TRUST & OPERATIONS
The proposal should be judged under hostile leadership, public panic, partisan pressure, secrecy claims, budget stress and institutional self-protection. Failure is a design input.
ASSUME BAD INCENTIVES
A constitutional institution should be able to survive people who dislike its mission, people who want to weaponize it, and insiders who want to protect it from embarrassment.
Attack: case selection becomes an electoral instrument. Required defense: jurisdiction rules, documented predicates, recusal, multiparty-independent review, publication of aggregate selection metrics and judicial challenge to coercive process.
Attack: permanent staff, contractors or alumni become an informal governing class. Required defense: rotation, hiring controls, conflict rules, external audit, protected internal whistleblowing and post-service limits.
Attack: public-accountability jurisdiction expands into generalized policing, ideology monitoring or intelligence collection. Required defense: enumerated jurisdiction, anti-surveillance prohibition, sunset review of statutory powers and judicially enforceable standing limits.
Attack: confidentiality and classification are invoked to bury mistakes. Required defense: independent classified review, records preservation, misconduct channels, correction logs and the rule that classification protects legitimate secrets, not misconduct.
Attack: appropriations are used to punish a named investigation. Required defense: institution-level appropriations, public budget traceability and rules against case-specific funding leverage.
Attack: popularity becomes a mandate to grow indefinitely. Required defense: the hard 10% annual aggregate budget-growth ceiling, external audit and public staffing/contract metrics.
The strongest objections should be preserved on the site even after the proposal changes. A public institution asking for constitutional power should show the case against itself.
CURRENT FEDERAL CONTROL BENCHMARK
GAO · Standards for Internal Control in the Federal GovernmentThe 2025 Green Book, effective beginning in fiscal year 2026, emphasizes risk assessment, preventive controls and documentation.Source distinction: Linked federal materials describe current U.S. law or practice. Citizen Branch rules on this page are proposed design standards, not current legal rights or government procedures.