Glossary · entry 04 / 12
Data sovereignty
Data sovereignty is your control over your own records: where they live, who can read them, and how they are used. It is strongest when the data stays on your own hardware, encrypted, with you holding the only keys.
For tribal nations the term carries extra weight: the membership roll, council resolutions, and court records are acts of a sovereign government. Where those records physically sit decides who can subpoena them, mine them, lose them, or lock you out of them.
Records in an outside company's cloud are governed by that company's terms, that company's security, and the law of wherever its servers sit. Records on your own hardware are governed by you.
Software supports data sovereignty when it runs on your machines, encrypts everything at rest, works offline, and lets you export the whole record any time you choose.