Practically the ONLY way to ensure 100% that sensitive data won't fall into the wrong hands is physical destruction of the drive. Formatting the drives won't suffice, as any regular Joe with free software could potentially recover "lost" data. I've done it MANY times on magnetic drives as well as flash memory cards/drives. It is therefore NECESSARY procedure to destroy government drives once the computers have reached the end of their useful life.
This is GOOD policy:
"When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired ... the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction,"...
Desh: in my short time on this site, I've concluded that you're aren't a very intelligent person. You're also incredibly dishonest. You invent a scandal where this is none, in attempt to smear the character of those with whom you disagree. You're revolting.