A secure democratic Net is a fundamental right

The best thing to do if for political reasons you are obliged to give your old office computers to the poor or schools or whatever (and this advice counts in fact for all old computers on which there are files that shouldn't be seen by anybody) is

keep the harddisk

First of all, or the harddisk is too old and it will be broken in a few months or years time (or it will be too slow or too small) or it will be new or good enough to install it on another computer with the data on it (or with the data within your protected network).

Second it would take you some hours to be sure that all data from a hard disk is completely destroyed and that no bit of data will be available with any kind of restoration method or recuperation software that exist.

Third : a harddisk doesn't take much space, so you can easily keep them while you are throwing all the rest away or giving it away. If you really want to destroy the harddisk anyway, you should look for a specialised firm that is certified to destroy that kind of material. The best way is to break it in thousands of pieces or burn it to hell (with all the other confidential papers).

Another tip : the only way to destroy paper without burning it is turning it into confetti, the traditional cheap way of cutting it can be reconstructed..... And there is a history of an american destruction firm in which paper money or things to make paper money wasn't really destroyed. You always have to supervise the whole destruction process yourself to be able to certify it.

So if you don't want to play the game that some politicians are playing by promising to give away old computers from administrations to the poor (give the poor old poor computers....) than you better make sure that there is no hard disk in it or just make it break down so that you don't have to restore it.

I am not against giving computers to the poor, but when at the one hand you should keep and replace the harddisk (which would cost you if you take the time needed to process that) and at the other hand there are new netbooks for 200 Euros.

I think it would be better to give them those new computers except if you make a business model out of it in which each part of the computer is recycled, re-used or redistributed. In this business model hundreds of old governmental or administrative computers come in (without their harddisks). They are pre-sorted according to their age and state in two groups : re-use or recycle (maybe parts like RAM can even be used for the re-usable computers). The re-usable computers get new harddisks with a pre-installed OS and utilities and are given away.

If it is just playing santa claus without this process it will be just another idea that has no process, no structure and no security. What will happen is that after the first incident or article in the process not one administration will dare to give any old computer, not being sure how much information could eventually be recovered with specialised tools in front of a camera. As an administration you stay legally responsable for your data, even if you give the computer away. (that is why you keep the harddisk with the data so no lawyer can say you didn't take any necessary precaution to keep the data in your saver environment).

By the way, shouldn't the Belgian Privacy Commission be consulted ? Because there are no rules whatsoever about that. There are hardly any rules and standards anyway about anything IT.