In another installment of “Your Tax Dollars At Work” (at least if you’re Canadian), comes this story. The Canada Revenue Agency (the Canadian version of the IRS), is stockpiling hard drives that contain taxpayers data because they can’t be erased:
About 1,000 obsolete devices have been locked away at offices across the country as technicians search for software that can wipe them clean.
The problem began in October 2007 when the RCMP warned all federal departments that standard disk-erasing software, previously sanctioned by the police force, was no longer reliable.
So-called DSX software “could eventually fail to properly function on newer, larger drives,” said a Mountie bulletin. “Use of the software is ‘at your own risk’. ”
The RCMP’s technical security branch found that DSX left traces of sensitive data on newer drives that can be read by modern devices, a sticky problem known as “data remanence.”
Here’s a free suggestion: They could try Darik’s Boot And Nuke which I talked about previously. Or they could try BCWipe which does the same thing. I’ll even offer my services to help deal with this, for a fee of course.