Provenance gaps treated as omissions

What it looks like. An artifact's origin is partially unknown and that is tolerated as untidy record-keeping. Attribution for an outcome is assigned when convenient and revised later without ceremony.

Why it fails. A gap in provenance is exactly where a laundered origin lives. Treating it as an omission rather than a defect means the one place worth investigating is the place nobody looks.

Instead. Require end-to-end provenance chains on high-consequence artifacts and treat unclaimable gaps as defects. Fix attribution at the time of outcome and surface any later re-attribution as an elevated-scrutiny revision requiring explicit override.