NEC "Advanced Personal Computer"? & Secure data removal

[Antonio Carlini]

William Donzelli wrote:
> It is thought that NO amount of reading and writing will
> completely scramble a disk. There is a reason why the
> NSA/CIA/FBI/military disintegrates their disks.

Which is why the FBI, NSA and CIA are still sharing that 20MB
drive they purchased in 1989 to store their combined 80PB
databases :-)

It's quite obvious why they often shred their disks: if their
is a non-zero risk that some other procedure might lead to
WW3 (or worse yet, a significant career hit for the security
officer involved) exactly which option do you think they 
might pick? In addition, exhibiting any sign of a lack of
elevated levels of paranoia in such a position is quite
possibly an even greater career risk than developing a
sense of humour!

It's also probably cheaper to destroy the disk than to
follow any fixed wiping procedure.

Antonio


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Antonio Carlini arcarlini at iee.org