Problem with deletion is that if there's no systematic rewrite (like a bunch of zeros/random numbers) over the deleted data on the disk , it can be easily recovered since it's just "a check" over the disk's registry (the "map" telling where is what), a mark telling the OS "you can write over there now" basically. But the data is still there it's just that you don't see it anymore and can write over it I'm not an expert, maybe things don't work that way anymore or it's not quite that simple given the all cloud shit, but I believe I'm not that far off in terms of technical "no safe" And again it's not really the legal way I "fear" the most in that context since it's slow, expensive, and rather easily invalidated in case of no legal right to exploit those informations, varrying jurisdiction and all that. It's the grey/dark way, the "buddy system", like when the ADL got caught in 1993 making illegal list of people in their crosshair for instance https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wiki+1993+adl+spy+scandal&atb=v191-3__ https://psmag.com/news/kings-garbage-76228 Fascinating story >>In 1993 it was alleged that the League had been involved in a grotesque rap sheet of covert activities, including espionage, illegal surveillance, theft, and the treasonous sale of classified information to a foreign government. It’s a hell of a tale, and not just for its cartoonish cast of characters: a corrupt police officer, a bungling “fact finder,” and a McCarthyite from Indianapolis. I have no choice but to remember the story. In 1993 I received a letter in the mail. It informed me that I was the victim of an illegal spy ring involving members of the ADL and a San Francisco Police Department intelligence detective called Tom Gerard. The letter came with an index card that included my full name, driver’s license, the license-plate number on my shitty old Subaru hatchback, and the Mission District addresses of my apartment and the leftie bookstore where I worked, near Guerrero and 20th Street. My file had been marked “Pinko,” one of five categories that the ADL spymaster used to flag the group’s targets. At that period I was already at a low point. My stepfather spent most of that year dying of a malignant brain tumor. It was a gruesome, agonizing death, and I put off moving to Moscow to help my mother get through it. That alone was so stressful that we both wound up losing our minds in the process. In the grip of that ordeal, learning that the ADL had spied on me seemed like just one more torment in a personal hell. But I was not alone. Police had seized thousands of index cards like mine in raids on the ADL’s San Francisco office, and in searches of the homes and storage facilities of the organization’s key figures. According to newspaper reports of the time, 12,000 Americans and 950 groups were victims of the now-forgotten scandal. The list of victims reads like a Who’s Who of the Liberal Establishment: NAACP, ACLU, Greenpeace, ACT UP!, National Lawyers Guild, Mother Jones founder Adam Hochschild, reporters from the Los Angeles Times and KQED public television, and scores of local labor unions including the United Auto Works and Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers. The ADL operatives even spied on a handful of U.S. Congressmen, all Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, Senator Alan Cranston, Pete McClosky, Mervyn Dymally, and Ron Dellums of Oakland, head of the House Armed Services Committee. Many prominent Jews were also spied on, including Dr. Yigal Arens, the son of former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens.