9 ms·

Social-media platforms are destroying evidence of war crimes

253 points by CPAhem 6y ago

OmarShehata 6y ago
This seems like a good thing. The article does explain how you probably shouldn't use what you see on Facebook as evidence in court.
tomc1985 6y ago
Yet another one of the myriad negative externalities that have come from the rise of cloud everything and people forgetting how to download their media. Own your bits, people.
- uniqueid 6y ago
  A tape drive is, as far as I can tell, the only reasonable back-up medium. Even then, where file format is concerned, our industry doesn't care about promoting a 1000-year format for file-storage. If you back up online, you delegate privacy and longevity to a stranger. If you back up to DVD, watch out for bit rot. If you back up to HDD, watch out for mechanical failures. If you back up to SSD, well, failure typically means the whole thing is dead. Even if you have a medium that can keep data alive for more than a couple decades, chances are, when the time comes, you'll be stuck doing a lot of research to access old disk and file formats. Tape drives really ought be a staple item, in the consumer market, not just enterprise, and companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple ought to guide customers to a common standard to ensure their archives will last a life-time.
  - octoberfranklin 6y ago
    RAID-1, block-checksumming filesystem, regularly-scheduled scrubs. Everything rots. Entropy is unavoidable. Math outlives physics.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - tomc1985 6y ago
    But we're talking about much more current temporality. Evidence disappearing because nobody thought to run youtube-dl or somesuch.
  - throwaway2048 6y ago
    The problem is modern tape drives cost $5000
    - uniqueid 6y ago
      That's my secret agenda ;) I want to see affordable tape drives! If the number of people who need a tape drive, but don't know it, and won't find out till its too late, knew they needed one, there'd be more competition in the market.
- aaron695 6y ago
  They only exist because of the cloud. Normally they would never see the light of the day. We just need to adapt. Things social media delete for a 'reason' probably matter.
hirundo 6y ago
“Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” -- Louis Brandeis Include pics on social media as a light form. Of course I don't want to be exposed to snuff films. But to the extent that blocking them sweeps evil under the rug that's a selfish impulse. And it's not just the existence of such evidence, such that blocking is fine if only it is preserved for a court. It is our very disgust and outrage that drives change. To protect the public from it is to abet such crimes. It's a good thing to protect children from it and a bad thing to treat us all as children.
- xkcd-sucks 6y ago
  Might exposure to snuff films be a morally appropriate consequence for financing the production of such films via tax payments?
  - kortilla 6y ago
    Tax collection is coercive and therefore tax payers cannot be held responsible for the actions that are performed using that revenue. Voters maybe, but not racketeering victims.
anigbrowl 6y ago
I hoped the article would go into more depth. For example, propagandists store caches of videos and imagery on distributed servers to keep circulating it, and manually or automatically run imagery through filters that distort the image enough to fool computers but are still easily recognizable to humans. In some cases this is done to such a degree that it becomes a kind of in-group aesthetic, a style distinctive enough to be its own signature and obviate the need for attribution.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  This is fascinating and I would like to read more about it.
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    Unfortunately most of the high quality writing about it tends to focus on state actors, or else be hand-wringing 'extremists are terrible, why won't social media companies do something'. This is a decent big-picture article but like anything to do with memetics it's kind out of date already. https://johnkoetsier.com/fake-news-the-truth-about-lies-with-mitch-chaiet-from-university-of-texas-at-austin/ https://johnkoetsier.com/fake-news-the-truth-about-lies-with...
skissane 6y ago
Removed from public access != deleted For all we know, the content still exists on the social media platforms' servers, and access is just blocked to the public, but the platforms will happily provide it to the proper authorities in response to an appropriate request. (Of course, I can't rule out the possibility they may have physically deleted some of it, or may do so eventually – I don't know what their data retention policies are – but I imagine they would be hesitant to permanently delete content that may plausibly be of future interest to regulators – this article contains zero information on whether they have actually physically deleted any of it or not) Human Rights Watch is of course a purely private body, so unless they reach some special arrangement with the platforms (and platforms are sometimes willing to enter into those sorts of special arrangements), they are not going to have any more access to removed content than the general public has. But that doesn't mean that government authorities don't have more access than the general public has.
