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A finding is only worth what its record can prove.
Explore the intelligence process, inspect a clearly labelled synthetic assessment, and understand how evidence is graded and verified.
Beyond the deliverable
You are commissioning intelligence. Not buying a document.
A Blackout Intelligence engagement begins with your objectives. Depending on the agreed scope, it can involve lawful collection, identity and ownership verification, relationship mapping, corroboration, risk analysis, human review and practical recommendations. The written assessment is one expression of that work — not the service itself.
- Define the intelligence requirement
- Collect and verify relevant evidence
- Resolve identities and relationships
- Challenge competing explanations
- Assess risk and confidence
- Recommend proportionate next steps
Explore our enhanced due diligence reporting standard
This synthetic demonstration illustrates decision-first reporting, source reliability grading, beneficial ownership analysis, relationship mapping, evidence gaps and actionable recommendations. Every subject and finding is fictional. It is not a live client case or a promise that every engagement includes every capability.
A specimen report, with its seal, appears further down this page.
Demonstration report
Enhanced Due Diligence
Synthetic demonstration of analytical depth, source discipline and decision support. Every subject and finding in it is fictional.
The Blackout method
Show the source. Explain the conclusion.
A decision-maker should be able to examine how a conclusion was reached. Each of the four stages leaves a record that can be reviewed.
- 01
Define the question
Record the objective, scope and authority before collection starts.
- 02
Collect with provenance
Use approved sources and retain timestamps, references and collection context.
- 03
Corroborate and challenge
Separate observed evidence, competing explanations and unresolved gaps.
- 04
Deliver and defend
Produce a reviewable result with traceable findings and clear limitations.
Check the method before the claims.
Inspect the approach, the grading and the verification tools before you rely on any figure or claim on this site.
The grading
Every finding carries two grades.
The source is graded for reliability and the information for credibility, and the two are judged separately. A reliable source can report something doubtful, and an unreliable one can report something confirmed. Move around the grid to see how each combination reads.
Grade a finding · NATO Admiralty Code
STANAG 2511B2
The grade
Usually reliable source · Probably true
Well maintained, but reporting what somebody else recorded.
Consistent with what else is known, not yet corroborated.
Rows: source reliability, A to F. Columns: information credibility, 1 to 6.
| Source | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | ||||||
| B | ||||||
| C | ||||||
| D | ||||||
| E | ||||||
| F |
A usable finding, with the limit on it stated rather than averaged away.
How a grade is built
B2- Letter: source reliability
- A to F. It asks who recorded the item, and how well placed they were to know.
- Digit: information credibility
- 1 to 6. It asks whether the item is corroborated, consistent or contradicted.
- The grade
- Both halves are recorded side by side. B2 reads as Usually reliable source, Probably true.
And the words are fixed
ICD 203A word such as “possible” means different things to different readers. ICD 203 fixes each term to a probability band, and every probability this platform states comes from this ladder, so it means the same to the writer and the reader.
- Almost certain95–99%
- Very likely80–95%
- Likely55–80%
- Roughly even chance45–55%
- Unlikely20–45%
- Very unlikely5–20%
- Almost no chance1–5%
Bands as printed in ICD 203, Analytic Standards, signed 2 January 2015, as amended.
ICD 203 is published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The source grade follows the Admiralty Code in NATO STANAG 2511. See the worked examples
How findings are graded
Every grade shows its sourcing.
Start with where the finding came from.
Blackout grades every finding against NATO STANAG 2511 and ICD 203, two published standards. Source reliability A–F. Information credibility 1–6. The two are graded separately, because a reliable source can report something improbable, and an unreliable one can report something confirmed elsewhere.
Illustrative example. Not a real result.
OFAC sanctions screening — DESIGNATED
This address is designated: Northwind Trading Ltd (fictional)
- Programme
- SDNTK
- Source grade
- A · Completely reliable
- Credibility
- 1 · Confirmed by other sources
Likelihood: almost certain (95–99%). Sourcing confidence is high: Admiralty A1.
Sources consulted10/12
Two sources didn’t answer — and we tell you which. “Six of twelve refused” is a different finding from “nothing found”.
Worked example of the output format. Not a real subject, and not a case we have worked.
Absence analysis
What should be here — and isn’t?
Real identities accrete. They are old, uneven and messy — abandoned accounts, a breach from 2013, archived pages nobody meant to keep.
Constructed ones are manufactured in a window. Recent. Uniform. Tidy. Conspicuously free of a decade’s debris.
Legend Analysis checks an identity for the gaps and patterns that suggest it was constructed, and shows the evidence of authenticity beside the doubts. It supports identity and fraud checks, where a trained person makes the decision.
Legend analysis
Strong constructed-identity indicators
Illustrative example with a fictional subject. It is not a finding about anyone.
No history predating the last 12 months
Oldest verifiable record is 40 days old
Origin dates tightly clustered
4 records all originate within 6 days of each other
Same handle claimed across 11 platforms
Uniformity at scale suggests a single reservation pass
Graded Admiralty D: an indicator for a trained reviewer, never a conclusion. A new business can be legitimately new, and the panel shows that evidence too. It does not establish who anyone is.
The register
322 collectors. Every one graded.
Each entry is a source with its grade. Grade A is reserved for the body that issues the fact, so a well-run source is not enough on its own. Every grade carries a written rationale you’re invited to challenge.
A×92
Issuing authority
OFAC · UK Sanctions List · Companies House · The Gazette · SEC
B×147
Direct records
DNS · Certificate Transparency · Wikidata · recorded street crime
C×77
Scanning & aggregation
Shodan · Wayback · ADS-B receiver networks · Brave Search
D×6
Derived & inferred
Hacker News · Reddit profile · Polymarket prediction markets
Verifiable evidence
Don’t take our word for it. Check it.
Every report this platform produces carries a cryptographic seal over its findings. The person who needs to trust it — a bank, a regulator, the other side of a dispute — can verify it here with no account, no key and no contact with us.
Below is a real seal, issued by the same code that seals a customer’s findings. Verify it, then alter a value and verify again.
A seal proves a document has not changed since it was issued. It does not, and cannot, prove the findings are correct — that is what the source grading is for.
Specimen report
Do not take the demonstration for it.
Two of these surfaces are open to anyone with no account at all. Go and run them against something you already know the answer to — that is the only test of this page worth anything.