DoD decides wiping is enough for unclassified old disks

[Timothy McVeigh]

WASHINGTON (AP) --
                                          The Pentagon believes it
                                          has found a way to give
                                          its old computers away
                                          to American schools and
                                          still protect information
                                          locked in the machines'
                                          hard drives.

                                          Officials announced
                   Thursday that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
                   Wolfowitz was reversing an unpopular five-month-old
                   order to destroy the hard drives on unclassified
                   computers, which rendered the computers practically
                   unusable.

                   Henceforth, hard drives should be destroyed on
                   classified machines but only overwritten on
                   unclassified ones, Wolfowitz said. The overwriting
                   entails printing series of ones and zeros over the
stored
                   material.

                   "Wolfowitz's new ... guidance will make more
                   computers available for schools and other worthy
                   organizations," a Pentagon statement said.

                   It said more than 74,000 pieces of computer
                   equipment, valued at $60 million or so, had been
                   donated to school organizations in 2000 before the
                   order came in January to destroy hard drives.

                   Wolfowitz's predecessor Rudy de Leon had order the
                   destruction but said the idea should be reviewed,
said
                   Susan Hansen, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

                   "We've looked at the pluses and minuses," she said
                   Thursday, and determined that overwriting would
                   protect information on the computers while allowing
                   the machines to be donated.

                   Some lawmakers had criticized the January order as
                   overkill.

                   Others supported it after an audit found sensitive
                   information such as lists of names and addresses had
                   been left on hard drives of donated computers. Though

                   unclassified, they said such cases still present
risks.

                   Wolfowitz's decision returns the practice to what it
                   had been since 1992, requiring destruction only of
                   computers that had dealt with classified information.