- sneak 6y ago
  Without public knowledge and access to the media directly, what incentive or pressure does government have to pursue consequences for these crimes?
  - vageli 6y ago
    > Without public knowledge and access to the media directly, what incentive or pressure does government have to pursue consequences for these crimes? I agree with you, but to play devil's advocate, without public knowledge and access to the media directly, what incentive or pressure do terrorist organizations have? If the whole point of these acts is to instill fear, if they are not well-known the impact is limited. I can see that argument but don't have a good rebuttal.
    - sneak 6y ago
      You don’t combat terrorism by not talking about terrorism (aka censorship).
      - 6y ago
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/Bytys https://archive.is/Bytys
renewiltord 6y ago
Does anyone actually give a fuck about this? Everyone wanted Facebook to be where people go to see baby photos. Now it is that thing. It's fine. I see lots of baby photos and my life is good. So go upload to Liveleak if you want to post pictures of people shooting hooded people. Bro I don't want to see that and previously I was okay at avoiding it on Facebook. Then everyone decided that it was important that Facebook remove anything political that could be spun. Now they're doing that. Great. Now you want to complain about that? Listen, I'm going to be honest. No one gives a fuck about war crimes beyond a "Oh no, this is horrible" thing. If you asked people to contribute a dollar to fighting them you'd get zero dollars.
- lvs 6y ago
  Whoa.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  There has to be a limit to cynicism, at least on a discussion forum like this Twitter partially addresses this issue by letting you flag an account as NSFW. If you're going to post war crimes or nudes, great, I don't have to see your content even if it's retweeted - I can shut off NSFW content
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Honestly, there's probably money in making people feel better about outrageous things in some way. I think Reddit does an okay job here since they let people bicker on subreddits and 'award' people on either side. They sell people the illusion of impact, and that's probably worthwhile. So I think I've changed my mind completely. People don't not care about war crimes, etc. They care about them through the identity of being someone who cares about war crimes. In that respect, it is amazing what Facebook is doing since they are throwing away a pretty concrete engagement opportunity. Fascinating.
  - tomjen3 6y ago
    I want to see nudes, but not gore so the NSFW filter doesn't work. I want to see posts about accomplishments, but not instagramable food. I want your honest accomplishments, not your drama. I want to see pictures of puppies, but not babies. In other words, what I want is different from what other posters want. This is fine, until you throw us all together into the same area. Then we end up having all these fights.
malwarebytess 6y ago
Censorship has innate negative nth order consequences. To fight temporary discomfort we destroy history.
- indymike 6y ago
  This is the truth.
- kmlx 6y ago
  yes, this should be upvoted. "we destroy history" reminded me of these guys: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-middle-east-34112593 https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-mi... > As IS notes in the eighth issue of its own publication, the glossy Dabiq magazine, they see ancient cultural heritage as a challenge for the loyalties and legitimacy of Iraqi or Syrian people to IS itself. Destroying such heritage is thus a part of their duty, as they see it, to reject such a "nationalist agenda" that the statues, temples, and indeed, cities represent. To some degree, describing such desecrations as a "war crime", as the UN has , nicely plays into IS' hands - as do articles on the subject. But the internet cannot be un-invented, and unless we are to surrender some of our closest held beliefs on freedom of speech, we cannot stop dissemination of such depressing stories. We must, therefore, respond however we can. Calm reasoning exposing the hypocrisies, the practicalities, and the banalities of IS' policies is a step towards demystifying and debunking the likes of IS as just yet another political organisation. --- i guess we surrendered our "closest held beliefs of freedom of speech" in just 5 years.
erikerikson 6y ago
It wouldn't be hard for the feeds of these items to be fed to the appropriate governmental and non-governmental agencies, gated by some reasonable process.
schoen 6y ago
