Rob wrote:
On Wed, Nov 02, 2005 at 12:28:34PM -0500, David Zakar wrote:
Yes. There was a discussion on bugtraq (or focus-linux?) a while back, I
believe. Essentially, the best way to delete your data is to never store
it unencrypted, and make sure to use a good crypto algorithm. You could
always piece together a shattered hard drive and then read that, whereas
brute forcing the encrypted data is mathematically just not going to
happen.
Of course, they could still conceivably read your RAM, so you'll need to
physically destroy/hide that, too. And your crypto key! Breaking into
your house and stealing that hidden USB key is a serious issue...
I've always taken it as a question of your faith in voodoo:
Does the NSA have stronger voodoo in making lost bits coming back to
life or by breaking strong encryption? Lots of smart people can talk,
but no one really nows..
You know, if it's really that hard to get rid of old data, someone ought
to leverage this to obtain more space from hard drives. I mean after
all, if data which is deleted and rewritten over isn't really gone, then
why not use it?
Angelo
