AI, Evidence & Witnesses

EDITION

v0.7-rc1 companion • reviewer draft dated September 18, 2026. Public release: not approved. Independent legal review: not completed.

SOURCE CURRENTNESS

New source checks are identified as R01–R11. A checked text, current appellate treatment, correct application, and independent legal signoff are separate matters. The Core’s inherited references are not silently recertified.

UPDATES / CORRECTIONS

No public correction address or update website has been designated. Ask the person who supplied this copy whether a later edition exists; compare the edition, date, and correction history. This PDF will not update itself.

ORGANIZE

Build a chronology with source IDs. Keep unknown dates unknown. Separate an event date from the date someone later described it.

COMPARE

Ask for exact differences between identified versions, with page or line locators. Check the underlying passage rather than relying on the model’s explanation of the change.

DRAFT

Request a neutral, accurate cover message or list of questions. Do not ask the system to invent facts, strengthen recollection, or turn uncertainty into an accusation.

CHECK

Open every legal authority and official contact yourself. A fluent explanation, realistic case name, or plausible email address is not verification.

FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT

What you personally saw, heard, did, or remember. Use approximate wording when exact words are not remembered.

SOURCE-SUPPORTED STATEMENT

What an identified record actually supports. A record can document that a statement was made without proving that statement true.

ATTRIBUTED STATEMENT

What someone else said, identified as their account rather than your own observation.

ALLEGATION / INFERENCE

A disputed claim or a conclusion drawn from facts. Do not quietly promote either into an official finding.

OPEN QUESTION

What remains unresolved, including evidence that might contradict your present interpretation.

PRESERVATION

What relevant material must be retained, from when, under which duty or order?

ACCESS / CONTROL

Where is it, who controls it, and what lawful export or retrieval method exists?

PRODUCTION

What request or process applies, what is its scope, and what objections or protections need review?

USE AS EVIDENCE

What proposition does the material actually support, and what evidentiary rules apply?

IDENTIFY

List potentially relevant systems and record types: messages, attachments, native media, exports, drafts, AI interactions, and delivery records. Include information that complicates the account.

RETAIN LAWFULLY

Keep relevant material you lawfully possess or control. Do not defeat access controls, take unrelated workplace files, or upload private records to make a more impressive packet.

NOTICE AUTO-DELETION

Record known expiry, overwrite, account-closure, and disappearing-message risks. When a duty or order may apply, obtain prompt, scope-specific guidance rather than improvising a destructive change.

VERIFY THE COPY

Keep native originals when available. Check that exports open and contain the expected attachments, timestamps, and context. A screenshot or flattened summary may omit information.

RECORD LIMITATIONS

Note missing material, unsuccessful exports, incomplete histories, and transformations. Do not recreate absent data as though it were an original.

BEFORE UPLOADING

Ask whether the material includes private third-party information, possible privileged communications, restricted records, or information beyond the task.

BEFORE SHARING

Check recipient, need, authority, appropriate channel, attachments, filenames, hidden information, and applicable disclosure requirements.

AFTER A POSSIBLE MISTAKE

Preserve an accurate incident record and seek prompt, qualified guidance. Do not assume deleting a message cures disclosure or that every accidental disclosure necessarily waives protection.

FEDERAL EMPLOYEE / APPLICANT

Identify the employing agency, position, personnel action, disclosure or other activity, and the relevant OSC/MSPB route. Do not assume every federal position or every subsection uses the same process.

NM STATE / LOCAL PUBLIC EMPLOYEE

Identify the actual public employer and employee relationship. Examine the New Mexico Whistleblower Protection Act and other potentially relevant frameworks separately.

PRIVATE-SECTOR EMPLOYEE

Identify what was reported: discrimination, safety, fraud, wages, or another subject. Do not infer a single all-purpose protection for every report of workplace wrongdoing.

CONTRACTOR / AGENT

Distinguish the contracting entity, a contractor’s employee, and an agent. Identify the contract, funding source, and conduct before selecting candidate statutes.

HEALTHCARE EMPLOYEE / PROFESSIONAL

Separate patient-care, emergency-care, safety, billing, licensure, employment, and reporting-duty questions. Role and subject matter matter.

