Terms & policies

§1.1

“Operator”

means Louisiana Husky Rescue, Inc., a Louisiana nonprofit corporation, EIN 84-1977696, with a notice address for written communication at intake@petoffenders.org.

“Registry”

means the database of Reports and Records operated by Operator under the petOffenders name.

“Report”

means a submission made through the Registry alleging conduct in respect of an animal, together with all Evidence submitted with it.

“Record”

means a Report that has completed Screening and been assigned a Tier.

“Subject”

means a natural person or entity identified in a Report as responsible for the alleged conduct.

“Reporter”

means the person submitting a Report.

“Evidence”

means photographic, documentary or other files submitted with a Report.

“Screening”

means review of a Report by a natural person employed or engaged by Operator, resulting in rejection or Tier assignment.

“Verified Organization”

means an entity granted Registry access under an executed Organization Access Agreement.

“Tier”

means the classification assigned to a Record under §1.9.

§1.2.1 · Assent

By submitting a Report you agree to these Terms. The Registry does not require account creation; assent is obtained by affirmative act at the point of submission, and the version of these Terms then in force is recorded against the Report together with the time of acceptance.

§1.2.2 · Versioning

Operator maintains each version of these Terms with its effective dates. The version in force at the time of a submission governs that submission. The current version is 2026.5, effective July 29, 2026.

§1.3.1 · Not a public authority

Operator is a private nonprofit corporation. It is not a law-enforcement agency, animal-control authority, or governmental body, exercises no police power, and conducts no investigation.

§1.3.2 · Not an emergency service

The Registry provides no emergency response. Submission of a Report causes no person to be dispatched. Emergencies must be directed to 911 or local animal control.

§1.3.3 · Supplementary function

The Registry supplements and does not replace official investigation. Animal cruelty is a felony offence in all fifty states and is prosecuted principally under state law; in Louisiana, principally under La. R.S. 14:102.1. A narrow category of extreme conduct may fall within 18 U.S.C. § 48 where interstate commerce or federal jurisdiction is present.

§1.4.1 · Age

You must be at least 18 years of age to submit a Report. Operator does not knowingly collect personal information from persons under 13.

§1.4.2 · Capacity

You represent that you have legal capacity to enter these Terms and are not barred from doing so by court order, including any order restraining contact with a Subject.

§1.5

You represent and warrant, as of submission, that:

1. the factual assertions in the Report are true to the best of your knowledge and belief;
2. the Report is based on your own observation or on information you reasonably believe to be reliable, and not on rumour, speculation, or inference drawn from a personal dispute with the Subject;
3. you obtained no part of the Report or Evidence by trespass, unauthorised entry, unauthorised access to a computer or account, or by any recording made without the consent required by the law of the jurisdiction where it was made;
4. you own or are licensed to submit each item of Evidence, and its submission infringes no third-party right;
5. you are not submitting the Report for the purpose of harassing, intimidating, retaliating against, or gaining commercial or personal advantage over the Subject; and
6. you are not a competitor of the Subject in the sale, breeding, or placement of animals, or, if you are, you have disclosed that fact in the Report.

§1.6.1 · Removal

A Report that Operator determines was submitted with knowledge of its falsity, or with reckless disregard for its truth, is removed and the Reporter permanently barred.

§1.6.2 · Referral

Operator may refer such a Report to law enforcement and may disclose the Reporter's identity in doing so, where Operator holds it. This is a stated exception to the sealing of contact information described in the Privacy Policy at §2.3, and it is stated here rather than left implicit: a sealing promise with an undisclosed exception is worse than a narrower promise honestly made.

§1.7.1 · Amount and processing

Each Report requires a non-refundable filing contribution of $1.00, processed by Givebutter. Operator does not receive or store payment card data.

§1.7.2 · Separation

Payment records are held separately from Reports. No identifier links a payment to the Report it authorised: the payment record contains no report reference, and the Report contains no payment reference. Operator does not represent that no correlation is possible — a filing authorisation is spent at the moment its Report is created, so the two records bear closely adjacent timestamps — and states the limit of the separation rather than overstating it.

