Verifiable Approval Records: Minimum Contents for Standing Authority Behind Non-Person Actor Actions
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Non-person actors increasingly act under authority that is granted per task, bounded in time, and backed by a human approval for higher-impact actions. Each of those approvals is a claim that an accountable person permitted a specific action. A claim of approval is not evidence of approval. This note states the minimum contents an approval record must carry so that an interviewer, an assessor, or an independent verifier can determine, after the fact and without relying on the system that produced it, who approved, whether they held the authority to approve at that moment, what they approved and until when, and which action ran under it. It states four elements, each with the test applied to it, and adds no new terms beyond approval record and verifiable, defined in §2: standing and persistent grant are used exactly as the companion deposit defines them.
Author: Singletary, Cliff
Language: English
Topic: Access Control and Trust
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225274088