Re: The hammer is best

On 2026-08-23 11:14, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
> [email protected] (Kenny McCormack) writes:
>> Carlos E.R. <[email protected]> wrote:
>> ...
>>>>    are hidden buffers plus the wear-leveling scheme
>>>>    gets in the way. You wipe 'em the Hillary Clinton
>>>>    way - HAMMER :-)
>>>
>>> Instead, use encryption, on the device or the partitions.
>>
>> Hammer is better, because encryption can be worked around by holding a
>> gun to the head of the person who knows the encryption key.
> 
> My backup drives are encrypted. In principle they could be stolen from
> here, from an offsite location or in transit and if that happens I won’t
> have the opportunity to destroy it.

Exactly.

And in the typical business case, hammering of disks is not often done. 
Hard disks are simply repurposed, recycled, sold... usually zeroing them 
first. Encryption protects the case when zeroing is forgotten, or the 
disk breaks before that. Encryption protects against such accidents.


> 
> The chances that someone would threaten my life or liberty over it are
> negligible, but if they did, they wouldn’t need to wait for a device to
> be disposed of, they’d just turn up at my door with a weapon, RIPA
> notice or other leverage.
> 
> Physical destruction is not really relevant for most of the lifetime of
> confidential data, and encryption does actually achieve something useful
> in realistic use cases.
> 
> High value data is protected by keys that no human knows.
> 


-- 
Cheers, Carlos.
ES🇪🇸, EU🇪🇺;