You're going to need it in Shovel Fulls.
The last big job I did for a Government Department here involved decommissioning several hundred Computers from the Health Department. As you can imagine these had Patient records on them so the Information had to be removed completely. I was fitting new HDD to these at Government Prices of about $35.00 per computer and putting a big hammer through the ones removed after first checking that they where not required by people in that office.
Some bright Spark complained to higher ups that I was wasting money by breaking the HDD and fitting new ones in units that the department or that particular office was making a profit on selling them at auction 3 years after buying them. They still sold for more than they paid for them new with the new blank HDD's fitted.
Anyway I was told to stop destroying the drives and run FDISK on the remaining drives as this destroyed all the DATA according to the Resident Expert There who could type in Change Directory in DOS and get the system to change the directory so she knew it all.
When I told this woman that they had been misinformed and I was responsible for the Security of the Data in that office I was asked to leave but they insisted that I leave all the new HDD there which had not been invoiced out because I may have taken some of their drives and I had to leave my Hand tools as well because I may have picked up one of their screwdrivers. :D
Anyway they got the Police to escort me off the premises without any of my equipment or tools and did it themselves. At auction they sold all of the computers and a guy bought 2 of them for his son who used a simple recovery application and recovered not only the Patient Data but also the actual OS in a Bootable form.
He then rang the Individuals and offered to sell them their Data for $15.00 or there abouts if I remember correctly. It was nothing but the affected people did complain quite loudly to the Department and I might say quite rightly as far as I was concerned. Anyway to cut a very long story Short I had to appear as an Expert Witness for the Department in the case against the Kid and I was called in by the Plaintiff to give evidence against the Department for allowing confidential Data to get out.
So within a 14 day period I was in Court twice once for thew Department as an Expert Witness and once as a Hostile Witness in front of the same Judge with the Same Barristers for the Department. One day they where extolling my Expert Opinion to this judge and then next they where saying I was a discontented employee who had a grudge against the Department. Of course the case by me against the same office for the cost of the missing HDD which where never recovered and my tools didn't help matters much either. :^0
Anyway the outcome was that the Department sold the computers [b]As Is[/b] so if the kid in question could recover the Data he owned it and could do as he please with it so the Department had to pay costs and return the Drives which the Police had seized from the Kid and drop all Charges against him. The Barrister was a very unhappy Chappy then and it got worse 2 Weeks latter when the Members of the Public Won their Case against the Department for selling their Data on. Then just to add salt to my wounds the Judge in Question Demanded that he hear my case against the Department for my losses he was well and truly fed up with the waste of the courts time with the previous 2 cases and wanted it out of the way without anyone actually walking into the court.
I suggested to the Departments Barrister that they just simply buy the drives back and give this Kid 2 New ones into the bargain which when he heard the costs involved he immediately agreed to and organized it then & there. The kid in questing was paid something like $400.00 per drive and given 2 new 4 GIG Drives when these where really big drives as even with that ridiculous cost it was still far cheaper than 1 Hours of the Barristers time. He also finalized my case with the Department then & there as it was only a few K and gave me interest for my losses which I hadn't asked for and he organized to pay me for my wasted time. Still cheaper than a few hours of his time there.
Anyway to save something like $2,000.00 it cost the Department as a whole 4.5 million + Costs and the Department stopped the individual Offices selling their old equipment and had it all returned to a central office for decommissioning where the individual offices didn't receive any money from the sale of their old equipment. But at least the job was done properly and no more data ever got out that way.
Then within a year another department sold off 2 computers from a Insecure area so they didn't even run FDISK on these drives as there was nothing important on the drives they could go out without a second thought. The only problem was that the State Premiers E-Mail address was on both computers but as they had no information on them that was important this didn't matter. :D
I got told of that by a friend who was employed to work for the Government section responsible for decommissioning thee computers just as a way to show that they still had learned nothing. But at least it wasn't any members of the publics Data only a Politicians E-Mail address which was a easy fix. And then the hammer was finally brought down and no computers could be sold by any office under any circumstance and the Government used the proceeds of the sale of all decommissioned equipment to pay the staff who decommissioned it and any extra just disappeared into Consolidated Revenue.
All the time that I was contracting there it was like bashing my head against a Brick Wall and I was going crazy attempting to do the correct thing and being jumped on at every opportunity.
If you have put up with that for 30 years you are far better than me I would have broken long before that time and murdered someone and enjoyed it. :^0
Col