I was trying to reply to a post that got flagged, so I'll repost at the top level instead: I strongly disagree with [the other poster's lack of concern about war crimes], but I want to try to paraphrase the part of your intuition that makes sense to me. Facebook gets criticized by its users and governments both for taking down "too much" and "too little", sometimes with regard to the same post or subject area. Suppose user X posts something related to an armed conflict, violence, suffering, or death. This post might be part of a crime by X against Y, or evidence of a crime by Y against Z, or evidence of a crime by Y against Z, or not really a crime at all but just really disturbing and upsetting. Also, in various circumstances people might want records about violent crimes against them to be destroyed, or publicized, or not destroyed but not publicized (only used by some judicial process, or truth-and-reconciliation process, or historians, or something). Also, user X might have an intention that's different from the primary value or valence of the content, like prurient enthusiasm for violence, or making one of the parties depicted look bad, or trying to intimidate one of the parties depicted. In order to figure out which category (or categories) a post falls into, Facebook has to (1) learn the language(s) involved in all posts, (2) learn the political context of violent conflicts, (3) perform some level of adjudication and fact-finding about political conflicts and disputes, and maybe even (4) try to understand the motives of the person who posted something on each particular occasion. Is it reasonable to expect Facebook to do all those things, compared to other choices that are consistent, neutral, and inevitably result in various type I and type II errors with respect to the nature and purposes of posts related to violence?
- save_ferris 6y ago
  > Is it reasonable to expect Facebook to do all those things, compared to other choices that are consistent, neutral, and inevitably result in various type I and type II errors with respect to the nature and purposes of posts related to violence? I’ll grant that we’re in uncharted territory as far as the scale and depth of what a company like Facebook has to deal with on a regular basis regarding the amount and variance in the content that they see and manage. That said, Facebook constantly tells us how they want to change the world for the better. If that’s not just marketing bullshit and they want us to take them at their word, then they need to recognize that the position they’ve put themselves in demands a level of accountability and responsibility that they’re clearly not comfortable with. Ultimately, citizens should be able to define what’s reasonable to expect out of Facebook, not the difficulty of a particular content problem. Becoming one of the largest tech companies in existence doesn’t grant one immunity from real problems involving their content. If Facebook can’t manage their content at scale to address these kinds of issues, then perhaps they shouldn’t be managing content at this kind of scale.
fogetti 6y ago
Good. I mean we need more such articles, so that just like the BBC could shame the Cameroonian government into action, we can shame tech companies into action too.
benatkin 6y ago
Facebook has killed Rohingya. Mark Zuckerberg has blood on his hands. The U. S. has the ear of Facebook. Facebook listens to the E. U. but threatens to defy them. It largely ignores international human rights organizations though. > In June, The Gambia filed an application in U.S. federal court seeking information from Facebook that would help it hold Myanmar accountable at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). > Earlier this month, the company filed its opposition to The Gambia’s application. Facebook said the request is “extraordinarily broad,” as well as “unduly intrusive or burdensome.” https://time.com/5880118/myanmar-rohingya-genocide-facebook-gambia/ https://time.com/5880118/myanmar-rohingya-genocide-facebook-... Edit: "Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo" https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54161344 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54161344
mlb_hn 6y ago
This has been a systemic issue reported on for years; e.g. reported by the Intercept in 2017 [1] and Atlantic in 2019 [2]. Not really made clear from the story considering the Economist headline is almost identical to the Atlantic one. [1]https://theintercept.com/2017/11/02/war-crimes-youtube-facebook-syria-rohingya/ https://theintercept.com/2017/11/02/war-crimes-youtube-faceb... [2]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/facebook-algorithms-are-making-it-harder/588931/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/facebook-a...
known 6y ago
"If you don't read newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read a newspaper, you are misinformed" --Mark Twain (b. 1835) goo.gl/KXNf9
ReptileMan 6y ago
Ugh. Activist organizations trying to make social media do their work for them. While keeping the donations for themselves. Facebook just can't win. They should just start ignoring such demands. Want evidence of war crimes preserved - then do it yourself.
aussieguy1234 6y ago
In alot of countries, it's illegal to tamper with evidence of a crime. Would this destruction of evidence count? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampering_with_evidence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampering_with_evidence

