re Peter @ 15:57

Hello Peter, Mr RK05 here again.

As there is probably little reliable evidence to support your claims, it's hard to refute them, so I provided information which sensible people with at least some limited knowledge of the subject can use to calibrate their bullshitometers.

My bullshitometer (as a graduate physicist with a fair bit of post-graduation knowledge of electronics and data storage technology and indeed signal processing) says that your quoted variation in the "SNR" from a modern hard disk read head provides little or no meaningful information (let alone **evidence**) on whether data on a disk has been overwritten or not, though I can see circumstances in which gullible or otherwise motivated people might like to believe in that possibility, and in particular where certain organisations might like that belief to be widespread.

Even if there were some value in knowing whether a particular sector has been overwritten, what **evidence** does it provide? It might show, among other things, that the disk has previously been defragmented, or previously restored from backup, or a variety of other things unrelated to the presence or absence of (allegedly-)deniable file systems.

You are of course welcome to provide definitive references to show me wrong, and if necessary I'm happy to stand corrected; we're all here to learn aren't we.

Over to you.

ps

How is m-o-o-t coming on? Did it achieve the desired result of torpedoing the RIP Act, or was it a distraction from the real *political* issues, issues which are still live today?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/05/30/cypherpunks_aim_to_torpedo_rip/

www.m-o-o-t.org