Observation and integrity monitoring since 2006
Argus
Watches our own instruments for the moment they begin to lie.
Argus monitors the health and honesty of SENTINEL's own sensing estate. It does not observe people or public spaces. Its purpose is narrow and internal: detecting the drift, miscalibration and quiet failure that turn an instrument into a confident source of wrong numbers.
Purpose
Detect when SENTINEL's own instruments begin to lie before the Archive inherits the lie.
Architecture
- Cross-instrument corroboration before alerting
- Calibration drift detection over multi-year baselines
- Explicit false-positive budget per alarm class
- No collection against individuals, by charter
Design constraints
- Internal instruments only
- Must prefer missed drama to quiet falsehood
Failure modes
- Alarm fatigue if budgets are ignored
- Corroboration sets that share a common blind spot
Historical development
Formalised 2006 after repeated 'status OK' incidents including ARGENT 1993 lessons.
Known limitations
- Cannot observe what was never instrumented
- Not a public surveillance system
We do not claim systems are perfect. We document how they fail.