Jared Johnson wrote:

> Do you all agree with Peter Gutman's conclusion on his theory that data can
> never really be erased, as noted in his quote below:

Yes. Patterns of overwriting can offer a probabilistic assurance of
deletion, but not a promise. There is also the problem that disks
will silently remap sectors if they're error-prone, so it's not possible
in all cases to overwrite them.

If you're short on fishwrap, puppy training supplies, or birdcage liner,
you can print out an old whitepaper I wrote when I was trying to promote
a company based on a secure deletion scheme. My proposal is to transparently
encrypt every file with a different key, and assure deletion by losing the
key.

http://www.tenebras.com/papers/wp-draft.pdf

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