There seems to be a fair bit of confusion over data destruction "standards".

There are standards. Different ones, but standards. We will try to outline some of the more common ones.

The US DoD standard is mentioned many times on different sites. But there are others as well.

DOD National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual
NISPOM (DoD)
NISPOM 8-306
US DOD 5220.22-M Standard, defined in the US National Industrial
Security Program Operating Manual of the US Department of Defense (January
1995; chapter 8, section 3, 8-306. Maintenance).

DoD 5220.22-M 3 pass

http://www.dss.mil/seclib/index.htm
http://www.dss.mil/isec/nispom.htm
http://www.dss.mil/isec/nispom_0195.htm

Other "standards":

GOST P50739-95 5 pass

VSITR (a German data-destruction standard) 7 pass

RCMP TSSIT OPS-II Standard Wipe

NAVSO (US Navy) P5239-26, AFSSI-5020 and  (US Army) AR380-19

Gutmann method, which uses a whopping 35 passes, with 27 random-order passes using specific data combined with eight passes using random data.

Seven-pass Schneier method, which uses two passes of specific patterns followed by five passes using a cryptographically secure pseudo-random sequence.

BCWipe

Data is overwritten seven times to all addressable locations:

Pass       Data
1             A random character, n = [0, 255]
2             A random character, n
3             Complement of previous character, ~n
4             A random character, n
5             A random character, n
6             Complement of previous character, ~n
7             A random character, n

U.S. DoD 5200.28-STD 1985 method, with seven pass extended character rotation

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