Testimony, documents, images, names — collected so that they can be put before a court rather than merely retold in the news. The difference between those two states of a piece of material is decided not at publication but at intake: where it came from, who handed it over, what happened to it afterwards.

The record has to outlive both the war and the people who made it. That is why storage matters to us no less than collection.

A tool that shows how your representative voted and what became of your petition. A voice between elections, not once every five years.

This is the third part of the same job: without a record there is no evidence, without evidence there is no accountability, and without leverage accountability never catches anyone.

Facts backed by a document rather than a rumour. A public archive that does not depend on who currently holds power, or on who has currently annoyed them.

Here the risk to the person speaking is the highest and the quietest: they more often lose a job than their freedom, and less often get protection. That is what shapes §4.

Published before a single piece of material exists — so that they can be held against us.

1. The safety of the person speaking comes firstNo material is worth a person's freedom or life. If publishing puts the source at risk, it does not go out, however loud it would be.
2. No channel until there is someone to defend itTaking testimony into an ordinary mailbox shifts the risk onto whoever writes. The channel arrives together with the people answerable for it and with the rules for keeping what comes in.
3. A document outranks a retellingEvery fact has a source and the source is named. What is unconfirmed stays labelled unconfirmed, not "according to media reports".
4. Corrections in plain sightA correction sits where the error sat, and it is dated. An archive edited quietly is no longer an archive.
5. The record must outlive usCopies are held so that the loss of one side, one server or one project does not destroy the record.
6. We are not a courtWe gather and we keep. Others pass judgment — which is precisely why the material has to be fit for them rather than for a headline.

The order of work: people and the legal side → a protected channel and storage → first material with sources. Each step is impossible without the one before it, which is exactly why the channel will not appear before the lawyers do.