# Institutional Review Board (IRB)–Style Ethics Review

## Project Title
**Federal FOIA Intelligence Search**

## Principal Investigator / Maintainer
Trey Smith

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## 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.

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## 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

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## 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

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## 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

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## 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.

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## 6. Data Retention

- No persistent storage
- No logging
- Session memory only
- No training on user inputs

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## 7. Ethical Safeguards

- No automated decision-making
- No profiling or inference
- No surveillance functionality
- No downstream redistribution of content

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## 8. IRB Conclusion

This project qualifies as **Exempt / Not Human Subjects Research** and adheres to ethical standards for transparency-focused public data tools.

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## Ethics Statement

> This system is designed to **support accountability, not automate judgment**.