What is Selective Interception?

Selective Interception (also called the "non-vacuum principle") is the guarantee that the governance system observes ONLY the specific selectors declared in the Policy Artifact—nothing more.

The Non-Vacuum Contract

We do NOT:

✗Scan arbitrary files
✗Crawl the filesystem
✗Capture arbitrary network packets
✗Collect OS-wide telemetry
✗Vacuum up data for later analysis

How Selection Rules Work

The Policy Artifact contains explicit selection rules that define exactly what will be measured. These rules are sealed at build time and cannot be expanded at runtime.

"selection_rules": [
  {
    "type": "FILE_DIGEST",
    "path": "model_weights.bin",
    "normalize": { "encoding": "binary" }
  },
  {
    "type": "FILE_DIGEST",
    "path": "config.yaml",
    "normalize": { "line_endings": "LF" }
  }
]

Why It Matters

■
Privacy by Design: Only declared subjects are observed
■
Minimal Attack Surface: No arbitrary data collection
■
Deterministic Scope: Observable scope is sealed at policy mint time
■
Audit Clarity: Verifiers know exactly what was and wasn't measured

Comparison to Traditional Monitoring

Traditional Monitoring

Collects everything, filters later
Scope expands over time
Privacy concerns
Storage/processing overhead

Selective Interception

Collects only declared items
Scope sealed at build time
Privacy preserved by design
Minimal resource usage