Lawful Basis Policy

Stable URL: https://policy.publicvcons.org/lawful-basis

Every vCon published by PublicVCons carries a lawful_basis attachment, implemented per the IETF lawful-basis extension (draft-howe-vcon-consent, evolving to lawful basis). This page is the human-readable policy that those attachments reference.

Basis: public_task

The material PublicVCons ingests is the proceedings and events of the US federal government — chamber floor sessions, committee hearings, agency mission audio. These are works of the US government in the public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. Where obtained from the Internet Archive or the National Archives, items are additionally dedicated to the public domain (CC0 / public-domain mark).

Publishing a transparent, verifiable record of federal proceedings is a task carried out in the public interest, supporting government transparency and accountability. The lawful basis is therefore public_task.

Purpose grants

Each attachment grants an explicit, structured set of purposes. At minimum: public_transparency, research, journalism. Grants record when they were granted; for public-domain federal material there are no conditions and no expiration (retention is permanent under public-records norms).

Provenance and proof

Each attachment cites 17 U.S.C. § 105, the source dedication, and the source identifier (e.g. the NARA ARC id or the official channel), and records the as-obtained media SHA-256. Proof is a SCITT statement chain — see how to verify. The registry is scitt.publicvcons.org.

Sensitive participants

Speakers are anonymous by default (diarized labels) unless identified from public metadata such as a hearing witness list or the Congressional Record. For any case where consent matters, the opt-out mechanism applies and a lifecycle redaction statement provides verifiable proof the request was honored.