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Honest posture

Law-enforcement policy

We require a warrant. We tell you when we can.

This is what happens when law enforcement or a government body asks us for somebody’s archive. The diagram below is the whole of it, in order. Short version: we require lawful process, we push back when a request reaches too far, and we tell the account holder unless a court has ordered us to stay quiet.
Warrant requiredUser notified when lawfulQuarterly aggregates

If we can’t keep a promise yet, it gets written here first.

The whole process

Four gates. Then a public count.

How a legal request is handledFour steps happen before anything leaves our hands. A request arrives from a court, a government body or a lawyer. It has to be lawful process, meaning a valid warrant or an equivalent treaty request; informal asks and lawyers' letters stop at that gate. Counsel then narrows the response to the smallest set of records that satisfies the process, redacts third parties, and challenges requests that reach too far. You hear from us before we comply, unless a court has ordered us not to tell you. Whichever way that goes, the request is counted in the quarterly transparency report, including the gagged ones, which is the one step that happens in public.Before anything leaves our handsA request arrivesFrom a court, a government body, or a lawyerLawful process, or nothingA valid warrant or an MLAT. Informal asks stop hereCounsel narrows itThird parties redacted. Overbroad requests challengedYou hear from usBefore we comply, unless a court has gagged usGagged or not · it still gets countedIt appears in the reportQuarterly aggregates, published in publicTrust Centre · transparency

What we require

A warrant, or nothing moves.

  1. A valid warrant, issued by a court with jurisdiction over Confinity Ltd or over the account holder.
  2. Where the requester sits in a jurisdiction that doesn’t bind us directly, a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty request or its equivalent.
  3. Emergency disclosure gets accepted only where there’s a specific, imminent, good-faith threat to someone’s life. Every one of those is documented and counted.
  4. Informal requests, lawyers’ letters and voluntary disclosure asks without process: we don’t honour any of them.

How we respond

The narrowest set of records. Nothing beyond it.

  1. Counsel reads every request and cuts the response down to the narrowest set of records that still satisfies the process.
  2. Third parties get redacted wherever redaction is possible. On a memorial that usually means the other people who contributed to it.
  3. Where a request reaches further than it should and there are grounds to argue, we argue.
  4. We charge the cost-recovery rate the jurisdiction allows. Nothing above it. There’s no margin in this for us.

User notification

We tell you unless a court says we can't.

  1. You hear from us before we comply. There are two exceptions: a court gag, or a case where telling you would damage a live investigation into harm to a child.
  2. A gagged request still gets counted, under ‘gagged requests’ in the quarterly transparency report, with none of its content revealed.
  3. The moment a gag lifts, we tell the account holder. We don’t wait to be asked.

Service address

Serve formal process on Confinity Ltd’s registered office. The address is held by Companies House. Investigators with a question about process or scope can write to privacy@confinity.com. This page isn’t a substitute for lawful service.

More honesty

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