Things that make you go "Hmmmmm..." An item in today's MacOSXHints about securely erasing files included this link
<http://tinyurl.com/7hppm8> which is a scholarly paper on this exact topic. They looked at hard drives with atomic force microscopes, measuring the 'residual' data that is supposedly recoverable, and found that one pass was sufficient to make a drive essentially unreadable. (If the url is not reachable, a pdf of the article is here: <http://dbdev2.pharmacy.arizona.edu/miscjunk/wright_etal.pdf> ) VERY interesting reading; I like folks who do good 'ol hands on science. Now we start verging on the dimmer recesses of why this apparent myth is so deeply engrained. Perhaps un-named TLA agencies are pushing out misinformation to hide their true sources and methods? "We were able to recover data forensically after we got a search warrant" is MUCH more convincing on the stand than "We hacked his system before we had a search warrant." or "Well, since we monitor all electronic traffic in the continental U completely contrary to law and our charter, we'll tell you we got it in the lab..." Or actually how this is really handled on the Hill: "We tell the Intelligence Committee it's a Defense project, and we tell the Defense Committee it's an Intelligence project" -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
