The Ninth Circuit has already ruled on this sort of situation.. the courts will and must revoke the police's qualified immunity against claims of excessive force. Let the lawsuits begin: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1332957.html

The whole point of the referenced article is that it is somehow a "problem" that data deleted (and intended to be deleted) by the owner of the SSD cannot be later recovered. Why should deleted data be recoverable? Will "police state" now require SSDs to stop this seemingly desirable behavior to ensure evidence be recoverable from an impounded device? I for one applaud the behavior of these new storage devices.

I once purchased a device for a mac (macos) that I believe was called ADControl. It was a box that had several analog and digital inputs and outputs. They sold an IR based sensor that you glued/taped to the outside of the meter which sensed the black mark on the "wheel" spinning in the older style electric meters. You then calibrated the pulses into watt-hours based on the number of pulses in a set time vs the increment on the dials. I would imagine such a sensor would not be hard to recreate.