Examining provenance and origin claims

Purpose and when to use it

Use this method when an origin claim, Content Credential, source-system record, or transformation history matters to the question. State whether the claim concerns capture, generation, editing, publication, or custody.

Evidence required

Retain the exact object, embedded and external manifests, certificates or keys, ingredient references, validator version, and trust policy. Collect source records independently where access permits.

Principles and procedure

• Write the origin proposition in concrete terms and identify its claimant.
• Extract provenance without replacing the original object. Identify bindings and missing ingredients.
• Validate under a documented specification, tool version, and trust configuration; retain errors as well as successes.
• Compare asserted activities and times with independent records, then mark confirmed, conflicting, and unresolved links.

What to document

Record assertion identifiers, object hashes, validation output, trust-store details, and inaccessible resources. Separate signature validity, identity trust, and substantive claim assessment.

Failure modes

Using the current default trust store without recording it can make later validation hard to reproduce. Interpreting absent credentials as proof of deception ignores normal exports and unsupported production systems.

Limits on the conclusion

Provenance can be incomplete, selectively asserted, or unavailable after transformations. No origin record replaces assessment of the underlying content and the claim being made about it.

Independent checks and corroboration

Seek capture or generation records, retained earlier versions, and custody records that do not simply repeat the manifest. Explain when two sources share the same upstream assertion.

How to report the result

Report which claims validated under which policy, which failed, and which could not be tested. Avoid an unqualified authentic label when only a narrower technical check succeeded.

Related methods

• The complete evaluation method
• Interpreting metadata and system artifacts
• Seeking independent corroboration

Related glossary terms

• provenance
• content credentials

How do you examine a signed editing history?

Preserve the asset and manifest, identify the assertions, and run the relevant validation under a recorded trust policy. Inspect ingredient and transformation relationships and compare them with separately acquired source or project records.

State the exact checks that passed and the history they cover. Keep factual assertions, signer identity, and cryptographic integrity distinct so a valid signature does not silently become proof of the depicted scene.