Privacy Policy - Newburgh Civic Intelligence

Overview

The Newburgh Civic Intelligence Dashboard ("the Service") is operated by Converging Strategies LLC ("we," "our"), which is the data controller for the information described here. This policy explains what we collect, how we use it, and how to get it deleted.

                Our Mission: To make local government information accessible and understandable for Newburgh, NY residents. 
                We collect only what's necessary to provide this service.
            

Information We Collect

Account Information

When you create an account, we collect:

Email address - Required for account creation and communication
Full name - Optional, used for personalization
Password - Stored securely using industry-standard hashing (bcrypt)
Billing identifiers - If you subscribe to a paid plan, we store your Stripe customer and subscription IDs and your plan status. We never see or store your card number.

Community Tips

If you submit a community tip, we store what you write, including any location you give us (for example a street or intersection). Please do not include anything you would not want a city official to read — tips are reviewed by our team and may inform reporting.

Usage Information

To improve our service and understand user needs, we collect:

Questions asked - The text of questions you submit to the chat
Query analytics - Topics, intent classification, and retrieval quality metrics
Usage counts - Number of questions asked per month
Session data - Anonymous session identifiers for trial users

Technical Information

IP address - for security and rate limiting. We never store your raw IP address: it is converted to a one-way cryptographic hash before it is saved, and cannot be converted back.
Browser type and version
Access timestamps

Cookies

We use no advertising cookies, no analytics services, and no third-party trackers. There is no Google Analytics, no Meta Pixel, and nothing similar on this site. We set exactly two things in your browser:

A device identifier (civic_device_id) - a random value stored for one year. It lets us count free questions fairly when several people share one internet connection, such as at the library, a school, or a coffee shop. Without it, one household or building would share a single quota. It is not linked to your identity, and like your IP address it is hashed before being stored on our side.
Sign-in information - stored in your browser to keep you logged in.

Both are necessary for the service to work as described. If you clear them, you will be signed out and your free-question count will reset.

How We Use Your Information

Purpose	Data Used
Provide civic information answers	Questions, conversation history
Improve answer quality	Query analytics, retrieval metrics
Identify content gaps	Unanswered questions, low-confidence queries
Enforce usage limits	Question counts, subscription tier
Prevent abuse	IP address, rate limiting data
Send account notifications	Email address

                We do NOT:
                Sell your personal information to third parties
Share your questions with advertisers
Use your data for purposes unrelated to civic information

            

Data Retention

Account data: Retained until you delete your account, then removed immediately.
Your conversation history: Retained while your account exists. Deleting your account deletes it.
Questions asked without an account: Retained indefinitely. These are not linked to a name or email address — they are stored against a one-way hash of your IP address and device identifier — but we keep them, because the questions residents ask are the record of what this community needs to know about its government. If you want a specific question removed, contact us and we will remove it.
Query analytics: Retained indefinitely in the same hashed, non-identifying form.
Background job records: 90 days.
Administrative audit logs: 2 years.

Data Security

We implement industry-standard security measures:

Passwords hashed with bcrypt
All data transmitted over HTTPS
Database connections encrypted (SSL/TLS)
API rate limiting to prevent abuse
Account lockout after failed login attempts
Security tokens hashed before storage

Third-Party Services

We use the following third-party services. This list is intended to be complete.

OpenAI - AI language processing. The text of your questions, and the documents they are answered from, are sent to OpenAI.
Perplexity - Used to search the wider web when we cannot answer from our own document collection. Your question text is sent when this happens.
Qdrant - Vector database for semantic search over civic documents.
Resend - Email delivery for account notifications and digests.
Railway - Application and PostgreSQL database hosting.
Stripe - Payment processing, if paid plans are enabled. Card details go directly to Stripe and never reach our servers.
Sentry - Error monitoring. Configured to scrub personal information before it is sent.
Cloudflare R2 - Storage for uploaded documents.
Backblaze B2 - Encrypted database backups. These contain a copy of everything above.
WordPress, YouTube, X (Twitter) - Used to publish and gather public civic content. These do not receive your personal information.

Each service has its own privacy policy. We only share the minimum data necessary for functionality.

Your Rights

You have the right to:

Delete - Delete your account and everything attached to it. You can do this yourself from your account menu — you do not need to ask us or give a reason. Deletion is immediate and permanent, and removes your conversations, questions, and any tips you submitted.
Access - Request a copy of the data we hold about you. Email us and we will send it.
Correct - Update your name or email from your profile at any time.
Opt out - Unsubscribe from digests and alerts using the link in any email we send.

We respond to requests within 30 days and will not charge you or ask you to justify them.

One honest limitation: questions asked without an account are stored against a one-way hash of your IP address and device identifier, so we have no way to look up "everything from this person" and no way to verify that a request comes from them. If you want a specific question removed, tell us roughly when you asked it and what it was about, and we will find and delete it.

Public Records Notice

                Important: The civic data we provide (meeting minutes, agendas, transcripts) comes from 
                public government records. This information is already publicly available. Our service makes it more 
                accessible but does not create new privacy concerns regarding government documents.
            

Children's Privacy

This service is not intended for children under 13. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify registered users of significant changes via email. The "Last Updated" date at the bottom indicates when the policy was last revised.

Contact Us

For privacy questions or data requests:

Email: info@newburghtimes.com

This service is operated by Converging Strategies LLC.

Newburgh, New York