Civic Shield

Method

The method and the limits

What a record will contain, what we will never do, and how either could be checked by someone who would prefer it fell apart.

Status
Design commitments — nothing is operating yet

What a record is

A record will be structured, not screenshotted: the address, the moment of capture, the page as it was served, the text inside the pictures, and the original language beside its translation. It will be sealed with a SHA-256 digest over the preserved bytes, so that a later alteration is detectable rather than deniable. And every view, edit and export of it will be logged, so that custody can be shown rather than asserted.

What we will never do

  • We do not name people.
  • We do not build profiles of individuals.
  • We do not reproduce the content. Documenting it is not the same as spreading it.
  • We do not read private messages, and we do not enter closed spaces.
  • We do not run reporting swarms.
  • We do not publish blacklists.
  • We do not treat criticism of a government — including Israel’s — as antisemitism.
  • We do not file anything a person has not approved.
  • Where our collection is automated, it only reads. It never posts, replies, engages or mass-reports.

The Platform Accountability Index

Reporting content asks a platform to act; publishing what it did is a different job. Civic Shield will build the Platform Accountability Index — a public, versioned record of what happened to the notices it sends, by platform, by country and by language, with the method published before the first figure is. It will be able to publish that record whatever it says: no platform partnership, no commercial relationship with any service it would measure — nothing an unwelcome result could cost it.

Status

The seal

A real SHA-256 over a fictional record. Alter one character and the fingerprint changes completely. Put it back and the original returns, exactly.

Illustrative record fragment

4

SHA-256 of the fragment

a86fe4bc75e50c22eb8ed043b9a9b084df8dfc305e6159a89a8c459a4d7f08e7

Sealed at build · not yet verified in this browser

The due-diligence pack

The method in full, the governance model and the open questions are in the due-diligence pack — ask for it.