It takes a couple of clicks through to BBC articles, but it turns out that even if he were to find it, he has no legal right to it and also would have no legal right to mine the landfill.
But James Goudie KC, for the council, argued that existing laws meant the hard drive had become its property when it entered the landfill site. It also said that its environmental permits would forbid any attempt to excavate the site to search for the hard drive.
Plot twist, he does get exemption to dig it up, causing mass damage all around. He finds it. The board is completely busted, but it seems the platters are fine, so he pays some very expensive data recovery team to access the data. They manage to do it! Now he got all the files from the drive, in a safe place. He just have to find where the wallet is stored. Easy enough, he lucked out using a common software for it, so it’s well documented, and he retrieve the files. It costs an inordinate amount of money to get the rights to the landfill, to “convince” local authorities to allow the digging, to actually do the digging, to put the drive in a recoverable state, but finally, his wallet is in his hands! He inputs his password… which doesn’t work.
That would be hilarious.
(note: this is a fantasy scenario. I never bothered actually reading these articles, as it sounds like a stupid story, so there may be approximations there)
It takes a couple of clicks through to BBC articles, but it turns out that even if he were to find it, he has no legal right to it and also would have no legal right to mine the landfill.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0r0dvgpy0o
Not to mention the fact the drive is almost certainly dead.
Plot twist, he does get exemption to dig it up, causing mass damage all around. He finds it. The board is completely busted, but it seems the platters are fine, so he pays some very expensive data recovery team to access the data. They manage to do it! Now he got all the files from the drive, in a safe place. He just have to find where the wallet is stored. Easy enough, he lucked out using a common software for it, so it’s well documented, and he retrieve the files. It costs an inordinate amount of money to get the rights to the landfill, to “convince” local authorities to allow the digging, to actually do the digging, to put the drive in a recoverable state, but finally, his wallet is in his hands! He inputs his password… which doesn’t work.
That would be hilarious.
(note: this is a fantasy scenario. I never bothered actually reading these articles, as it sounds like a stupid story, so there may be approximations there)