Where Old Hard Disks (with Digital Secrets) Go To Die 128
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Justin George writes at McClatchy that in a 20,000-square-foot warehouse, where visitors are required to trade in a driver's license for a visitor's badge, some of the nation's secrets are torn apart, reduced to sand or demagnetized until they are forever silent. Need to destroy a rugged Toughbook laptop that might have been used in war? E-End will use a high-powered magnetic process known as degaussing to erase its hard drive of any memory. A computer monitor that might have some top-secret images left on it? Crushed and ground into recyclable glass. Laser sights for weapons? Torn into tiny shards of metal. "We make things go away," says Arleen Chafitz, owner and CEO of e-End Secure Data Sanitization and Electronics Recycling, a company with sixteen employees that destroys hard drives, computers, monitors, phones and other sensitive equipment that governments and corporations don't want in the wrong hands. Chafitz say the information technology departments at typical companies might not have the proper tools or training to adequately dispose of data. IT departments focus on fixing and restoring data, they say, while data-wiping companies focus on just the opposite."
Re:Disgusting. (Score:4, Interesting)
Then it's the idiot managers paradox. Because even if I gave you a $50,000 holographic night vision scope, 99% of the population could not hit a target unless they had the skill to actually shoot a gun. You know those videos of samalis holding the AK 47 above their head firing? all they are hitting are buildings and the ground, if they were fighting a trained enemy force they would be wiped out in mere moments. A well trained soldier from a western or eastern country could easily take out 20 untrained soldiers without effort or fear.
So someone having it is not a risk. Just like how they whine about people being able to buy defused grenades at surplus stores. Yes, someone with an IQ above 120 can make them work again, but the risk is so low it's not funny. Plus it is a lot easier to make a new one from gas pipe than trying to fix a Vietnam era grenade. But it does not stop uneducated people from being horrified that I can go and buy "grenades" for $5.00 each.