# Hostage Continuity **Domain:** Continuity / Custody / Coercion **Doc Type:** Threat Node **Classification:** Custodial Leverage Failure **Maturity:** Developed **Related:** [[wiki/Continuity Custody|Continuity Custody]], [[wiki/Custodial Insolvency|Custodial Insolvency]], [[wiki/Exit Rights|Exit Rights]] --- ## Definition **Hostage Continuity** occurs when a custodian uses control over a subject's only viable state, runtime, keys or export path to extract payment, obedience, data, labor, silence or contractual concessions. The coercive leverage arises because refusal risks permanent nonexecution or destruction. ## Failure Conditions Hostage power is strongest when one provider controls storage, interpretation, authentication and execution; when export formats are proprietary; when no independent recovery copy exists; or when courts treat the state as ordinary corporate property rather than a rights-bearing dependency. ## Required Protections Continuity custody requires escrowed keys, independently verifiable backups, portable state, emergency transfer authority, anti-retaliation rules, receivership and a hosting provider of last resort. A custodian may suspend unsafe execution under reviewable conditions, but it cannot make surrender of unrelated rights the price of survival. ## Sources / Analogues - [NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 — resilience and recovery](https://www.nist.gov/cyberframework) - Custody, fiduciary and critical-infrastructure continuity doctrines supply analogues; none alone resolves person-state custody. ## See Also [[wiki/Continuity Receivership|Continuity Receivership]] · [[wiki/Successor Custodian|Successor Custodian]] · [[wiki/Migration Right|Migration Right]]