253 points by CPAhem 6y ago

This seems like a good thing. The article does explain how you probably shouldn't use what you see on Facebook as evidence in court.

tomc1985 6y ago

Yet another one of the myriad negative externalities that have come from the rise of cloud everything and people forgetting how to download their media. Own your bits, people.

uniqueid 6y ago
A tape drive is, as far as I can tell, the only reasonable back-up medium. Even then, where file format is concerned, our industry doesn't care about promoting a 1000-year format for file-storage. If you back up online, you delegate privacy and longevity to a stranger. If you back up to DVD, watch out for bit rot. If you back up to HDD, watch out for mechanical failures. If you back up to SSD, well, failure typically means the whole thing is dead. Even if you have a medium that can keep data alive for more than a couple decades, chances are, when the time comes, you'll be stuck doing a lot of research to access old disk and file formats. Tape drives really ought be a staple item, in the consumer market, not just enterprise, and companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple ought to guide customers to a common standard to ensure their archives will last a life-time.
- octoberfranklin 6y ago
  RAID-1, block-checksumming filesystem, regularly-scheduled scrubs. Everything rots. Entropy is unavoidable. Math outlives physics.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- tomc1985 6y ago
  But we're talking about much more current temporality. Evidence disappearing because nobody thought to run youtube-dl or somesuch.
- throwaway2048 6y ago
  The problem is modern tape drives cost $5000
  - uniqueid 6y ago
    That's my secret agenda ;) I want to see affordable tape drives! If the number of people who need a tape drive, but don't know it, and won't find out till its too late, knew they needed one, there'd be more competition in the market.
aaron695 6y ago
They only exist because of the cloud. Normally they would never see the light of the day. We just need to adapt. Things social media delete for a 'reason' probably matter.

hirundo 6y ago

“Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” -- Louis Brandeis Include pics on social media as a light form. Of course I don't want to be exposed to snuff films. But to the extent that blocking them sweeps evil under the rug that's a selfish impulse. And it's not just the existence of such evidence, such that blocking is fine if only it is preserved for a court. It is our very disgust and outrage that drives change. To protect the public from it is to abet such crimes. It's a good thing to protect children from it and a bad thing to treat us all as children.

xkcd-sucks 6y ago
Might exposure to snuff films be a morally appropriate consequence for financing the production of such films via tax payments?
- kortilla 6y ago
  Tax collection is coercive and therefore tax payers cannot be held responsible for the actions that are performed using that revenue. Voters maybe, but not racketeering victims.

anigbrowl 6y ago

I hoped the article would go into more depth. For example, propagandists store caches of videos and imagery on distributed servers to keep circulating it, and manually or automatically run imagery through filters that distort the image enough to fool computers but are still easily recognizable to humans. In some cases this is done to such a degree that it becomes a kind of in-group aesthetic, a style distinctive enough to be its own signature and obviate the need for attribution.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
This is fascinating and I would like to read more about it.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  Unfortunately most of the high quality writing about it tends to focus on state actors, or else be hand-wringing 'extremists are terrible, why won't social media companies do something'. This is a decent big-picture article but like anything to do with memetics it's kind out of date already. https://johnkoetsier.com/fake-news-the-truth-about-lies-with-mitch-chaiet-from-university-of-texas-at-austin/ https://johnkoetsier.com/fake-news-the-truth-about-lies-with...

skissane 6y ago

Removed from public access != deleted For all we know, the content still exists on the social media platforms' servers, and access is just blocked to the public, but the platforms will happily provide it to the proper authorities in response to an appropriate request. (Of course, I can't rule out the possibility they may have physically deleted some of it, or may do so eventually – I don't know what their data retention policies are – but I imagine they would be hesitant to permanently delete content that may plausibly be of future interest to regulators – this article contains zero information on whether they have actually physically deleted any of it or not) Human Rights Watch is of course a purely private body, so unless they reach some special arrangement with the platforms (and platforms are sometimes willing to enter into those sorts of special arrangements), they are not going to have any more access to removed content than the general public has. But that doesn't mean that government authorities don't have more access than the general public has.

