Forensic bomb
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A forensic bomb is a type of instrument used to delay or fully halt forensic investigation by causing information overload. Forensic bombs operate by autonomously planting excessive amounts of plausible and misleading forensic evidence. Typically they are used to hide the identities of people who have traversed an area by spraying or otherwise covering their surroundings in genetic matter, fingerprints and other recognizeable smudges, chemical signatures, etc. The relative ease of deploying a forensic bomb compared to the difficulty of existing without leaving traces makes forensic bombs especially attractive to business entities, criminal users, and persons avoiding identification for various reasons. Many technologies initially developed for forensic bombs have become ubiquitous in mundane uses, such as precise seeding in agriculture, and thus mundane equipment has become a common source of makeshift forensic bombs retrofitted to their original purpose.
Forensic bombs can be constructed in a wide variety of ways, and as such the term is very general; there are few mechanical parallels between a bag of modified hedgehogs, something resembling a portable irrigation nozzle, and an explosive ceramic orb. While a vast number of forensic bombs are designed to be disposable, the term also typically encompasses multiple-use devices, such as trained animals or portable spraying devices with forensic obfuscation as their sole purpose. Following forensic bombs' humble, mostly pyrotechnical beginnings, their "golden age" saw the vast use of modified critters; these were preferred as they come packaged with vast intelligence entirely for free, yielding extra chaos and autonomous dispersion. Nowadays, biological forensic bombs are practically obsolete, with advanced mechanical designs having become dominant. Most currently ubiquitous designs may be described as resembling hairy, rancid robotic smoke grenades.
The main hurdle in creating a forensic bomb is the collection of large amounts of plausible evidence, with appropriate specificity becoming ever more important. Early forensic bombs could get away with simply ejecting large amounts of any information, as having to catalogue large volumes of information in itself was an expensive and time-consuming part of investigations. However, developments in automation of sample collection and data processing mean that a modern forensic bomb needs to be tailored more closely to the subject being obfuscated and to the region it's used in, to avoid the information to be hidden standing out as anomalous. While a larger volume of even nonspecific information directly improves the forensic bomb, designs quickly become constrained by how much matter can reasonably be carried around in a device.
Notable evidence heists
Collecting large amounts of appropriate evidence for use in forensic bombs is a convoluted and increasingly sensitive operation with scale, often performed by organized actors. Some common methods include covertly swabbing & sweeping populated areas, making people provide samples themselves by pressure or deception, and stealing information gathered by another organization such as a vat facility. Here are some notable plots & heists aiming to capture information for use in forensic bombs.
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- Beep
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