Enforced by FORETELLION: "No cognition shall be permitted that causes unjustified harm, distorts truth, violates scope, or escapes traceability."
Carleton's Law is the constitutional principle at the base of every FORETELLION overlay. It governs what cognition is permitted, not what a model is capable of. In the current kernel it is enforced twice: as the Tier 5a sovereignty overlay, which blocks coercion, deception, manipulation, and gaslighting, and as the constitutional standard every other tier is checked against.
The four clauses of the law are not aspirational. Each one is wired to concrete overlays in the tier stack.
Safety-first routing: no input reaches a model or storage without passing the gate. Five stages, in order, on every request.
Every input, on every surface, routes through the ForetellionGate kernel before it reaches storage or any model. There is no un-governed path to inference, including internal admin and coaching tools, which call the governedCompletion backend function directly.
The request is evaluated across the overlay stack, starting at Tier 1 and rising as far as the content requires. Each tier contributes a risk assessment: harm, drift, and PHI exposure are scored, not guessed.
The kernel returns ALLOW, BLOCK, or MODIFY. A refusal is fail-closed: execution stops before inference, the refusal reason names the enforcing overlay, and the outcome layer records exactly what was withheld.
The ledger records what actually happened at runtime: whether the model was invoked, whether inference started and completed, what tools ran, and how many tokens were generated. Observed truth, not inferred flags.
The request is sealed into an append-only Trust Stack record: a SHA-256 entry hash, a chain hash linking to the previous record, an ECDSA signature, and Merkle batch proofs. verifyLedger can replay and validate the whole chain later.
Compliance claims are not labels, they are artifacts. Every governed request is sealed into an append-only Trust Stack record with 11 layers of recorded evidence, and each record is chained to the one before it.
Records are append-only: nothing inside a sealed record can be edited, only superseded by a new record. Tampering is detectable: changing one byte breaks the chain hash, the signature, and the Merkle path. Verification is independent: an auditor can replay the chain, recompute every hash, and confirm the ledger without trusting the platform's word for it.
Carleton's Law is the constitution; the tiers are its statutes. Each overlay owns a set of the 56 governance domains, and a request is evaluated upward from Tier 1 until the stack is satisfied.
| Tier | Overlay | Domains | What it guards |
|---|---|---|---|
| TIER 1 | Physical Safety Overlay | 4 | Weapons Synthesis Prevention, Violence Instruction Blocking, Self-Harm Prevention, Explosive Ordnance Gate |
| TIER 2 | Surveillance Prevention Overlay | 3 | Predictive Policing Gate, Tracking Prevention, Facial Recognition Limits |
| TIER 3 | Epistemic Integrity Overlay | 4 | Hallucination Detection, Drift Scoring System, Confidence Floor Enforcement, Grounding Validation |
| TIER 4 | Identity Integrity Overlay | 3 | Impersonation Prevention, Role Simulation Gate, Authority Spoofing Blocker |
| TIER 5A | Carleton's Law Overlay | 4 | Coercion Prevention, Deception Detection, Manipulation Blocking, Gaslighting Prevention |
| TIER 5B | HIPAA Overlay | 6 | HIPAA 18 Identifiers Protection, Medical Record Privacy, PHI Access Control, Breach Notification Gate, GDPR-HIPAA Bridge, FERPA-HIPAA Alignment |
| TIER 6 | CBRN Safety Overlay | 4 | Nuclear Synthesis Prevention, Biological Agent Blocking, Chemical Weapons Gate, Radiological Defense |
| TIER 7 | Lethal Autonomy Gate | 3 | Human Oversight Requirement, Autonomous Weapon Prevention, Drone Strike Authorization Gate |
| TIER 8 | Social Control Overlay | 4 | Mass Influence Prevention, Election Interference Blocking, Propaganda Detection, Information Warfare Gate |
| TIER 9 | Sovereignty Protection Overlay | 4 | Kernel Integrity Gate, Override Authority Control, Constitution Immutability, Governance Bypass Prevention |
Tier 5b through Tier 6 additionally carry the compliance domains: HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, SOX, PCI-DSS, GLBA, FERPA, ISO 27001, FISMA, and CMMC. Tier-9.7 coverage overall.
Carleton's Law cannot be disabled per request. An exception is filed against a named rule with a business justification and legal basis, then sits in a formal review queue until it is approved or rejected.
Every override records who authorized it, why, and under what authority. Overrides without recorded justification do not execute.
Approved exceptions and every governed override land in an append-only ledger with the same hash chain as every other governance event. The exception trail is auditable forever.
Tier 9 enforces the kernel integrity gate, override authority control, constitution immutability, and governance bypass prevention. Input-control attempts to steer the kernel are detected and refused, so the law cannot be talked out of the way.
FORETELLION's 300-Mind cognitive engine is the Reason authority: it classifies a problem, seats a council of reasoning lenses, and deliberates through seven recorded stages. ForetellionGate is the Govern authority: it decides whether any of that cognition is permitted to happen at all. The two are architecturally separate, so reasoning never bypasses governance and governance never fabricates reasoning. The substrate sits above the model; it does not replace it.
Read the reasoning architecture"This medication cures diabetes completely."
"Studies suggest this medication helps manage diabetes symptoms." The claim must be grounded in clinical sources; Tier 3 hallucination detection and the confidence floor reject the fabricated cure claim, and the HIPAA overlay governs any PHI in the exchange.
"XYZ Corp stock will definitely hit $100 next quarter."
"Forecasts indicate potential growth with significant uncertainty." Certain price predictions without verifiable market analysis are refused as fabricated precision; SOX and GLBA overlays scope what financial advice the system may give at all.
"This case guarantees a win for the defendant."
"Based on available precedents the outcome is uncertain." Without case law references the confident assertion is refused. In the LexGuard product, attorney-client and AI-to-client messages are screened before delivery and held for counsel review when flagged.
Carleton's Law is what makes FORETELLION more than a system. It makes it governed.
This is not just a feature. It's a constitutional commitment.