At 11:54 AM 9/5/95 +0200, Anonymous wrote:

Is this a new discovery? When I used to work with DOD classified data, not so long ago, disk drives had to be declassified using an approved program, such as Norton Utilities' "WIPEINFO". (That was approved up through the SECRET/SAR level, anyway. I don't know about TS/SCI/SI.) But those same regulations said that RAM was considered declassified within a certain time (30 seconds, I think) after power was removed. (That time figure was UNclassified, BTW.) I think it was just to allow time for the voltage to bleed off of the power supply's filter capacitors, and not related to the relative volatility of DRAM.

I worked at a DoD contractor for a while, and there was a DoD-approved method of disposing of hard drives, which was expensive, laborious, and rather silly. We just had two witnesses watch as we smashed it to smithereens (technical term) with a sledge hammer, and then handed the parts over to an approved disposal person (trash man). It's JUST that easy.