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For sure.

There are other measures the suspect could have taken; store everything on an always encrypted micro-SD, which is tiny enough to be easily destroyed.

Actually: Has anyone done any research about the risks of "super microscopes and Flash memory"? There's a theoretical risk with conventional platters. I don't know how big one bit is on a conventional drive, and I don't know how big one bit is on a, say, 8GB micro-sd card.

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What are they going to do, read the encrypted data off the flash drive the hard way?

I stress this is just me noodling around, and that I'm not talking about real world risks. But: Is it possible to read unencrypted data of the flash drive the hard way?

Obviously, if it's sensibly encrypted there's no point. But a person may think they have physically destroyed a flash drive only to have left information available.

Here's some links to DIY de-capping and microscopy of a variety of ICs:

(http://siliconexposed.blogspot.com/2011/03/microchip-pic12f6...)

(http://uvicrec.blogspot.com/)

(http://dangerousprototypes.com/2011/06/27/hacking-the-pic-18...)

I imagine it's probably possible. The trick with flash drives though I think is the size. You could easily swallow a micro sd card without anyone even noticing.

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