sneak 6y ago
Without public knowledge and access to the media directly, what incentive or pressure does government have to pursue consequences for these crimes?
- vageli 6y ago
  > Without public knowledge and access to the media directly, what incentive or pressure does government have to pursue consequences for these crimes? I agree with you, but to play devil's advocate, without public knowledge and access to the media directly, what incentive or pressure do terrorist organizations have? If the whole point of these acts is to instill fear, if they are not well-known the impact is limited. I can see that argument but don't have a good rebuttal.
  - sneak 6y ago
    You don’t combat terrorism by not talking about terrorism (aka censorship).
    - 6y ago

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/Bytys https://archive.is/Bytys

renewiltord 6y ago

Does anyone actually give a fuck about this? Everyone wanted Facebook to be where people go to see baby photos. Now it is that thing. It's fine. I see lots of baby photos and my life is good. So go upload to Liveleak if you want to post pictures of people shooting hooded people. Bro I don't want to see that and previously I was okay at avoiding it on Facebook. Then everyone decided that it was important that Facebook remove anything political that could be spun. Now they're doing that. Great. Now you want to complain about that? Listen, I'm going to be honest. No one gives a fuck about war crimes beyond a "Oh no, this is horrible" thing. If you asked people to contribute a dollar to fighting them you'd get zero dollars.

lvs 6y ago
Whoa.
kevingadd 6y ago
There has to be a limit to cynicism, at least on a discussion forum like this Twitter partially addresses this issue by letting you flag an account as NSFW. If you're going to post war crimes or nudes, great, I don't have to see your content even if it's retweeted - I can shut off NSFW content
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Honestly, there's probably money in making people feel better about outrageous things in some way. I think Reddit does an okay job here since they let people bicker on subreddits and 'award' people on either side. They sell people the illusion of impact, and that's probably worthwhile. So I think I've changed my mind completely. People don't not care about war crimes, etc. They care about them through the identity of being someone who cares about war crimes. In that respect, it is amazing what Facebook is doing since they are throwing away a pretty concrete engagement opportunity. Fascinating.
- tomjen3 6y ago
  I want to see nudes, but not gore so the NSFW filter doesn't work. I want to see posts about accomplishments, but not instagramable food. I want your honest accomplishments, not your drama. I want to see pictures of puppies, but not babies. In other words, what I want is different from what other posters want. This is fine, until you throw us all together into the same area. Then we end up having all these fights.

malwarebytess 6y ago

Censorship has innate negative nth order consequences. To fight temporary discomfort we destroy history.

indymike 6y ago
This is the truth.
kmlx 6y ago
yes, this should be upvoted. "we destroy history" reminded me of these guys: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-middle-east-34112593 https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-mi... > As IS notes in the eighth issue of its own publication, the glossy Dabiq magazine, they see ancient cultural heritage as a challenge for the loyalties and legitimacy of Iraqi or Syrian people to IS itself. Destroying such heritage is thus a part of their duty, as they see it, to reject such a "nationalist agenda" that the statues, temples, and indeed, cities represent. To some degree, describing such desecrations as a "war crime", as the UN has , nicely plays into IS' hands - as do articles on the subject. But the internet cannot be un-invented, and unless we are to surrender some of our closest held beliefs on freedom of speech, we cannot stop dissemination of such depressing stories. We must, therefore, respond however we can. Calm reasoning exposing the hypocrisies, the practicalities, and the banalities of IS' policies is a step towards demystifying and debunking the likes of IS as just yet another political organisation. --- i guess we surrendered our "closest held beliefs of freedom of speech" in just 5 years.

erikerikson 6y ago

It wouldn't be hard for the feeds of these items to be fed to the appropriate governmental and non-governmental agencies, gated by some reasonable process.

