The point was not the method of destruction but that they were forced to do it at all, on a questionable legal basis, on computers they were still using (not disposing of).

> but that they were forced to do it at all

I'd like to underline this. The Guardian co-workers were forced to perform the entire deletion _themselves_ (!!!)

It is almost like a combination of some kind of forced, unpaid employment (akin to "slavery"), shifting the blame ("you did it yourself"), or retribution ("you abused it, you take care of it"). Very twisted.

> The book, published next week, describes how the Guardian took the decision to destroy its own Macbooks after the government explicitly threatened the paper with an injunction.

They were “forced” but not in that sense. The Graun offered to do this instead, and so GCHQ came along to watch. There is a problem but not with forced labour.

I think the point in the Guardian drive-drilling episode is that they weren't destroying the data. The data was already in numerous copies in other places, and everyone involved knew it, including the people doing the drilling and the people who had ordered it.

I work for a company that makes stone products.

We still drill through drives and then bash them till the platters are dust.

It doesn't take long and where our main site is people dumpster dive.

Stone as in rock? The hard stuff on the ground?

Yep.

I was hired to re-write the internal ERP as well as adding new features plus bring everything up to date as well as run the servers and all the other stuff, I'm an army of one basically, varied job, nice people and 9-5 - can't fault it.