90s Privacy, County Computers Not Wiped
Published: Monday, April 27, 2026, 5:19 AM CDT
By Lisa Loucks-Christenson, Publisher
A thrift-store discovery from the 1990s raises questions about records destruction, public accountability, and what was left behind.
Although I was the Apple girl in the IBM family, I could move through systems without hesitation. I knew Linux, Mac, DOS, BASIC, C, and my PC Jr.; I knew when to use wildcards, DIR, and backslashes; how to connect any dot matrix printer; how to make backups, copy, delete, and check directories; and how to figure out any program if given enough time.
I grew up around systems being built, not broken. My father worked for IBM and was involved in the creative process behind EDI, and I learned early that records matter and so does the way they are handled. That lesson stayed with me through the winter drives on I-90, through the IBM PC Jr., and into my own work in my photo studio.
In the 1990s, I bought a used DOS computer at a thrift store and put it to work in my business. When I turned it on, I discovered it had come from county hands and still contained records that should have been securely destroyed before the machine ever reached resale. It was not even password protected. To my horror, I found pages of records I did not want to see. Once I saw them, I could not unsee them, so I wiped the hard drive. People deserved their privacy. And as an investigative journalist, I am not a snoop — I am a person who follows stories and documents the findings ethically.
This happened in the 1990s, but I am bringing it up now because I just found the DOS disks while cleaning out my garage. And when I look back, I do not see a safer world now than then. Hackers exposing student records, 911 systems under pressure, and state cyberattacks all suggest the same problem keeps resurfacing under different labels.
I remember the break-in, and I remember the dead sparrow hung on twine in my photo studio office, its eyes stitched shut. I could not even get an officer to respond to that, so how was I supposed to prove who had been rifling through my things, or whether they were looking for county files I had already wiped? That remains my suspicion, not my certainty — one hypothesis among several, including the possibility that someone bought the other two machines may have wanted the third.
I close with the words, “His eye is on the sparrow.” And then there is the fuller verse: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.” If records were left exposed, and if someone came looking for what should never have been public, then the failure began long before I ever found the machine.
I can hardly complain about having my name misspelled on a credit line when other people’s details were sitting wide open in an insecure system with no proper end-of-life removal. For a county the size of ours, there is no room for that kind of carelessness. Wipe the drives. Budget for professional data destruction. Do not donate hardware with records still on it. One man’s garbage is another man’s gold. Who signed off? Who got sloppy?
The watchdog keeps watch.
Got a story you want me to check out? Use the contact form.
#Watchdog #InvestigativeJournalism #AccountabilityReporting #NewsAnalysis #LocalNews #BreakingStories #PublicInterest #TruthSeeking #MediaWatch #Columnist #Journalism #FourthEstate #FactFinding #CommunityNews #ReportersLife
Lisa Loucks-Christenson is founder and publisher of Rochester Sun Times News, an investigative journalist, author, and multimedia creator based in Rochester, Minnesota. Her work focuses on public accountability, civil rights, records, and community issues, with a long career in reporting, publishing, and documentary storytelling
© 2026 Lisa Loucks-Christenson. All rights reserved.