Much ado about nothing.
If the internal drive is not encrypted, the fingerprint reader is just a toy... And I personally have gotten around two types of so-called drive-encryption (really drive-locking) that turned out to be nothing more than a front door.
In point of fact, don’t put anything incriminating on any electronic device, period.
The intent of the fingerprint reader isn’t necessarily to safeguard any data.
The fingerprint, along with iOS 7 (coming to users of iPhone 4 and up, this next Wednesday) is aimed to make a stolen iPhone utterly worthless. Today, if I steal an iPhone, I can reset it and sell it for cash. The customer doesn’t know if it’s my old phone, or a stolen phone.
Next week, in order to release an iPhone from it’s owner’s account, the owner must log into the iPhone or his iCloud account and release the phone. If it’s not released, the owner can track it indefinitely. Will the local cops retrieve it and charge the thief with felony theft? Maybe, maybe not ... depending upon your location and the cops involved. But, the thieves will quickly learn that a stolen iPhone is now utterly worthless.
It’s not on an internal “drive” it’s in a firewalled section on the CPU. Further more, new I do states that hacking off somones finger won’t work either. It has to be alive with electronic biometric activity. The scanner reads more than the ridges and whorles.