# Contemporaneous Evidence as the Basis of Knowledge and Attribution

- **Artifact ID:** CHQ-ASC-2026-002
- **Version:** v1.0
- **Status:** Ratified · Canonical
- **Public record:** https://record.cybersecurityhq.com/constraints/chq-asc-2026-002
- **Machine-record SHA-256:** `1857487fb82367086bb88c8055d687d8abbec228dc74005c44963682841856ac`

## Complete structured record

```json
{
  "id": "CHQ-ASC-2026-002",
  "legacy_ids": [
    "CHQ-ACJ-2026-002"
  ],
  "title": "Contemporaneous Evidence as the Basis of Knowledge and Attribution",
  "version": "v1.0",
  "issued": "2026-02-01",
  "status": "Ratified · Canonical",
  "doctrine_class": "Authoritative Canonical Judgment",
  "precedent": [],
  "purpose": "This Anticipatory Structural Constraint establishes the governing principle for determining knowledge, decision state, or epistemic scope at a point in time across all CHQ governance artifacts.\n\nIt is not domain-specific. It applies wherever knowledge attribution, state determination, or epistemic boundary is contested under scrutiny.",
  "core_judgment": "Knowledge, decision state, or epistemic scope at a point in time is established by contemporaneous evidence.\n\nInference from role, access, position, organizational responsibility, supervisory authority, or post-hoc reconstruction does not constitute evidence of knowledge or state at the relevant time.",
  "derivation": [
    "Knowledge is a fact about a mind at a specific time",
    "Facts about minds are not directly observable and must be evidenced",
    "Role, access, and authority create opportunity, not knowledge",
    "Post-hoc reconstruction is shaped by outcome, bias, and hindsight",
    "Attribution without contemporaneous evidence is inference, not determination"
  ],
  "scope_governs": [
    "Attribution of knowledge to individuals or organizations at a point in time",
    "Determination of decision state for causality or accountability purposes",
    "Establishment of epistemic boundaries for assertion defensibility",
    "Evaluation of what was known, decided, or in scope at a relevant moment",
    "Any CHQ Position, analysis, or assessment that depends on knowledge or state attribution"
  ],
  "scope_does_not_govern": [
    "What should have been known",
    "Duty of care, negligence, or reasonable inquiry standards",
    "Prospective obligations to acquire information or maintain awareness"
  ],
  "relationship_to_derived": "CHQ Positions that apply this constraint to specific domains inherit its authority but do not inherit its permanence.\n\nDomain-specific applications may be revised, retired, or superseded as empirical conditions, practices, or evidentiary environments change. This constraint does not change.",
  "irreversibility_statement": "This constraint contains no retirement triggers.\n\nIt is not subject to mandatory reassessment.\n\nIt may be superseded only by a successor Anticipatory Structural Constraint that explicitly demonstrates that contemporaneous evidence is logically invalid as the basis for knowledge or state attribution, not merely disfavored, inconvenient, or inconsistent with prevailing practice.",
  "boundary_of_application": [
    "Define liability or legal standards of proof",
    "Prescribe governance processes or controls",
    "Substitute for regulatory, contractual, or statutory requirements",
    "Determine what knowledge should have been acquired"
  ],
  "attestation": "This constraint reflects CHQ's position that knowledge attribution must be grounded in evidence, not inference. Role-based or reconstructive attribution is a governance failure, not a simplifying assumption.",
  "pdf_hash": "f86cecd8d7c70ce23e5cd03915953cf487903f0a8ac377e4341f50b5b32213d2",
  "nomenclature_clarifications": [
    {
      "date": "2026-09-22",
      "description": "Legacy judgment terminology replaced with Anticipatory Structural Constraint terminology",
      "meaning_changed": false,
      "prior_hash": "27bb0d5be1e93bbb62e6937944dc3f5ccde587679d0d907c7fc7f0369c06e9b3",
      "new_hash": "f86cecd8d7c70ce23e5cd03915953cf487903f0a8ac377e4341f50b5b32213d2"
    }
  ],
  "classification_scope": "EXTERNAL_INTERPRETIVE",
  "classification_resolution": "This constraint governs interpretation of an external structural condition.",
  "lifecycle_governance": {
    "error_correction": "A clerical, citation, date, identifier, or transcription error may be corrected only by a dated erratum that identifies the prior text, corrected text, evidence for the correction, affected hash, and whether meaning changed. Meaning-changing corrections are amendments, not errata.",
    "amendment": "A constraint may be amended only by a ratified, versioned amendment that preserves the prior version, states the changed proposition and rationale, recomputes the canonical hash, and notifies registered reliance. An amendment may clarify or narrow a constraint but may not silently replace its core judgment.",
    "successor": "A constraint may be superseded only by a separately identified successor that cites the predecessor, satisfies the predecessor's stated supersession test, states the exact proposition displaced, and records the effective transition. Prior versions remain historical and ineligible for new reliance after supersession.",
    "permanence": "Permanent means no automatic expiry or retirement trigger. It does not mean immune from demonstrated error, transparent amendment, or a successor that satisfies the canonical supersession test."
  },
  "governance_amendments": [
    {
      "date": "2026-09-22",
      "effective_version": "v1.0",
      "amendment_id": "CHQ-ASC-TEMPLATE-2026-001",
      "description": "Successor and reassessment language normalized as explicit artifact-governance metadata; individual canonical supersession tests remain controlling.",
      "canonical_hash_effect": "RECOMPUTED"
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-09-22",
      "effective_version": "v1.0",
      "amendment_id": "CHQ-PRS-2026-001-AMD-003",
      "description": "Class-wide error-correction, amendment, successor, and permanence semantics ratified as non-canonical governance metadata. ASC-006's internal-adjudication classification is formally resolved without changing its canonical constraint text.",
      "canonical_hash_effect": "UNCHANGED"
    }
  ]
}
```