The protection stack
Staked Voice doesn’t rely on a single mechanism to protect your political data. It uses five independent layers — each providing a protection the others cannot. Layers 1–3 are active or actively being pursued. Layers 4 and 5 are vision and roadmap items. They do not exist yet.
Layer 1: Why Switzerland
Why would a Minneapolis company put its infrastructure 4,700 miles away? Because US law is the problem.
The CLOUD Act (2018) grants US authorities power to compel data from any US-incorporated company, regardless of where data is physically stored. FISA Section 702 enables warrantless surveillance of foreign communications transiting US infrastructure. National Security Letters — over 50,000 issued in 2022 alone — compel disclosure with gag orders preventing recipients from revealing the demand.
Article 271 of the Swiss Criminal Code makes it a criminal offense — up to three years imprisonment — to perform acts on Swiss soil on behalf of a foreign government without authorization. This includes complying with foreign data demands. This is federal statute, in force since 1937.
The Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) classifies political opinions as sensitive personal data under Article 5(c). Switzerland is not a member of the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, or Fourteen Eyes intelligence-sharing alliances.
Layer 3: The Inverted Terms of Service
Most platforms present you with their terms. You click “accept” and become the subject. Staked Voice inverts this. You are the licensor. We are the licensee. Your data license expires in 7 days unless you actively choose to renew. You can revoke it at any moment.
This maps directly to IEEE 7012-2025 (MyTerms), the global standard for machine-readable personal privacy terms. The standard defines five agreement types; the one our Intentions system is built to implement is PDC-INTENT — the standard’s framework for the Intention Economy, where individuals gather, curate, and share intent data under their own control.
Our Inverted Terms of Service implements the four governing principles of all MyTerms agreements: Transparency, Data Minimisation, Purpose Limitation, and Reciprocity. This is not a marketing label applied retroactively — it is the architectural target we built toward from the beginning.
Layers 4–5: The cooperative vision
The most common failure mode in civic technology is organizational capture. A well-intentioned founder builds a platform. Investors acquire influence. Incentives shift. Project Liberty has identified this as the central design challenge of the next generation of digital infrastructure.
Staked Voice’s long-term architecture places the platform’s mission under the custody of three legally distinct organizations:
Swiss AG
Canton Zug (planned) — Commercial operating companyAccepts investment, employs the team, generates revenue. Governed by articles of incorporation requiring a supermajority to change data governance provisions.
Swiss Cooperative
Canton Zurich (planned) — Democratic governance bodyOne member, one vote. Every paying user is a cooperative member. When it forms, it takes custody of the platform’s core intellectual property. The Cooperative holds a blocking minority in the AG — no investor coalition can change data policies without a member vote. Swiss cooperative law under the Swiss Code of Obligations has governed such structures since 1911.
Liechtenstein Foundation
Vaduz (planned) — Permanent mission lockTakes final custody of core IP under a purpose-locked charter supervised by the Liechtenstein FMA. Deviation from the chartered purpose triggers regulatory intervention, not a policy review.
Swiss law makes it illegal to hand over your data to a foreign government. MyData certification proves the architecture works that way. IEEE 7012 gives your consent legal form any court can verify. The co-op means users — not investors — govern collective data use. Verifiable credentials let you confirm your own consent state without trusting us. Together they make the same claim at the statutory, governance, contractual, organizational, and cryptographic levels simultaneously.
Where we are honestly
None of the three entities exist yet. Staked Voice is operated by Quiet and Helpful, LLC, a Minnesota limited liability company. The Swiss AG, the Cooperative, and the Foundation will be formed at specific milestones — each triggered by real adoption metrics.
Four protections are active today. Your political preferences are stored on your device, not our servers. You are the licensor in our Terms of Service. The source code is published and readable. And our Inverted ToS is built to align with IEEE 7012-2025 from day one.
Additional protections activate as the entity structure matures through its milestones. We name those milestones publicly because the communities we serve will track them. We publish this roadmap — including the honest gaps — because vague promises about future governance structures are worth less than a clear vision with stated limitations at each stage.
The consistent spine across every stage: You own your political data. We are the custodian, not the owner. That is the legal structure — not a marketing claim.
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