Thursday, September 17, 2026
Public Witness Protocol
Turn surveillance around: an open, decentralized public evidence protocol designed for evidentiary symmetry rather than centralized tracking.
Ten things
- The protocol allows independent devices and storage operators to prove that evidence existed at a particular place and time without automatically making raw footage publicly searchable.
- A public evidence commons fails if it becomes “Flock for everyone.” The protocol must be intentionally bad at constructing persistent dossiers about individuals and intentionally good at verifying bounded events.
- A person no longer has to know that “Camera 927” existed before they can establish that evidence may contradict an institutional account.
- Relevant recordings can be released through consent, legal process, journalistic/public-interest rules or another transparent governance mechanism.
- Give communities a record that does not disappear simply because an institution chose not to preserve its own footage.
- Turn surveillance around: an open, decentralized public evidence protocol designed for evidentiary symmetry rather than centralized tracking.
- Storage and verification could be operated by a federation of independent actors rather than one government agency or surveillance vendor.
- Citizens usually encounter evidence only after an accusation, a collision, a protest, an arrest, a lawsuit or another disputed event.
- By then, the useful camera may be unknown, overwritten or controlled by the same institution whose account is being challenged.
- Anyone receiving the evidence can check that the disclosed file matches the fingerprint committed at the time of recording.
Five questions
Which term completes this sourced statement? “The protocol allows independent devices and storage operators to prove that evidence existed at a particular place and time without _____ making raw footage publicly searchable.”
Which term completes this sourced statement? “A person no longer has to know that “_____ 927” existed before they can establish that evidence may contradict an institutional account.”
Which term completes this sourced statement? “Give _____ a record that does not disappear simply because an institution chose not to preserve its own footage.”
Which term completes this sourced statement? “_____ and verification could be operated by a federation of independent actors rather than one government agency or surveillance vendor.”
Which term completes this sourced statement? “By then, the useful camera may be unknown, _____ or controlled by the same institution whose account is being challenged.”