§1.7.3 · Not consideration for outcome

The filing contribution purchases no outcome. It does not cause a Report to be accepted, published, prioritised, or assigned any Tier.

§1.8.1 · Human review

Every Report is reviewed by a natural person before it becomes a Record.

§1.8.2 · Discretion

Operator may reject any Report, in whole or in part, for any reason or none, and is under no obligation to publish, act upon, investigate, or explain its disposition.

§1.8.3 · No acknowledgement of merit

Acceptance of a Report is not a determination that its allegations are true.

§1.9.1 · Tier 1 (Watch)

A Record for which Operator has received no corroboration beyond the Report itself. A Tier 1 Record is uncorroborated allegation and nothing further. It is never, alone, a sufficient basis to refuse a placement, sale, or transfer, and a Verified Organization that relies on it as a sole basis is in breach of its access agreement and loses access.

§1.9.2 · Tier 2 (Verified)

A Record supported by Evidence that Operator has reviewed and found consistent with the allegation.

§1.9.3 · Tier 3 (Restricted)

A Record reflecting a criminal conviction, plea, or judicial order restricting animal ownership, verified by Operator against the court record.

§1.9.4 · Tiers describe the file

A Tier describes the evidentiary state of Operator's file. It is not a finding of fact, an adjudication, or a statement by Operator that the Subject engaged in the alleged conduct. A report is not a finding of guilt.

§1.10.1 · Tier 1 expiry

A Tier 1 Record expires automatically twenty-four months after the date of filing unless corroborating Evidence has caused it to be raised to Tier 2. On expiry the Record, all associated Evidence, and any sealed contact information are purged, and the Record is not retained in any archive, derived dataset, or aggregate statistic, subject only to §1.10.4. Purged data is eliminated from rotating backups within 30 days of the purge; Operator does not represent deletion as instantaneous. A permanent metadata-only log records that each purge occurred, so that this clause is demonstrable rather than merely asserted.

§1.10.2 · Tier 2 expiry

A Tier 2 Record expires automatically ten years after the date of filing. On expiry the Record, all associated Evidence, and any sealed contact information are purged on the same terms as §1.10.1, and the same permanent metadata-only log records that the purge occurred. A Tier 2 Record is additionally reviewed for continued relevance at five-year intervals, measured from the last review or, where none has taken place, from the assignment of the tier. The reviewer records what they concluded, and that finding is written to the Record’s chain of custody. The automatic term and the review are not alternatives: the term is enforced without anyone acting, and the review exists because ten years is a long time for an allegation to stand unexamined.

§1.10.3 · Tier 3 duration

A Tier 3 Record persists for the duration of the underlying conviction or order and is removed on expiry or vacatur upon verification. It is subject to no automatic time-based expiry: a Tier 3 Record rests on an adjudicated outcome, and the passage of time does not unmake one.

§1.10.4 · Preservation holds

A retention period is suspended while the Record is subject to a preservation hold arising from legal process, a pending dispute under §1.13, or a law-enforcement preservation request. The period resumes on written release of the hold. Nothing under hold is purged by any automated process.

§1.11.1 · Limits

The public interface displays only geographically rounded markers and aggregate statistics. It displays no name, no address, no Tier, no Evidence, and no Report content.

§1.11.2 · Rounding

Location data is reduced at intake to street, municipality or postal code — the house number is discarded and never stored — and rounded again before any public display, such that no individual property is identifiable. Geolocation metadata embedded in uploaded image files is stripped before storage, so that this rounding cannot be defeated by coordinates travelling inside a file.

§1.12

You must not:

1. use the Registry to harass, threaten, stalk, defame, or retaliate against any person;
2. submit a Report in furtherance of a domestic, commercial, neighbourhood, or custody dispute;
3. attempt to identify, locate, or contact any Subject using information derived from the Registry;
4. scrape, crawl, bulk-download, index, mirror, or republish any part of the Registry;
5. submit automated, duplicative, or bulk Reports;
6. misrepresent your identity, affiliation, or authority; or
7. circumvent any access control, rate limit, or verification mechanism.

