Privacy

We have developed our site so that you can visit it without identifying yourself or revealing any personal information to us. We do not track visitors to our site as they access other sites. We collect personally identifying data about you, such as your name, address and e-mail address, only when you provide it to us voluntarily.

We do not share your personal data with any third parties other than some common service providers who use the information only to help us improve our site. Some of these services provide social media conveniences for our readers, while others help us serve banner ads and measure traffic. These services may place cookies on your computer. We don't have any way of knowing how each service handles your data internally.

Here are the services you can find on ProPublica.org:

• Sharing buttons for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. These use the standard scripts provided by each company.
• Banner ads served by  Public Media Interactive (an NPR spinoff company), advertising.com (owned by Aol) and Google AdSense, using those companies' ad serving platforms.
• Google Analytics, which we use to measure site traffic.
• Chartbeat, which helps us see traffic patterns in real time.
• Typekit, owned by Adobe Systems Inc., and other cloud-based typeface services.
• RebelMouse, which provides social bookmarking for our MuckReads feature.
• NewRelic, a service that helps us track site errors and slowdowns.

Remember that no data transmitted over the Internet can be guaranteed to be completely secure. You provide us with this data at your own risk. Our servers are located in the United States. If you are located outside of the U.S., by sending us your data you consent to its transfer to and storage within the United States.

By accessing this site, you agree to be legally bound by and comply with this User Agreement. If you do not agree to comply with this User Agreement, you are not authorized to use this site. This site is not directed to children under 13, and will not knowingly collect or maintain personal information from children under 13.

Your Comments on Our Content

You agree that your posted comments intended for display on our site ("Reader-Submitted Content") will not include any content that is illegal, indecent, profane, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy or otherwise injurious to third parties; and that it will not consist of or contain software viruses, political campaigning, commercial solicitation, chain letters, mass mailings or any form of "spam." You may not use a false e-mail address, impersonate any person or entity, or otherwise mislead as to the origin of your Reader-Submitted Content.

You may not submit Reader-Submitted Content that infringes in any manner on the copyright, trademark or other intellectual property rights of any person or entity, or that contains any confidential or proprietary information of any person or entity, or that otherwise violates the legal rights of any person or entity. You may not submit Reader-Submitted Content that contains personally identifiable information about other people, such as their phone number, street address or e-mail address, or information about other people that could result in an invasion of their privacy or their harassment.

You agree that, by submitting any Reader-Submitted Content to us, you are granting to us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable and fully assignable and sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, edit, reformat, create derivative works from, distribute and display that Reader-Submitted Content throughout the world for any purpose and in any media. Your Reader-Submitted Content may be edited for length or clarity or for any other reason either before or after it is published, and it may be attributed it to you and may include your name and city. We reserve the right (but not the obligation) to remove any Reader-Submitted Content for any reason from our site.

Our Copyright Agent for notice of claims of copyright infringement can be reached at:

ProPublica
Attention: President
155 Avenue of the Americas, 13th Floor
New York, NY 10013
Fax: 212-785-2634
Email: info@propublica.org

Copyright

Copyright in this site and the materials included in it, unless otherwise indicated, is owned by Pro Publica, Inc.

We respect the intellectual property of others. If you believe that your work has been copied — by us or by any third party on our site — in a manner that constitutes copyright infringement, please provide our copyright agent the written information specified below. Please note that this procedure is exclusively for notifying us that your copyrighted material has been infringed.

• An electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright interest;
• A description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed upon;
• A description of where the material that you claim is infringing is located on our site, including the URL of the page on which it appears;
• Your address, telephone number and e-mail address;
• A statement by you that you have a good-faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or the law; and
• A statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner's behalf.

Links and Frames

You may link to the home page of our site as long as the link does not cast us in a false or misleading light. You may not frame the content of our site.

Links to Other Web Sites

Our site may contain links to other websites that we think may be of interest to you. We have no control over these other sites or their content. You should be aware when you leave our site for another, and remember that other sites are governed by their own user agreements and privacy policies, which you should be sure to read.

Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability

ALTHOUGH WE TAKE REASONABLE STEPS TO PREVENT THE INTRODUCTION OF VIRUSES, WORMS, "TROJAN HORSES" OR OTHER DESTRUCTIVE MATERIALS TO OUR SITE, WE DO NOT GUARANTEE OR WARRANT THAT OUR SITE OR MATERIALS THAT MAY BE DOWNLOADED FROM OUR SITE ARE FREE FROM SUCH DESTRUCTIVE FEATURES. WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OR HARM ATTRIBUTABLE TO SUCH FEATURES. WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, LOSS OR INJURY BASED ON ERRORS, OMISSIONS, INTERRUPTIONS OR OTHER INACCURACIES IN OUR SITE, NOR FOR ANY CLAIM, LOSS OR INJURY THAT RESULTS FROM YOUR USE OF THIS SITE OR YOUR BREACH OF ANY PROVISION OF THIS USER AGREEMENT.

Termination

We reserve the right to terminate the site and this User Agreement at any time without notice for any reason, including, in the case of the User Agreement, for your violation of any of its provisions. The Limitation of Liability and Governing Law Sections of this User Agreement shall survive any such termination.

Governing Law

This User Agreement will be governed by the laws of the State of New York applicable to contracts made and performed there without regard to its conflicts of law principles. You agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts sitting in the State and County of New York and waive any jurisdictional, venue or inconvenient forum objections to such courts.