"...smashed up hard drives and other digital media..."
Smashing up (assuming these words are accurate) doesn't really get very far down the road to secure destruction. A square cm of platter would still contain huge chunks of data. A square mm of flash drive might contain a whole raft of files. Any forensic expert worth their groceries could extract vast amounts of info from the fragments.
MoD: Secure Erase, smash up, grind to dust, heat dust well above the Curie temperature, load the ash into barrels, place the barrels in a locked and monitored dungeon under an old castle, within a secure Military base, and keep them there 'forever'.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
