If you're dealing with a state-level attacker, any scheme involving explosives or incendiaries would get the attackee in as much or more trouble than the original data would.
This is a hard problem. I suspect any solution will involve tamper-resistant hardware, which zeroizes itself if not used in the expected mode.
Right, there are at least two workable solutions-
Hard drives with user alterable firmware. I surprised that none of the major drive manufacturers seems to have thought about offering a version of their controllers, for substantially more money, that offers this.
A retrofit device that screws into the side of the hard drive and is set to inject a corrosive that almost instantly destroys the drive surfaces. The device can be triggered by any number of intrusion detectors or a voice-activated system keyed to the operators voice print.
steve
