Evidence and Provenance
Evidence records a source claim or observation. Admission makes that claim durable; it does not make it current truth.
Admission
Section titled “Admission”TM-EVD-001 — Admission is not promotion. Admitting evidence MUST NOT by itself change current truth.
TM-EVD-002 — Source preservation. An implementation MUST preserve the source representation when the medium and data policy permit it. When the source cannot be retained, the evidence record MUST state what was observed, by whom or what, when, and why the original is unavailable.
TM-EVD-003 — Provenance. Every evidence record MUST identify its source, capture or receipt event, integrity mechanism where applicable, and any actor or process that transformed it before admission.
TM-EVD-004 — Derivative distinction. Extraction, transcription, normalization, classification, and model-produced interpretation MUST be represented as derivative results. A derivative MUST NOT replace or edit the source evidence it interprets.
TM-EVD-005 — Correction by addition. Once evidence supports an accepted change, its substantive content MUST NOT be rewritten. A correction or later clarification MUST enter as new evidence linked to the earlier record.
TM-EVD-006 — Evidence status. An implementation MUST distinguish at least admitted evidence from evidence that is untrusted, failed processing, withdrawn by its source, superseded by a later claim, or rejected for a stated use when those states occur.
Integrity
Section titled “Integrity”The specification does not mandate cryptographic hashing. The integrity mechanism must be proportional to the consequence and media:
- a file may use byte identity and SHA-256;
- an API observation may preserve the request contract, response subset, endpoint identity, and observation time;
- a human statement may preserve an attributable note or signed record;
- a physical observation may preserve the observer, method, time, and measurement uncertainty.
TM-EVD-007 — Detectable substitution. When evidence bytes or values are retained, the implementation MUST provide a deterministic way to detect substitution or unrecorded alteration after admission.
Data minimization
Section titled “Data minimization”TM-EVD-008 — Bounded retention. Evidence retention MUST obey the system’s declared privacy, security, legal, and ownership boundaries. A truth machine is not permission to copy every source into one store.
A recovery-safe reference, manifest, or curated observation may be more truthful than an uncontrolled duplicate. The record must say what it proves and what remains outside the system.