Hard to get data off a drive with a hammer and blowtorch.
Waterboarding those boxes is the only way to make them give up their data.
The ‘black box’ is pretty ruggedly constructed, but the data storage unit (what you might call a hard drive) is even further isolated in a sealed armored subunit box.
Easy to understand debris and salt accumulation on the outside, even the inside of the Black box. The electronics would be damaged as well. But the actual data storage itself ? I find that hard to believe.
statement decoded.....we don’t have the technology to recover the data....