Forged Commitment
A decision record attributed to an authority who did not make the expressive act
Tier-one ground truth certifies that a mark entered the record under a named credential — not that the credential's holder performed the act; forged or misattributed authorship collapses identity into assumption.
The record shows decidedBy: senior.underwriter. The loan was approved. Investigation discovers the credential was shared, the session was left unlocked, or the signature was applied by an assistant with delegated access. The mark exists; the attributed authority may never have seen the decision. Accountability queries have an anchor event — but the anchor may be false about who committed.
In software systems
Shared service accounts, broad delegation, and API keys without per-action attribution produce commitment events with plausible decidedBy fields and unknowable human provenance. An automated job posts approvals using a human’s token because the integration was configured that way. Admin impersonation features let support staff act as users with no durable distinction in the event log between the user and the impersonator.
The schema assumes credential equals actor. Forensics after fraud or misconfiguration reconstructs who clicked from proxy logs and hope. The commitment boundary was crossed; the named authority may not have been present.
In human organisations
Wet signatures are forged. Stamp signatures are applied to stacks of documents. Junior staff sign “on behalf of” seniors without a recorded delegation event. Committee decisions are attributed to the chair though the chair was absent and a secretary filled the form. The organisation’s file shows a decision; the decision’s authorship is fiction maintained by habit.
When disputes arise, the named authority denies the commitment. The organisation must choose between admitting its records are unreliable and punishing someone who may not have acted. The failure was storing attribution as fact without binding the expressive act to the credential holder through mechanisms that resist forgery and shared-account blur.
In socio-technical systems
Family members complete healthcare portals for elderly patients. Brokers submit applications in clients’ names with consent assumed. Managers approve timesheets they did not review using bulk-approval tools. Each case produces a tier-one decision attributed to a person who may not have performed the act — or performed it without understanding.
Regulators and courts treat credential-backed records as strong evidence of personal commitment. The socio-technical design optimised for convenience of submission over cryptographic or procedural binding of actor to act. Identity at the commitment boundary is asserted, not demonstrated.
Structural causes
Epistemic tier collapse
Forged commitment is collapse between “this credential was used” and “this authority committed.” Strong authentication, non-repudiable signing, per-session attribution, impersonation audit events, and prohibition of shared credentials narrow the wrong-agent gap. None remove it; each makes misattribution harder and more visible when it occurs.