News of the World shredded hard-drives, laptops

A lawyer for victims of News of the World phone hacking told the court that long after NotW knew of the police investigation of its newsgathering process, it put reporters' laptops and hard-drives "through a grinder" and took them out and "smashed them up."

The destruction of the computers is understood to have taken place around October last year, prior to the launch of Operation Weeting, the London Metropolitan Police investigation into phone hacking which has led to the arrests of 16 journalists.
The shredding of hard drives would have happened long after senior executives were made aware that phone hacking had spread beyond a single "rogue" reporter.

Phone-tap tabloid's computers destroyed, court told (via The Inquirer)

(Image: Responsible Hard-Drive Destruction - Let's Get Real)

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OldBrownSquirrel

In fairness, if I ran a newspaper, even one not guilty of any wrongdoing, I’d want a secure method for disposing of old hard drives so as not to compromise sources. I’m not convinced this is a smoking gun.
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  I’m not convinced this is a smoking gun.
  
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http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

Oh, I thought those were the laptops seized in the OWS raid.
Paul Renault

I wonder is some CSI-style sleuthing would figure out how long the material’s been cut up based on the oxidation on newly exposed metal…
Lobster

OOPS! All the evidence got shredded ooooooooops!
http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul

Though it might never come out, I’d bet that those computers had, in turn, been secretly archived/keylogged/tracked etc.

If they’re tracking so many others, why wouldn’t they be tapping their own employees in the depths of their presumptuousness and paranoia?

And what IT department has ever been without undocumented copies of everything, backups of backups compulsively burned onto unlabeled disks tossed in the bottom of drawers by techies who don’t trust any system to be bulletproof enough to risk data loss?
Marktech

Well, well. I may die of not surprised.
travtastic

Why would you shred the whole fucking laptop?