Actually is it more likely as a result of having to comply with government approved techniques for sanitising machines. The problem with motherboards these days is they usually have flash memory soldered onto them. These cannot be wiped so the only approved method involves destruction. Even RAM modules don't escape being 'processed'. At the very least they have to be subjected to full MEMTEST passes, and then powered down for a minimum of 24 hours (or something like that). Hard disks have to be wiped using approved software like Blancco. The problem is that the RAM and Harddisk processing I have just mentioned only brings the classification down from secret to restricted, and even restricted material has to be tightly controlled as assets. The Guardian might not have had approved processes for the handling of government UK restricted material, let alone UK secret, and therefore the only option was destruction as you have seen.