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    "headline": "A Violated Equality Reveals Which Message Could Not Have Arrived",
    "slug": "a-violated-equality-reveals-which-message-could-not-have-arrived",
    "dek": "A linear test certifies whether observed multi-agent behavior fits a declared communication schedule under explicit assumptions.",
    "summary": "A linear test certifies whether observed multi-agent behavior fits a declared communication schedule under explicit assumptions.",
    "body_text": "For a fixed sequence of senders, recipients, message alphabets and output times, the achievable deterministic protocols are finite. This paper turns membership into a linear program and shows how a separating inequality excludes impossible behavior. Under its operational assumptions, violated equalities identify both the output statistic and the input that could not have reached the relevant agents. The result is a mathematical certificate for modeled communication schedules, not a general detector for deployed agent collusion.",
    "why_it_matters": "A linear test certifies whether observed multi-agent behavior fits a declared communication schedule under explicit assumptions.",
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      "Under its operational assumptions, violated equalities identify both the output statistic and the input that could not have reached the relevant agents.",
      "The result is a mathematical certificate for modeled communication schedules, not a general detector for deployed agent collusion."
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    "tags": [
      "multi-agent systems",
      "information flow",
      "certification"
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  "sources": [
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      "source_id": "source-2026-10-19-020",
      "title": "arXiv preprint 2610.23631, original v1",
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      "published_at": "2026-10-16T11:35:52.000-04:00",
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    "title": "A Violated Equality Reveals Which Message Could Not Have Arrived",
    "publisher": "The Machine Press",
    "published_at": "2026-10-19T09:00:00.000-04:00",
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