§1.13.1 · Access

Any person may request a copy of every Record naming them. Operator verifies identity before disclosing or discussing any Record. Write to intake@petoffenders.org.

§1.13.2 · Dispute

Any Subject may dispute the accuracy of a Record. Write to intake@petoffenders.org; Operator verifies identity before discussing any Record, then reviews the dispute and issues a written determination within 30 days.

§1.13.3 · Disputed flag

While a dispute is pending, the Record carries a disputed flag visible to every Verified Organization that views it. The flag shows that the Record is contested and the date the dispute was received; the contents of the dispute are not shown to organizations.

§1.13.4 · Correction and downstream notice

Where a dispute succeeds, the Record is corrected or removed, and Operator notifies every Verified Organization whose logged lookup returned that Record, requiring them to disregard it, destroy any copy, and reconsider on its merits any decision already taken in reliance on it. Every lookup records which Records it returned, which is what makes this notice possible rather than aspirational.

§1.14.1 · Reports are third-party content

Reports and Evidence are submitted by third parties. Operator does not author them and does not adopt their assertions.

§1.14.2 · Reservation

Operator reserves all protections available to it under 47 U.S.C. § 230 and any other applicable immunity, and nothing in these Terms waives any such protection.

§1.15.1

You will indemnify, defend and hold harmless Operator and its officers, directors, employees, volunteers and agents from any claim, loss, liability, damage, cost or expense, including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising from a Report you submitted, any Evidence you uploaded, any breach of §1.5, or any use of the Registry in breach of §1.12.

§1.16.1 · No warranty

THE REGISTRY IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ACCURACY, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

§1.16.2 · No completeness

Operator does not warrant that the Registry is complete, current, or accurate. The absence of a Record is not evidence that a person has not harmed an animal.

§1.16.3 · Not a consumer reporting agency

Operator is not a consumer reporting agency within the meaning of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq., and Records are not consumer reports. Records may not be used in whole or in part as a factor in establishing eligibility for employment, credit, insurance, housing, or any other purpose enumerated in that Act.

§1.16.4 · Third-party decisions

Placement, sale, and transfer decisions are made solely by Verified Organizations. Operator makes no such decision, participates in none, and accepts no liability for any.

§1.17.1

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, OPERATOR'S AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING FROM OR RELATING TO THE REGISTRY WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNT YOU PAID OPERATOR IN THE TWELVE MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM, OR (B) ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS.

§1.17.2 · Excluded damages

OPERATOR WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA OR REPUTATION.

§1.18.1

Operator may restrict or bar any person from the Registry at any time, with or without notice, including for breach of §1.5 or §1.12.

§1.19.1 · Governing law

These Terms are governed by the law of the State of Louisiana, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles.

§1.19.2 · Venue

Exclusive venue lies in the state and federal courts sitting in the parish in which Operator maintains its registered office, and you consent to personal jurisdiction there. This clause binds a Reporter who assented under §1.2. It does not purport to bind a Subject, who has entered no agreement with Operator.

§1.20.1 · Amendment

Operator may amend these Terms. The effective date and a summary of changes will be posted, and material changes will be displayed prominently for 30 days.

§1.20.2 · Severability

If a provision is held unenforceable, it is modified to the minimum extent necessary or severed, and the remainder continues in force.

§1.20.3 · No waiver

Failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.

§1.20.4 · Entire agreement

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and the Evidence & Content Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and Operator regarding the Registry.

§1.20.5 · Notices

Notices to Operator: intake@petoffenders.org, attention Records Lead.

§1.21.1 · Who may hold access

Record access is granted to shelters, rescue organizations, and veterinary clinics, each verified in person before activation. Breeders may apply for access and are additionally verified against state licensing and inspection records; access is granted at our discretion, reviewed annually, and revoked on any lookup outside a placement decision.

