.
The old listings would be burnt to recover the silver.
One not need to have even worked on old computer systems. I'm not even retired yet, and I've gone to the library to look stuff up in old newspapers that were on microfiche. When I was a mechanic back in the day, parts listings were on "fish", too.
I think the author read "microfilm" and instead of hearing a synonym for the thing car parts are listed on, I'd bet the immediate thought was little micro spy cameras to put your microfilm in.
You find that mentioned in Brooks's Mythical Man-month book: everyone working on OS/360 got a box of microfiche representing the current state of the OS, each morning. Without a terminal, how else would you look up what a system call actually did? Printing one copy of all the source, and then optically reproducing it to more acetate, was obviously more efficient than printing it hundreds of times.
The old listings would be burnt to recover the silver.