Missing servers in DC

I heard on the radio this morning that two servers were found by the trash and was kind of shocked. My first reaction is how can anyone miss to servers, if they contain current information then they are probably in use so someone would notice them going offline. Then I read the Washington Post Article. According to the DC Tax office the machines haven’t been used for 5 years, which makes me feel a little better, but it will be interesting to see what is currently on the servers, my guess is that they were sold off as surplus and have been used somewhere else for the last 5 years until the current owners decided they weren’t worth the power to keep them running and junked them. What I am really hoping is that the machines were truly wiped before being retired by the DC tax office. I know that very few companies have a good asset retirement policies.