Privacy

What this site collects

This site has no accounts or sign-ups. The personal-information report form asks for a Bates page, location and note, and stores those details with a receipt reference and time for review. Do not include private details in a report. We do not ask for your name or email address.

Like most websites, the servers that deliver these pages keep standard technical logs (IP address, browser type, the page requested and the time) to keep the site running and secure. The site is served through Cloudflare, which processes that connection information as part of delivering and protecting the site.

We use Google Analytics (GA4) to see how the site is used — pages viewed, referring site, device type and an approximate location derived from IP address. GA4 anonymises IP addresses by default before any location is derived, and analytics data is not linked to a name or email address, since this site asks for neither. You can opt out by installing Google’s Analytics opt-out browser add-on, or by blocking scripts from googletagmanager.com and google-analytics.com in your browser’s privacy or content settings. Case-folder saves and notes, where available, remain in your browser. Copying a search link does not subscribe you to notifications.

Download verification

Bulk downloads use Cloudflare Turnstile to help prevent automated abuse. Cloudflare processes browser and connection information to perform this check. After successful verification, this site sets a signed, essential cookie that authorizes downloads for 12 hours. The cookie contains an expiry time and a random identifier; it does not contain your name or email address and is not used for advertising. See Cloudflare’s privacy policy.

Questions and answers

When you use Ask, a question and selected record excerpts may be sent to our answer provider, Anthropic, to prepare a cited answer. Answers may be stored with a shareable permalink. Do not include personal or confidential information in a question.

Advertising

This site shows ads served by Google AdSense to help cover its costs, when advertising is enabled. Google and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to show ads, limit how often you see them and measure their performance. Where you have allowed it, those ads may be based on your prior visits to this and other websites.

• How Google uses information from sites that show its ads: Google’s partner-sites policy.
• Turn off personalized advertising in Google Ads Settings, or opt out of third-party vendors’ use of cookies at aboutads.info.

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, you are asked for consent before personalized ads are shown, and you can change that choice at any time from the privacy link Google adds to the page.

We do not use the content of the City’s records to target ads or send your reading history to advertisers. Google processes connection and advertising information as described above. Ads appear below the main content on home, browse and change-history pages; never in documents, answers or policy pages.

Personal information in the records

The documents are published by the City of New York. The City redacted personal information before release and says some may have been missed. We serve the records with the City’s redactions and do not yet run our own redaction pass. Read our personal-information policy or report a missed redaction. You can also report to the City through its official portal.

Comparison submissions

The Contradictions form stores your submission type, source references, note, receipt reference, time, and review status privately for review by Cleartext Labs. It does not ask for a name or email address and does not publish your submission automatically. Do not include private personal information. Submissions remain available to the reviewer until removed; submitting does not subscribe you to updates.

Short links

When you create a short link, we may store the destination page URL, including its search parameters and fragment, so the link continues to work. Anyone with the link can open that destination. Do not include confidential information in a URL you share. A link to the case-folder page does not share the contents saved in your browser.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top of this page will change with it.