Obrelevant: The German customs service operates an auction site for confiscated goods and other used goods they or other parts of the state wants to sell. There used to be offers along the lines of "125 pentium desktops, complete with keyboards, hard drives and CRT monitors" and the ones with hard drives sometimes fetched <i>high</i> prices.<p>But they've learned. Here's one of a dozen identical laptops on sale today: <a href="https://www.zoll-auktion.de/auktion/produkt/fnord/767489" rel="nofollow">https://www.zoll-auktion.de/auktion/produkt/fnord/767489</a> and it says
"Die Festplatte wurde aus Datenschutzgründen komplett entfernt." No hard drive. Progress! People learning from experience! Hooray!