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| # Institutional Review Board (IRB)–Style Ethics Review | |
| ## Project Title | |
| **Federal FOIA Intelligence Search** | |
| ## Principal Investigator / Maintainer | |
| Trey Smith | |
| --- | |
| ## 1. Purpose of the Project | |
| The purpose of this project is to facilitate **ethical discovery, citation, and organization of publicly released U.S. government records** from official FOIA Electronic Reading Rooms. | |
| The project does **not** involve experimentation on human subjects and does **not** collect personal data. | |
| --- | |
| ## 2. Human Subjects Determination | |
| **IRB Determination:** | |
| ☑ Not Human Subjects Research | |
| Justification: | |
| - No interaction with individuals | |
| - No collection of personal identifiers | |
| - No intervention, manipulation, or observation of behavior | |
| - Data sources are entirely public and government-released | |
| --- | |
| ## 3. Data Sources | |
| - Public FOIA Electronic Reading Rooms | |
| - User-supplied search terms | |
| - Optional user-approved PDF text extraction | |
| **Excluded:** | |
| - Private communications | |
| - Classified or restricted materials | |
| - Authentication-gated systems | |
| --- | |
| ## 4. Risk Assessment | |
| ### Potential Risks | |
| | Risk | Assessment | | |
| |----|----| | |
| | Privacy harm | Minimal | | |
| | Misinterpretation | Moderate | | |
| | Overreliance on AI | Moderate | | |
| ### Mitigations | |
| - Explicit AI disclosures | |
| - Citation anchoring | |
| - Warnings against evidentiary misuse | |
| - User-initiated actions only | |
| --- | |
| ## 5. Informed Consent | |
| While no human subjects are involved, the application provides: | |
| - Explicit opt-in for AI | |
| - Clear disclosures | |
| - Usage warnings | |
| This satisfies ethical transparency expectations. | |
| --- | |
| ## 6. Data Retention | |
| - No persistent storage | |
| - No logging | |
| - Session memory only | |
| - No training on user inputs | |
| --- | |
| ## 7. Ethical Safeguards | |
| - No automated decision-making | |
| - No profiling or inference | |
| - No surveillance functionality | |
| - No downstream redistribution of content | |
| --- | |
| ## 8. IRB Conclusion | |
| This project qualifies as **Exempt / Not Human Subjects Research** and adheres to ethical standards for transparency-focused public data tools. | |
| --- | |
| ## Ethics Statement | |
| > This system is designed to **support accountability, not automate judgment**. |