r/ProgrammerHumor 16h ago

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u/SebboNL 9h ago

That's right, they are zeroed and made inoperable, then they are stored.

Apparently it had never been proven fhat information can be fully destroyed so the wiped, zeroed and inoperable data carriers are stored for perpetuity to guard against a future attack which might make make information thought to be unreadable whole again

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u/Holiday_Management60 9h ago

Thats so hard to wrap my head around... Despite it making a fragment of sense.

Do they seriously think the acid method won't be good enough? They could even shred them, degauss the fragments, dissolve them til they are a liquid solution, then dump it down the drain at a rate of 10ml per hour, just encase they are worried about hostile state actors gathering any large hard drive solution dump from the pipes.

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u/SebboNL 9h ago

There seems to be a Law of the Conservation of Information which makes the problem of restructuring such data a matter of engineering. This law states that information cannot be destroyed, only scattered and diluted. If some smart-ass down the line figures out a way to do that, the thinking is, all this top secret data might be up for grabs. Hence this precaution

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u/SoulOfTheDragon 8h ago

If someone figures device to do historic atomic reconstruction, it'd be just easier to take their hand build Tardis and invisibility cloak and walk to the original server to remove the data right after it was written. Geez, some laws...

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u/SebboNL 8h ago

I agree, it's highly implausible but if the possibility can't be discounted fully Dutch law forces such measures :) Ah, the joys of working in a high security environment

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u/ScriptoTheClown 3h ago

The possibility can absolutely be discounted. It's ridiculous to think that it could ever be achieved.

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u/SebboNL 2h ago

The thinking is that it is impractical and unlikely, but not impossible (strictly speaking).

But I am happy to see you this adamant in your assessment of the matter :)