An enterprising gentlemen discovered how to erase data from compact discs by shooting them with 150,000 volts of electricity.
Say you are a spy and you need to quickly transfer a bunch of confidential documents. There’s no way to use a USB drive, so you ask your trusty assistant to burn a CD with all of the sensitive information on it. Once the deal is done, and all that data is safely in the hands of the NSA or CIA, well now what? The data is still on the CD. Destroying the disc by breaking it in half doesn’t erase it, because the bits burned onto it might still be recoverable. In fact, there’s no way to erase that data without melting down the plastic.
That is, unless you have access to an apparatus that can produce an arc of 150,000 volts of electricity through the CD as it spins, instantly evaporating the metal on the disc until only a completely clean piece of plastic remains. That’s exactly what YouTube user “Photonicinduction” has done with amazing results.
You know, I don’t think this process is very practical, but it’s damn fun to watch isn’t it?
Sure, you could just use a microwave oven to “burn” the CD, but shooting it with electricity is a lot classier, in my humble spy opinion.