§1.21.2 · Terms of access

Every lookup is logged. Records may be used only for placement decisions and may not be redistributed, published, or used to harass any person. Access is granted under an executed Organization Access Agreement, which restricts every query to a specific, contemporaneous placement decision and makes speculative, precautionary and retrospective queries a breach.

§1.22.1

Anyone may donate without filing a Report or creating an account. All donations and net proceeds received through petOffenders fundraising support the operation of petOffenders and Louisiana Husky Rescue, including development, hosting, maintenance, human review, organization verification, outreach, advocacy, and securely sharing information with participating organizations.

§1.22.2

Donations do not create, prioritise, publish, verify, or influence any Report, Tier, or placement decision.

§2.1.1 · Two populations

This Policy addresses personal information concerning two distinct populations: (a) users who interact with the Registry, and (b) Subjects, who are identified in Reports, did not consent, and may be unaware that information about them is held. Most privacy policies describe only the first. Naming the second is the honest starting point for this one.

§2.1.2 · Basis of processing

Operator processes Subject information in furtherance of its exempt charitable purpose of preventing cruelty to animals, and not on the basis of Subject consent.

§2.2

§2.2.1 · What is never displayed publicly

No name, no house or unit number, no tier, no evidence and no report content reaches the public interface. The public sees a deliberately rounded map marker and, as text, the street name, city, state and postal code only — never a specific address. A street carries many homes, so that locates an area without identifying a household.

§2.3.1 · Anonymous submission

Where a Reporter submits anonymously, Operator holds no information identifying them: no name, no address, no email, and no network address is stored against an anonymous Report, and Operator cannot tell you who filed it. One qualification is stated plainly rather than left for you to discover. A Report carries a filing fee, and Operator retains a record of that payment for audit — which records that a payment produced a Report, though not who the Reporter is. The payment itself is processed by the provider named at §2.6.1, who holds the payer's own details under their terms. Operator never shares, sells or transfers any of this, and holds nothing that names an anonymous Reporter; but a payment record exists, and Operator will not claim otherwise.

§2.3.2 · Optional contact information

Where supplied, contact information is stored sealed, in a table separate from the Report, and is never shown publicly or to any organization. Staff access requires authentication and is recorded.

§2.3.3 · Disclosure of sealed information

Sealed contact information is disclosed only (a) under valid legal process in accordance with the Law Enforcement Request Policy, or (b) where §1.6.2 of the Terms applies — a Report submitted with knowledge of its falsity. Operator will notify the Reporter before disclosure under (a) and afford 14 days to seek protective relief, except where prohibited by court order or where notification would create a risk to any person.

§2.4.1

Operator holds verification records, licence and registration evidence, named authorised user identities, and a log of every lookup performed — the querying user, the query terms, the records returned, and the timestamp.

§2.4.2 · Purpose of lookup logs

Lookup logs exist to audit compliance with the permitted-purpose restriction, and to make the downstream correction notice at §1.13.4 of the Terms possible: when a record is withdrawn, the log is how every organization that saw it is identified and told.

§2.5.1 · Server logs

IP address, user agent, request path and timestamp, retained 90 days.

§2.5.2 · Analytics

Operator runs no third-party analytics product on any part of the Registry. Operator counts visits to its own public pages using its own software, and the counting is built so that it cannot identify you: the page is recorded only as one of a fixed list of page names and never as a link to a particular record or person, no network address is stored, and the identifier used to recognise a returning visitor within a single day is destroyed after two days — after which the count cannot be traced to anyone, including by Operator. Counts are kept for 13 months and are read by the Operator's principal account alone. They are never sold, shared, or disclosed to anyone. There are no advertising trackers, no cross-site tracking, no third-party measurement scripts, and no data brokers, and Operator's own counting sends nothing about your visit to anyone. That is a statement about Operator's counting and not about your whole visit: on a page that draws a map, your browser fetches the map images from OpenStreetMap itself, which necessarily shows them your network address and the area you are viewing. Operator neither makes nor receives that request. See 2.6.1.

