Revealed: How British Empire’s dirty secrets went up in smoke in the colonies
In April 1957, five unmarked lorries left the British High Commission in Kuala Lumpur and drove to a Royal Navy base in Singapore with their cargo of files detailing the secrets of Britain’s rule in Malaya. Their destination was, in the words of one official, a “splendid incinerator”.
This “discreet” mission in the closing days of British rule over what became Malaysia was one of hundreds of similar operations. As the sun finally set on the Empire, diplomats scurried to repatriate or destroy hundreds of thousands “dirty” documents containing evidence that London had decided should never see the light of day. Some 50 years later, the sheer scale of the operation to hide the secrets of British rule overseas – including details of atrocities committed during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya – is revealed in documents released today by the National Archives in Kew, west London.
The so-called “migrated archive” details the extraordinary lengths to which the Colonial Office went to withhold information from its former subjects in at least 23 countries and territories in the 1950s and 1960s.
Among the documents is a memo from London that required all secret documents held abroad to be vetted by a Special Branch or MI5 liaison officer to ensure that any papers which might “embarrass” Britain or show “racial prejudice or religious bias” were destroyed or sent home.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-how-british-empires-dirty-secrets-went-up-in-smoke-in-the-colonies-8971217.html
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I usually pull the drives, zero them, and put them aside as spares. Or recycle because there is nothing on the drive worth the effort. People ask me to do that now and then for them.
But I think we are on the same page. Power drills come to mind too. My solution is not to put things on the hard drive if I want them kept private, and also just not to have such things. And the Deity help you if you put it on the internet.
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8MHz 8086 CPU, 640KB of RAM, and a 20MB hard drive, and retailed for $2295 (about $4642 in 2012 dollars when adjusted for inflation).
http://www.pcworld.com/article/258989/the_ibm_ps_2_25_years_of_pc_history.html
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I paid $400 for it used in 1994 (paid $500 for my Dell Inspiron 15R - sheesh!)
I UPGRADED it to ONE MEGABYTE ram - wow, eh?
also "upgraded" from DOS 5.0 thru 6.2 - THEN Windows 3.1!
CC
ps: still own it - still works! (slooooooooooooooooooooooooooowly)
it was even worse. That was a 4.77 MHz 8088 Blue Chip with 512 Mb and two floppy disks. Later I bought a 20 Mb hardcard. That was a 5 1/4" drive on a slot and it was top heavy as well and so it crashed after about a year. It doesn't work anymore.
There's still a page about the computer: http://classictech.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/company-profile-blue-chip-electronics-chandler-ariz/
Hey, it was actually an Hyundai with a different label. Things you learn on the internet...
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