The Institutional Distinction

Documented conduct is in scope

What can be tied to the documentary record — an act, a decision, a transaction, a vote, a filing, a sworn statement — is fair territory for rigorous investigation, regardless of whether the subject is an institution, a public official, or a private person. Institutions are the most natural objects of this work because they generate the most records: voting records, financial disclosures, oversight reports, corporate filings. Public officials acting in public capacity are likewise in scope through the records their public conduct generates. A private individual whose conduct enters the documentary record — a check signed, a property purchased, a deposition given — is in scope through that conduct, on the same terms.

Inferred association is out of scope

Descent, family connection, marriage, friendship, religion, ethnicity, or membership in any group are not, by themselves, a basis for investigation. Not because such inferences are always wrong, but because findings built on them cannot survive the public-record standard: they have no specific document behind them. They reduce to guilt by category, which is the failure mode the methodology exists to prevent.

The classical example

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations prosecuted private individuals — former Nazi camp guards living quietly as private U.S. citizens — using immigration files, archival cross-referencing, and sworn testimony. The subjects were private. The evidence was conduct-based and documentary. The cases held. Had OSI worked from surnames, descent, or association alone, none of them would have held, and the methodology of looking would have done lasting damage to people on whom no real evidence existed.