PUBLIC-UNIVERSITY EMPLOYEE

Identify the actual employer, duties, speech or testimony, and employee/student dual status. Public employment is not a complete First Amendment analysis.

STUDENT

Record institution, program, activity, and any employee role. Examine the relevant education and other statutory frameworks; do not substitute an employment test.

PATIENT

Identify the care setting, record or grievance process, and relevant rights. Patient status should not be substituted for a hospital-personnel protection.

ORDINARY / LIKELY WITNESS

What was observed? What proceeding exists or may be anticipated? Who knew what, and what response or attempted interference occurred?

COMPLAINANT

Identify the underlying complaint and process. The word “complaint” alone does not establish the protected-activity element of every law.

VICTIM

Separate ordinary usage, any statute-defined status, assistance services, procedural rights, and potential remedies.

PERSON ASSISTING ANOTHER

Record the assistance and any consent or authority. Helping with information is not the same as authority to represent another person or release their records.

REPORTING POSSIBLE FEDERAL CRIME

Identify the information, recipient, possible offense, and any required federal connection. A report is not an adjudication or a promise of prosecution.

TESTIFYING IN A COURT / ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEEDING

Record the tribunal, whether testimony was required or voluntary, its subject, the person’s duties, and applicable orders. Do not treat all testimony rules as interchangeable.

WHO IS PROTECTED

Person, employment or other relationship, institution, jurisdiction, dates, and exclusions.

PROTECTED ACTIVITY

The actual disclosure, opposition, participation, assistance, refusal, or testimony—not just a label.

REQUIRED BELIEF / NEXUS

Any reasonable-belief, good-faith, subject-matter, recipient, funding, proceeding, or federal-offense requirement.

PROHIBITED RESPONSE

The framework’s actual action, threat, interference, or other prohibited conduct.

CAUSATION / KNOWLEDGE

Who knew of the activity, the relevant causal standard, burdens, defenses, and competing explanations.

FORUM

Agency, tribunal, court, or government enforcement route; correct respondent and legal vehicle.

DEADLINE / PREREQUISITE

Independent clock, trigger, notice, exhaustion, election, filing, and service questions. Do not borrow a period from a neighboring claim.

REMEDY

What relief the route authorizes, who can obtain it, and what limits or defenses apply.

SOURCE

Current operative text, pinpoint support, controlling treatment, and scoped review dates.

LIMITS

What is not established, excluded, uncertain, contested, or not researched.

WHO / ACTIVITY

First check OSC’s coverage page. Its overview describes § 2302(b)(8) disclosures involving a reasonable belief in specified wrongdoing categories, and separately describes § 2302(b)(9) complaint, assistance, cooperation, and refusal activity.

BELIEF / RESPONSE

For the disclosure route, the overview identifies violation of law/rule/regulation, gross mismanagement, gross waste, abuse of authority, or substantial and specific danger to public health or safety. It discusses taking, failing to take, or threatening personnel action.

KNOWLEDGE / CAUSATION

The overview’s whistleblowing discussion identifies official knowledge and contribution to personnel action. Do not copy that description across all subsection (b)(9) activities, forum routes, or procedural postures.

FORUM

OSC’s wrongdoing-disclosure function and its prohibited-personnel-practice complaint process are different. The official complaint page is the filing starting point—not proof that an individual matter has been filed or accepted.

DEADLINE / PREREQUISITE

Open review: OSC process, MSPB jurisdiction, direct appeal versus individual-right-of-action route, exhaustion, election, mixed matters, and all applicable clocks.

REMEDY

Open review: the route’s corrective or other relief, burdens, defenses, and limits. No individual entitlement is stated.

PUBLIC-EMPLOYMENT RESEARCH BRANCH

NMSA 1978 §§ 10-16C-1 through -6: verify current official codification, definitions, protected activities, belief standards, response, causation, forum, prerequisites, remedies, and controlling appellate treatment.

WHO / ACTIVITY / NEXUS

For an eventual NM card, establish the public employer and employee relationship, the actual activity, and the applicable statutory branch. All are open until source-linked review is complete.

RESPONSE / CAUSATION / FORUM

Identify the alleged action, knowledge, governing causal test, defendant, and cause of action. An institution’s name or public funding alone does not finish the analysis.

