Well, I wasn't making recommendations for criminal activity, but for protection against inadvertently disclosing sensitive material.  In the real-world example I cited, it was a doctor that retired.  Although HIPAA had not fully come into effect yet, he was rightly concerned about protecting confidential information entrusted to him by his patients.  I can confidently say we fufilled his ethical and legal obligations.

If you're concerned about keeping your data safe from any government, particularly those of the United States, China, Russia, Israel, or an EU member, you need to take additional precautions, such as the use of full-drive encryption (TrueCrypt) and an open-source operating system that has enough eyeballs on it that there is little chance of a backdoor being slipped in somewhere.  And then when you're done with the drive, electronically wipe it as I've described, drill a hole in it, smash it with a sledge hammer, and cast the parts into an active volcano like Mount Doom.