In 2007, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police warned the entire Canadian Federal Government that the disk-erasing software they were using was no longer reliable. The Force's Technical Security Branch found that this DSX software left traces of sensitive data on new hard drives. This problem, known as data remanence, is fairly well known and should not have come as much of a surprise. Sounds like a great story, doesn't it? The Mounties rode in, (I'll keep jokes about red pocket protectors and horses that run on Linux, not hay to myself) and protected Canadians from data theft. I think there is a movie in there somewhere...

Here is where the story starts to get interesting. The Canada Revenue Agency could not find any software that could reliably erase hard drives. Some offices simply destroyed the hard drives (there is no word on whether they destroyed them properly or not), other offices started storing them. According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, there are roughly 1,000 hard drives sitting under lock and key, waiting to be erased.

Let's think about this for one moment. There is enough data on those drives to make thousands of identity thieves disgustingly wealthy. I don't know about you, but if I were in charge of the Canada Revenue Agency, I'd make erasing that data a high priority. Here is the punch line to this entire saga - next month, the Canada Revenue Agency is going to start a pilot project to find a solution to this problem. They hope to be able to actually erase hard drives starting in September, 2009.

Now, I have a whole lot of faith in the Canada Revenue Agency - they are a first class team of professionals and I am glad they are being diligent, but I would feel a whole lot safer if my entire financial life was not sitting in a storage locker someplace. What do you think?