One of the most important ideas underlying Chatrie is that storing information with a technology company should not automatically eliminate a person's reasonable expectation of privacy.
The Supreme Court's decision in Chatrie will likely be remembered as a case about location data and geofence warrants. We think it also signals something broader.
For the last two decades, most conversations about digital rights have focused on who owns our data and how it should be protected. The next decade may ask a different question: Who owns the digital representation of ourselves? That question sounds abstract today. It won't for long.
The first generation of personal cloud software was designed to store information: your photos, email and documents. But, Agentic systems are different.
Agents store information and make inferences from it. Over time they accumulate your writing style, preferences, judgment, relationships, workflows, and the context that makes you uniquely you. The result will eventually be an increasingly accurate representation of how you think and work which means that the valuable asset is no longer just your data. It's the knowledge, context, and reasoning built from it i.e. an extension of you or your work
One of the most important ideas underlying Chatrie is that storing information with a technology company should not automatically eliminate a person's reasonable expectation of privacy. Whether future courts expand or narrow that principle is almost beside the point. What's notable is that courts are beginning to examine a question software architects answer much earlier: Where does control actually live? Most people assume that question is answered in a privacy policy or terms of service. In reality, it's often answered much earlier, as the system, tool or product is being designed.
Before anyone creates an account, a platform has already made a series of foundational decisions about who controls identity, encryption and access to data. And those decisions can often change if the company changes its business model, is acquired, or shuts down.
Those engineering decisions are also effectively policy decisions; what’s technically possible leads to the shape of the business models that the business is incentivized to pursue, and vice versa.
Questions Every AI User Should Ask
As AI becomes part of everyday life and everyday work, users and businesses should begin asking potentially new questions:
You don't need to understand encryption or distributed systems to ask those questions. You simply need to know they matter, take your own stance and then decide accordingly.
We've spent years talking about data sovereignty. We believe the next conversation will be about cognitive sovereignty i.e. ownership and meaningful control over the digital representation of your knowledge, judgment, and thinking.
The AI systems being built today will shape what's technically—and legally—possible tomorrow. And, that's why architecture matters. If we build these systems thoughtfully, the law can reinforce good decisions. If we don't, we'll spend years trying to regulate choices that were baked into software from the beginning. At Fulcra, the belief that cognitive and data sovereignty matters has shaped our architecture, our legal terms, and our business model from day one.
We believe your data and, importantly, the cognitive expression that emerges from it, should belong to you, not become an engine of someone else's business model. Today, we are closer to believing that others will head in that direction as well. It’s not just the right model, it should be your right.
Fulcra was designed by people who get privacy and know the importance of an infrastructure solution that can be the secure private datastore for the rest of your life. Here data is yours, under your control, and only shared with the people and tools you choose to share it with.
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