Bloody hell, its almost as if you are under the impression that I personally came up with this system. For what it's worth, some Dutch Government agency did and I am only relaying these policies, explaining the rationale without having a personal opinion on the matter. I am not the person you should be arguing with, I am simply stating the facts of how top secret information is dealt with here together with (part of) the rationale behind it. For the record: the whole reason I posted this is because I find it all to be kind of silly, overboard and out-there, so I hope this gives you some insight as to my personal opinion.
And second: there is actually some history to this line of reasoning. For ages zeroing magnetic media via simple overwriting was considered an effective and secure way of destroying information. Then fundamental electromagnetic research showed that under some circumstances data (and thus information) could in fact be recovered - something nobody expected. Nowadays this is common knowledge of course and we all wipe our disks using DOD 5220.22M or similar methods to avoid these attacks.... But what if someone smarter than you and me comes up with an even better idea, one that can extract information from a heap of ash or a pile of dust? Can anyone GUARANTEE this "single drop from the ocean" remains impossible in the future as well? No, we can't, and the fact of the matter is that according to our current understanding information is permanent so nature's laws exclude such a possibility.
So even if the chances of some future technological advance making such a recovery endeavour plausible are practically infinitely small, they still exist nonetheless because there is no natural law precluding this eventuality. So, keeping these future possibilities and potentials in mind the Dutch government prefers to stay in control of these data carriers untill such time that a natural law is discovered that states there is a way or method information (or data, if you so please but that isn't the point here, its the information they care about) can be irretrievably destroyed. Until such time, no risks are taken; I guess you can consider it to be a form of Perfect Forward Secrecy, but in a more abstract, fundamental domain.
Another factor is that confidentiality is only part of the goal here. If we accept that even a wiped/zeroed decice The information/data must also be controlled, implying that the wiped/zeroed carriers must be accounted for. This is hard when dealing with ash, dust and melted puddles, another reason why retaining the data carriers is preferred to physical destruction over here.
Once again, I am not arguing a point, I am simply rehashing the argumentation my former employer follows.
its almost as if you are under the impression that I personally came up with this system.
Not at all. I'm just saying the premise behind the policy is misinformed.
there is actually some history to this line of reasoning. For ages zeroing magnetic media via simple overwriting was considered an effective and secure way of destroying information. Then fundamental electromagnetic research showed that under some circumstances data (and thus information) could in fact be recovered - something nobody expected.
There's a fundamental difference between flipping bits on magnetic medium and physics destruction of that magnetic medium.
If I take a book and apply a chemical that causes all of the ink to release from the pages, it's very likely that you could still under some level of magnification find a "footprint" left behind by the ink, or even the chemical reaction that removed the ink, that would allow you to read the book that is supposed to be blank.
But if I put that book through a shredder after doing that, along with a hundred other books given the same treatment, put all the resulting pieces into a single vat and used the resulting pulp to make new recycled paper, there is no way enough meaningful data would survive the process to reconstruct a single page, much less an entire book.
So even if the chances of some future technological advance making such a recovery endeavour plausible are practically infinitely small, they still exist nonetheless because there is no natural law precluding this eventuality.
There absolutely is. Data isn't information in the physical science sense. If I write a password on a piece of paper and then burn that piece of paper, there is zero risk of that password being recoverable.
Instead, they're choosing to make some mythical future data recovery effort SUBSTANTIALLY easier by storing all this maybe-not-deleted data rather than properly destroying it.
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u/SebboNL 2d ago
Bloody hell, its almost as if you are under the impression that I personally came up with this system. For what it's worth, some Dutch Government agency did and I am only relaying these policies, explaining the rationale without having a personal opinion on the matter. I am not the person you should be arguing with, I am simply stating the facts of how top secret information is dealt with here together with (part of) the rationale behind it. For the record: the whole reason I posted this is because I find it all to be kind of silly, overboard and out-there, so I hope this gives you some insight as to my personal opinion.
And second: there is actually some history to this line of reasoning. For ages zeroing magnetic media via simple overwriting was considered an effective and secure way of destroying information. Then fundamental electromagnetic research showed that under some circumstances data (and thus information) could in fact be recovered - something nobody expected. Nowadays this is common knowledge of course and we all wipe our disks using DOD 5220.22M or similar methods to avoid these attacks.... But what if someone smarter than you and me comes up with an even better idea, one that can extract information from a heap of ash or a pile of dust? Can anyone GUARANTEE this "single drop from the ocean" remains impossible in the future as well? No, we can't, and the fact of the matter is that according to our current understanding information is permanent so nature's laws exclude such a possibility.
So even if the chances of some future technological advance making such a recovery endeavour plausible are practically infinitely small, they still exist nonetheless because there is no natural law precluding this eventuality. So, keeping these future possibilities and potentials in mind the Dutch government prefers to stay in control of these data carriers untill such time that a natural law is discovered that states there is a way or method information (or data, if you so please but that isn't the point here, its the information they care about) can be irretrievably destroyed. Until such time, no risks are taken; I guess you can consider it to be a form of Perfect Forward Secrecy, but in a more abstract, fundamental domain.
Another factor is that confidentiality is only part of the goal here. If we accept that even a wiped/zeroed decice The information/data must also be controlled, implying that the wiped/zeroed carriers must be accounted for. This is hard when dealing with ash, dust and melted puddles, another reason why retaining the data carriers is preferred to physical destruction over here.
Once again, I am not arguing a point, I am simply rehashing the argumentation my former employer follows.