I think the parent comment was more likely referring to using these devices for personal privacy. For example can a criminal steal my personal information in my phone vs. can the government spy on me. Where the government might spend a million dollars to do this process to read the phone of a terrorist, but a criminal probably wouldn't to steal my personal information off of a phone or USB drive.

Those people are fine. I'm looking at this from the perspective of the malware that can survive across OS re-installs because Intel put this enclave in your CPU that you can't touch. I'd assume the NSA is using that to spy on people right now but the question is how many other groups.

Not the parent commenter, but I suspect it’s less the act than the motivation.

Criminals who anticipate finding a way to profit on the information would be far more likely to go through the trouble of bribing someone or investing in the resources to snag it.