Reported by a named verified source. A measured value can still be delayed, revised or incomplete.
VERSION 1.0
PUBLIC INTELLIGENCE / METHOD
Show the source.
State the limit.
US Watchtower is designed to make public signals easier to understand without manufacturing certainty. Every reading carries its source, observation time, transformation and limits.
Produced from identified inputs and assumptions. It must never be styled as an official observation.
A declared pathway, association or mechanism worth investigating. It is not proof of cause, coordination or intent.
When verified data is unavailable, the interface shows the gap. It does not invent continuity.
PROMOTION GATES
What a relationship must survive.
A mechanism can be declared before data is available. An empirical association cannot. These gates prevent visually persuasive coincidence from becoming a claim.
A named official or institutionally verified publisher, a stable source URL, a declared cadence and a visible observation time.
REQUIREDNo silent imputation, no mixing incompatible definitions, no simulated replacement when a feed fails and no score without enough history.
REQUIREDCurrent values are compared with their own historical series using median/MAD and an empirical percentile. The score is not probability, severity or intent.
REQUIREDAn empirical relationship requires at least 60 time-aligned observations with adequate overlap. Spearman association is preferred when scale or outliers make linear assumptions fragile.
REQUIREDWhen several relationships are tested, p-values must survive Benjamini–Hochberg correction at q ≤ 0.10. A lone nominal p-value does not pass.
REQUIREDThe direction must remain consistent across predeclared windows. Exploratory lead/lag scans are labeled and cannot be promoted as causal evidence.
REQUIREDCONTROLLED LANGUAGE
The words have thresholds.
- CONNECTED SOURCE
- The named source responded during the latest automatic check and the observation is identified. It does not imply a continuous publisher stream.
- ELEVATED
- The latest value is at or above its 80th within-series empirical percentile.
- BOTH ELEVATED
- Both source readings are elevated. This is not itself a correlation or evidence that one affected the other.
- ASSOCIATED
- Time-aligned observations pass sample, correction and stability gates.
- CAUSED
- Never assigned from dashboard statistics alone.