alt Hacker NewsYou keep saying "potential evidence." What does that even mean? If I factory reset my phone right now, am I guilty of destroying "potential evidence?" Do you have "potential evidence" on any of your devices? Let's not make up phrases to help justify what they were doing. There was either an actual crime committed, and wiping the phone destroyed real evidence. Or there was not. You can't just consider all data everywhere to be "potential evidence" while you look around for some kind of crime that it's evidence of.
If it was evidence, what was the crime?
The implication they are making is that the person _intended_ to destroy potential evidence on the phone. That the person felt there was evidence on it that needed to be destroyed to hide a crime.
IMO, even if that's actually illegal, there's zero way to prove it that the fifth amendment doesn't address.