You didn't answer my question. There is nothing about the existence of a VM that makes it "difficult to explain away" and you did not establish why the fact tha

You didn't answer my question. There is nothing about the existence of a VM that makes it "difficult to explain away" and you did not establish why the fact that there is a VM being used is relevant. What you are now saying is that it's implausible that the CIA would be able to fake logs (and that's what we're talking about with inode data) on a VM for some reason. It would absolutely not be as simple as "have someone examine it and find inode activity when you had a clear alibi" because it is very likely the guy was actually using a VM legitimately. All the CIA has to do is establish that he was in possession of child pornography. Hell, they don't even need to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt if A) the jury, defense, prosecution and / or judge is not tech savvy to understand some of these concepts, and B) if their goal is to trash this guy's life and have it be a warning to other leakers. You don't even need a conviction for that. It does not strain credulity at all to think that the CIA would go to the effort to fake a small set of data on a VM. The "elaborate detail" is not any more elaborate than in any other instance -- it would be trivially easy to forge. If they wanted to ruin his life, this is a perfect, practical way for them to do it. The fact that they would forge this data on a VM makes it seem even more plausible to people who don't even understand what VMs are, or how one might fabricate logs like that. It's apparently working on you right now, and you're savvy enough to know about the existence of inode data. You're apparently ready to condemn this guy despite the ludicrous amount of circumstantial evidence that maybe this guy is being set up by an organization literally dedicated to covert operations of this nature, who have even go so far as to detail exactly how they would undertake this exact kind of operation.