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