Trust
Methodology
This methodology answers a question rarely asked out loud: why what is written here deserves more trust than the first search result.
Below is how we choose topics, what counts as a source, how we verify statements and what we do when sources contradict each other. It is a working procedure rather than a display: every material in the knowledge base is assembled by it.
How topics are chosen
Not by search volume but by the cost of being wrong. Some questions are asked constantly, yet a wrong answer changes almost nothing. Others are rare, and an error means detention in a transit zone. The latter come first. Topics come from real enquiries, from questions at the edges of where the law applies, and from places where public information most often diverges from practice.
Working with sources
First find the rule, then look at how it is applied. The rule is INTERPOL's Constitution, the Rules on the Processing of Data, the CCF Statute, the text of an extradition treaty, an article of a national code. Practice is CCF and court decisions, official statistics, oversight reports. Where rule and practice diverge, we describe both and name the divergence rather than picking the convenient half.
Verifying a statement
Any statement that affects a reader's decision must survive the question «how do we know this». If the answer is «it is generally assumed», the statement is either rewritten with a caveat or removed. Numbers, deadlines and the names of bodies get separate checks: that is where errors accumulate and travel from article to article across the internet.
What we do with contradictions
In international law it is normal for two sources to say different things: the country has its statute, INTERPOL its rules, the court its practice. We do not smooth this into a single simple answer. A reader is better served knowing that a question is contested and what the outcome depends on than receiving a confident formulation that will not hold in their jurisdiction.
Structure of a material
Every explainer is built the same way: what this is in plain words, how the procedure works, what the deadlines are and who decides, what affects the outcome, what you must not do, common questions. That order is not decorative — it mirrors the order in which a person in this situation actually thinks.
Language
We write in the reader's language, not the document's. A legal term is introduced once and explained, then used freely. We do not simulate complexity to look more competent: a text the reader did not understand has protected them from nothing.
Separating explainers from country pages
A general explanation of a procedure and a country-specific analysis are different genres. The first explains the mechanism; the second describes how it works in that jurisdiction: whether an extradition treaty exists, how the border service behaves, what refusals have been recorded. We link them but do not merge them, because merging breeds false generalisations such as «INTERPOL works the same way everywhere».
Revision and withdrawal
A material lives as long as a source can support it. We track changes in INTERPOL's rules, CCF and ECHR decisions, and changes to extradition treaties. When a rule changes, the material is updated and carries a new date; if the change makes the text substantively wrong, it is withdrawn rather than patched cosmetically.
What this methodology does not promise
It does not turn materials into a substitute for analysis of a specific case, nor into legal advice. It answers for one thing only: that what is written can be checked, that we show where it came from, and that we correct errors when they are found.