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Federation of Sealed Chambers - Membership and Quorum

Document Status

Field Value
policy-id DIA-FIP-QUORUM-001
type Implementing act / membership and quorum
version 0.1.0-draft
date 2026-03-12

1. Purpose

This document defines the minimal rules of membership, activity, and quorum in the Federation of Sealed Chambers (FSC), so that the unsealing track does not rely on a single body or an accidental group of jurisdictionally adjacent chambers.

2. Relation to the General Federation

The FSC is a special-purpose federation. It does not replace the general federation rules from FEDERATION-MEMBERSHIP-AND-QUORUM.md, but adds extra requirements for bodies that want to participate in U2-U3 unsealing.

If a conflict arises, the stricter requirements prevail for the FSC.

3. Chamber Statuses

A chamber may have the status:

  • candidate,

  • active,

  • restricted,

  • suspended,

  • retired.

3.1. candidate

The chamber is undergoing screening, does not participate in U3 quorum, and may participate only in observational or test capacity.

3.2. active

The chamber meets activity, jurisdictional diversity, and security requirements. It may participate in U2-U3 quorum.

3.3. restricted

The chamber remains operational but has temporarily narrowed competencies, for example only for U2 or without the right to serve as lead chamber.

3.4. suspended

The chamber is temporarily excluded from quorum due to conflict of interest, retaliation, suspected capture, or loss of operational capacity.

3.5. retired

The chamber has been withdrawn from the federation; it does not participate in new cases, but may remain part of audits of earlier cases.

4. Minimal Conditions for active Status

  1. at least min_members = 3 qualified chamber members,

  2. each of them has IAL4,

  3. the chamber has IRL jurisdictional standing or a comparable legal contract,

  4. the chamber maintains a secure intake channel and custody of secret shares,

  5. the chamber passes periodic procedural audit,

  6. the chamber is not under the dominant control of a single entity that also controls other chambers in the given quorum.

5. Quorum

5.1. For U2

The default quorum is 2 of 3 active or restricted chambers, of which at least:

  • one chamber does not come from the requestor federation,

  • one chamber does not come from the jurisdiction of the affected party.

5.2. For U3

The default quorum is 3 of 5 active chambers, with:

  • at least three different jurisdictions,

  • at least two different federations,

  • no single controlling organization supplying more than one chamber to the quorum.

5.3. Emergency Mode

If 3 of 5 quorum cannot be formed, an emergency 3 of 4 mode is allowed, but only if:

  • one or more chambers are suspended due to retaliation, outage, or force majeure,

  • diversity of at least three jurisdictions remains preserved,

  • the decision is automatically flagged for ex post review.

6. Snapshot of Composition and Conflicts

  1. Every U2-U3 case MUST have an fip_snapshot_id.

  2. The composition snapshot MUST freeze the list of eligible chambers at the time quorum is built.

  3. A chamber with conflict of interest is excluded from the case, but does not thereby automatically lose global active status.

7. Minimal Data Model

fip_chamber_record:
  chamber_id: "[chamber identifier]"
  status: "[candidate | active | restricted | suspended | retired]"
  federation_ref: "[federation identifier]"
  jurisdiction_ref: "[jurisdiction identifier]"
  qualified_member_refs:
    - "[IAL4 member identifier]"
  capabilities:
    can_lead_u2: true
    can_lead_u3: true
    can_hold_secret_share: true
  last_audit_at: "[ISO 8601]"
  suspension_reason: null

fip_snapshot:
  fip_snapshot_id: "[snapshot identifier]"
  case_ref: "[case_id]"
  eligible_chambers:
    - "[chamber_id]"
  excluded_chambers:
    - chamber_id: "[identifier]"
      reason: "[COI | suspended | unreachable]"
  created_at: "[ISO 8601]"

8. Relations to Other Documents

  • IDENTITY-UNSEALING-BOARD.md defines the role of the FSC and U2-U3 thresholds.

  • ROLE-TO-IAL-MATRIX.md defines the minimum IAL4 for chamber members.

  • FEDERATION-MEMBERSHIP-AND-QUORUM.md remains the general federation act, but the FSC is its specialized tightening.