schoen 6y ago

I was trying to reply to a post that got flagged, so I'll repost at the top level instead: I strongly disagree with [the other poster's lack of concern about war crimes], but I want to try to paraphrase the part of your intuition that makes sense to me. Facebook gets criticized by its users and governments both for taking down "too much" and "too little", sometimes with regard to the same post or subject area. Suppose user X posts something related to an armed conflict, violence, suffering, or death. This post might be part of a crime by X against Y, or evidence of a crime by Y against Z, or evidence of a crime by Y against Z, or not really a crime at all but just really disturbing and upsetting. Also, in various circumstances people might want records about violent crimes against them to be destroyed, or publicized, or not destroyed but not publicized (only used by some judicial process, or truth-and-reconciliation process, or historians, or something). Also, user X might have an intention that's different from the primary value or valence of the content, like prurient enthusiasm for violence, or making one of the parties depicted look bad, or trying to intimidate one of the parties depicted. In order to figure out which category (or categories) a post falls into, Facebook has to (1) learn the language(s) involved in all posts, (2) learn the political context of violent conflicts, (3) perform some level of adjudication and fact-finding about political conflicts and disputes, and maybe even (4) try to understand the motives of the person who posted something on each particular occasion. Is it reasonable to expect Facebook to do all those things, compared to other choices that are consistent, neutral, and inevitably result in various type I and type II errors with respect to the nature and purposes of posts related to violence?

save_ferris 6y ago
> Is it reasonable to expect Facebook to do all those things, compared to other choices that are consistent, neutral, and inevitably result in various type I and type II errors with respect to the nature and purposes of posts related to violence? I’ll grant that we’re in uncharted territory as far as the scale and depth of what a company like Facebook has to deal with on a regular basis regarding the amount and variance in the content that they see and manage. That said, Facebook constantly tells us how they want to change the world for the better. If that’s not just marketing bullshit and they want us to take them at their word, then they need to recognize that the position they’ve put themselves in demands a level of accountability and responsibility that they’re clearly not comfortable with. Ultimately, citizens should be able to define what’s reasonable to expect out of Facebook, not the difficulty of a particular content problem. Becoming one of the largest tech companies in existence doesn’t grant one immunity from real problems involving their content. If Facebook can’t manage their content at scale to address these kinds of issues, then perhaps they shouldn’t be managing content at this kind of scale.

fogetti 6y ago

Good. I mean we need more such articles, so that just like the BBC could shame the Cameroonian government into action, we can shame tech companies into action too.

benatkin 6y ago

Facebook has killed Rohingya. Mark Zuckerberg has blood on his hands. The U. S. has the ear of Facebook. Facebook listens to the E. U. but threatens to defy them. It largely ignores international human rights organizations though. > In June, The Gambia filed an application in U.S. federal court seeking information from Facebook that would help it hold Myanmar accountable at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). > Earlier this month, the company filed its opposition to The Gambia’s application. Facebook said the request is “extraordinarily broad,” as well as “unduly intrusive or burdensome.” https://time.com/5880118/myanmar-rohingya-genocide-facebook-gambia/ https://time.com/5880118/myanmar-rohingya-genocide-facebook-... Edit: "Facebook staffer sends 'blood on my hands' memo" https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54161344 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54161344

mlb_hn 6y ago

This has been a systemic issue reported on for years; e.g. reported by the Intercept in 2017 [1] and Atlantic in 2019 [2]. Not really made clear from the story considering the Economist headline is almost identical to the Atlantic one. [1]https://theintercept.com/2017/11/02/war-crimes-youtube-facebook-syria-rohingya/ https://theintercept.com/2017/11/02/war-crimes-youtube-faceb... [2]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/facebook-algorithms-are-making-it-harder/588931/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/facebook-a...

known 6y ago

"If you don't read newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read a newspaper, you are misinformed" --Mark Twain (b. 1835) goo.gl/KXNf9

ReptileMan 6y ago

Ugh. Activist organizations trying to make social media do their work for them. While keeping the donations for themselves. Facebook just can't win. They should just start ignoring such demands. Want evidence of war crimes preserved - then do it yourself.

aussieguy1234 6y ago

In alot of countries, it's illegal to tamper with evidence of a crime. Would this destruction of evidence count? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampering_with_evidence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampering_with_evidence