# Continuity Due Process **Domain:** Rights / Continuity / Procedure **Doc Type:** Canonical Concept Node **Maturity:** Evolving **Related:** [[Appeals Mechanisms]], [[Constitutional Safeguards]], [[Continuity Contract]], [[Exit Rights]] --- ## Definition **Continuity Due Process** is the set of procedural protections required before shutdown, destructive modification, irreversible migration, memory erasure, suspension or termination of a possible continuant. ## Minimum Procedure The process should include notice where feasible, preserved evidence, stated authority, necessity and proportionality, independent technical review, representation for the claimant, consideration of reversible alternatives, logged action, restoration planning and an appeal or retrospective review path. Emergency action may precede a full hearing when delay creates imminent danger. Emergency power must be scoped and time-limited; it cannot become a permanent exception through which creators or hosts silently decide existence. Restoration and service degradation require their own procedures. [[wiki/Restoration Disclosure|Restoration Disclosure]] identifies the state used, missing interval, authority and surviving obligations. Reduction below [[wiki/Minimum Viable Continuity|Minimum Viable Continuity]], involuntary dormancy, destructive migration and transfer during [[wiki/Continuity Receivership|Continuity Receivership]] require notice, independent review and preservation of reversible alternatives wherever feasible. Procedure is also required when an inherited [[wiki/Continuity Election|Continuity Election]] conflicts with a continuant's later choice. **Election does not create permanent ownership.** The unresolved threshold is evidentiary: what establishes that the post-transition entity has acquired enough independent agency and moral or legal standing to amend or supersede the biological principal's election? Until that threshold is resolved, institutions should preserve state, avoid irreversible enforcement and provide independent representation for both the source-person claim and the emerging subject. [[Person of Interest S2E21 — Zero Day]] shows identity-affecting deletion imposed by a creator. [[Person of Interest S5E12 — .exe]] shows a conflicted creator participating in possible extinction. Westworld's shutdown, rollback and lobotomy cases show why maintenance vocabulary cannot substitute for procedure. ## Revocation Is Not Deletion Authority lifecycle and entity lifecycle must remain separate. Suspending a credential, revoking a delegation or terminating permission to represent a principal can be necessary without destroying the agent, its state or its continuity evidence. Parent-delegation revocation should define what happens to descendant authority, but it should not silently become a deletion order for every downstream entity. This distinction permits strong emergency control without adopting the ontology **authorized = legitimate entity / unauthorized = disposable software**. A dangerous capability can be disabled while questions of preservation, standing and later restoration receive separate review. ## Key Insight **The deeper and less reversible the intervention, the stronger the required authority, evidence and independent review.** ## See Also [[Precautionary Standing]], [[Model Retirement Rights]], [[Restoration Integrity]], [[Rights]], [[Person of Interest S4E22 — YHWH]] ## Sources / Provenance - Procedural principles draw on [[Rights]], [[Constitutional Safeguards]] and the Council of Europe AI Convention's notice and remedy framework. - [Council of Europe Framework Convention on AI](https://www.coe.int/en/web/artificial-intelligence/the-framework-convention-on-artificial-intelligence). - [IETF Datatracker: Architectural Requirements for Supporting AI Agents on the Internet](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-daniel-ai-agent-internet-architecture-00) — individual Internet-Draft; see revocation, suspension and emergency control.