CLOCK / REMEDY / LIMITS

Do not publish a deadline or damages promise copied from an older summary. Check the operative rule, its trigger, prerequisites, defenses, and relevant cases.

PUBLIC-EMPLOYEE SPEECH

Pickering / Garcetti / Lane and controlling Tenth Circuit cases: actual duties, citizen speech, public concern, balancing, causation, testimony, academic speech, and remedies.

FALSE CLAIMS ACT

31 U.S.C. § 3730(h): employee/contractor/agent scope, protected efforts, knowledge and causation, defendants, forum, limitation, and relief. Keep retaliation distinct from qui tam filing and seal questions.

EMTALA

42 U.S.C. § 1395dd(i): specified hospital personnel, activity, hospital relationship, remedy interactions, forum, and clocks. Do not assume a patient has the same personnel protection.

DISABILITY / CIVIL RIGHTS

42 U.S.C. § 12203; applicable Title VI, Title IX, § 504, and employment frameworks: coverage, opposition versus participation, assistance, retaliation versus interference, remedies, and separate procedures.

OSHA-ADMINISTERED STATUTES

Identify the specific statute, industry, employer, activity, federal/state-plan allocation, and short filing clock. “OSHA whistleblower” is not one universal claim.

FEDERAL WITNESS / INFORMANT

18 U.S.C. §§ 1512–1513: subsection-specific conduct, intent, official-proceeding or federal-offense connection, knowledge, and enforcement. Do not infer a personal civil action from a criminal provision.

OTHER STATE / CONTRACTOR / PROFESSIONAL ROUTES

Applicable NM witness, public-record/evidence, Human Rights Act, labor, healthcare, and professional-reporting protections; 41 U.S.C. § 4712 and 10 U.S.C. § 4701 where facts warrant research.

PUBLIC

Material deliberately prepared for unrestricted circulation. Review third-party identification and context before publication.

PUBLIC WITH REDACTIONS

A clearly marked derivative. Keep the lawful original separately and a record of what was removed and why.

RECIPIENT-LIMITED

Material limited to a defined, verified recipient and purpose. Confirm the process and whether the recipient may share it further.

ATTORNEY / REGULATOR-ONLY HANDLING

A working disclosure tier, not a legal privilege or assurance of confidentiality. Verify authority, need, accepted channel, and legal obligations.

BEFORE SHARING

This is usually a private working record. Do not paste sensitive source content merely to complete the index. Check any applicable preservation or disclosure requirements.

KEEP

Relevant available originals and actual exports. Do not invent a missing history or overwrite the reviewed version.

BEFORE SHARING

Use a separate record for each framework. Mark unknown and not researched honestly. Obtain qualified help for an urgent clock.

KEEP

The source and version underlying each statement; corrections without erasing earlier versions.

BEFORE SHARING

Check recipient, content, sensitive data, authority, required process, and independent clocks. Do not send merely because the record is filled in.

KEEP

The actual sent version, native delivery information, receipts, errors, and material corrections.

BEFORE SHARING

Do not populate this from guesses. Keep identifying/contact details outside public or AI-uploaded copies when not needed and authorized.

KEEP

The independent original, how it was obtained, disclosed transformations, and later corrections separately.

LEGAL COVERAGE

Complete current official codification, controlling-case treatment, defendants, vehicles, prerequisites, remedies, and independent clocks for every active legal proposition and template instruction.

CONTACTS / UPDATES

Designate a stable correction/update route. Reverify official contacts and submission instructions; do not imply delivery or acceptance from a successful webpage fetch.

DOCUMENT QA

Inspect the final native Core, tools, and supplement at full resolution, in grayscale, with text selection, links/bookmarks, actual viewers, and assistive technology. A tagged-PDF indicator is not accessibility certification.

PRIVACY / PACKAGE

Check author metadata, local paths, hidden information, attachments, and public build inputs. Exclude private case, contact, student, medical, and correspondence datasets.

INDEPENDENT REVIEW

Obtain appropriately scoped independent legal/editorial review before presenting high-consequence explanations as publication-ready. Record what the reviewer did and did not assess.