I have the need for a product that I don't believe exists currently. The use case is that I want all the data on certain computers to be destroyed as soon as I'm dead. I envision a running application waiting for proof that I'm alive every X days. I was thinking of a bootable USB device that would run a countdown timer that, when it reaches zero, would cause the machine to reboot and to run a multi-pass secure wipe of all the drives in the machine.

An alternative would be to encrypt all of the drives so that if not accessed with the appropriate passphrase, they would be unusable by anyone. Not all my machines can support boot volume encryption, but an alternative would be to use encryption on just the home directory and external volumes. That would leave the OS data accessible to anyone performing forensics on the drive, but the confidential data would be safe. Unfortunately, I often leave machines running with these volumes mounted, and even if I failed to return to the computer, it would only require causing the OS to expose the vulnerable data (shared over the network or by gaining root from a second login, for example).

I would feel more comfortable if a hardware device was on the job, ready to kill the data unless given a waveoff. A malfunction of the device and misfire of the kill command would be catastrophic though -- another plus on the side of encryption. I'm sure this issue has been addressed in the security community, although I suspect that many of the solutions involve an executor following end-of-life instructions.

The problem with remote data destruction has stumped me so far. My Google Mail and Google Voice data, for example, I would want deleted upon my death. I could prepare a script to do the task, but it would be ideal if an API existed for this purpose. I'm not sure what the real-world analogy is. Do banks offer a service to destroy safe-deposit boxes in the event that their customer dies? I don't have anything valuable, just confidential.