Trope-a-Day: Leave No Witnesses

Leave No Witnesses: Mostly averted. Given the prevalence of vector stacks (allowing reinstantiation), muses, lifeloggers, pervasive surveillance, and so forth, the sensible criminal finds it much more convenient to so arrange their affairs that it doesn’t matter that they were witnessed.

Sometimes, nonetheless, played disturbingly straight, by those people who know that if the people in question didn’t have the right hardware and/or were inside a Faraday cage at the time, then they’ll be restored from backup without the unfortunate witnessing ever having taken place.

On the gripping hand, various members of the less brutal and more able to get cooperation club prefer to just redact the appropriate chunk of memory, which can work even if the above conditions don’t apply.