§05 — The Inspection Interface — The inspection request

Mars® Spec › §05 — The Inspection Interface › The inspection request

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3. The inspection request

The request is not a precondition of inspection. A transport bundle is inspectable by any party holding it. The request structure below governs the case where an inspecting party is asked to inspect and returns a result to the asker; it does not gate the inspection itself. An implementation that requires a well-formed request before a bundle can be verified has made verification contingent on the requester’s cooperation, which defeats the property.

Request contents.

InspectionRequest {
  request_id:            content address over the request's own contents,
  bundles:               one or more transport bundles, or their content addresses
                         where the inspecting party already holds them,
  requested_grade:       ∈ {derived_content, input_bound}  (§4.2),
  caller_input:          the input the lift was performed over, where the
                         requester elects to supply it; absent otherwise,
  identity_registry:     the registry against which attribution is checked, by
                         identity; absent where the requester does not require
                         an attribution determination,
  requested_at:          ISO 8601 timestamp
}

Withholding is a first-class election, not a failure. A requester may withhold caller_input — the material the lift was performed over — and frequently must: it is the requester’s own data, and supplying it to an inspecting party may be prohibited. A request that withholds it is a conforming request. The consequence is a determination at the weaker grade (§4.2), reported as such. An implementation that refuses to inspect without the caller’s input has made verification available only to parties willing to disclose the material under inspection, which is a substantial and undeclared narrowing of who can verify.

A request naming a grade the supplied material cannot support is answered at the grade the material supports, with the shortfall named in the result. It is not refused, and it is not silently answered at the requested grade. Both alternatives are defects: the first denies a determination that was available, the second reports an assurance that was not established.

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