FieldP-02 · Archive before you analyze
Collect and Preserve
Make the material survive the subject noticing you, and make the copy provably the same as what you saw.
Step 1
Capture Before Reading Closely
Snapshot the page to an independent archive first. Content disappears precisely when it starts to matter.
Step 2
Capture Two Ways
An independent web archive plus a local copy. One archive service is a single point of failure.
Step 3
Hash Every File
Compute a SHA-256 digest at capture. Recomputing it later proves the file has not changed. MD5 is not adequate on its own: practical collisions were published in 2004 and it was declared unsuitable for further use in 2008.
Step 4
Record the Four Facts
Source URL, capture time with time zone, the tool used, and who captured it. Contemporaneously, not from memory afterward.
Step 5
Never Work on the Original
Analyze a copy. On physical media, use a write-blocker so mounting cannot alter the source.
Step 6
Collect the Minimum
Data minimization is a professional standard, not a courtesy. Material about uninvolved people is a liability you chose to create.
How It Fails
The screenshot with no provenance; the file nobody can prove is unaltered; the archive that was taken after the post was edited.