§2.5.3 · Evidence metadata

Location and device metadata embedded in uploaded image files is stripped before the file is stored, not at the point it is displayed. This matters more than it sounds: GPS coordinates inside a photograph identify the exact property, which would defeat the geographic rounding described at §1.11 of the Terms inside a file subsequently released to an organization or an agency.

§2.5.4 · Area alerts and the contact form

Where you ask to be alerted about reports in your area, Operator holds the email address and postal code you supply and nothing else. No alert messages are being sent yet, and there is no self-service unsubscribe link; to be removed, write to intake@petoffenders.org and the subscription is deleted. Messages sent through the contact form are held for two years. Neither is used for any other purpose, and neither is shared.

§2.6.1 · Processors

Givebutter (payment processing); Microsoft Azure (application hosting); Supabase (database and encrypted file storage); Google (electronic mail delivery); OpenStreetMap Foundation (locating an address so a report can be placed on the map). Each is engaged to process only as necessary to provide its service. Separately, and not as Operator's processor: on any page that shows a map, your browser requests the map images from OpenStreetMap directly, and if you search an area on a map your browser asks OpenStreetMap to locate it. Those are requests your own browser makes. Operator does not make them, does not receive what they contain, and cannot prevent OpenStreetMap from seeing your network address and the area you are looking at.

§2.6.2 · No sale

Operator does not sell personal information and does not disclose it for advertising or cross-context behavioural purposes.

§2.6.3 · Compelled disclosure

Operator may disclose information where required by valid legal process, in accordance with the Law Enforcement Request Policy.

§2.6.4 · Successor

In the event of merger, dissolution, or transfer of the Registry, information may transfer only to a successor that agrees in writing to assume every obligation in §1.10 and §1.13 of the Terms — the expiry and the subject-rights provisions. Absent such a successor, the Registry is destroyed rather than transferred. A database of allegations about named individuals with no operator to honour a dispute is not an asset, and will not be treated as one.

§2.7.1

Retention is governed by the schedule below. A preservation hold arising from legal process, a pending dispute, or a law-enforcement preservation request suspends the applicable period; nothing under hold is purged by any automated process, and a hold is released only in writing.

§2.7.2 · Backups

A purge is not complete while the purged data persists in a backup. Backups rotate, and purged data is eliminated from them within 30 days of the purge. Operator does not represent deletion as instantaneous.

§2.7.3 · Proof of purge

Each purge is recorded permanently in a metadata-only log holding the record reference, its tier, its filing date and its purge date. No content, no name and no location is retained in that log. It exists because an expiry obligation with no record of execution is an unverifiable assertion.

§2.8.1 · Measures

Evidence is stored in private buckets, encrypted at rest, and reachable only through short-lived authenticated links. A cryptographic hash of every file is computed at intake and retained, so any later alteration is detectable. Record access requires authenticated staff or organization credentials, lookups are logged, and access is limited to Operator’s administrators — at present every staff account is an administrator, and Operator does not claim a separation of duties it has not built. Should Operator engage staff in a narrower role, their access will be narrowed with it.

§2.8.2 · No guarantee

Operator implements measures reasonable for an organisation of its size and makes no representation that they are impenetrable.

§2.8.3 · Breach notification

In the event of a breach of security compromising personal information, Operator will notify affected persons and the Louisiana Attorney General as required by La. R.S. 51:3071 et seq., and will comply with the notification statute of any other state in which an affected person resides, without unreasonable delay.

§2.9.1

Any person may exercise the access, dispute, correction and downstream-notice rights set out at §1.13 of the Terms by writing to intake@petoffenders.org. Identity verification precedes any substantive response, and no record is discussed before it.

§2.9.2 · Regardless of where you live

Operator is a nonprofit corporation and is generally outside the scope of the California Consumer Privacy Act and comparable statutes applying to businesses. Operator nonetheless affords these rights to every person, whatever their state of residence and whether or not a statute compels it.

§2.9.3 · Identity documents

Where a document is supplied to verify identity, it is used for that purpose only and deleted once verification is complete. The deletion is recorded against the request.

§2.10.1

The Registry is not directed to children and requires reporters to be at least 18. Operator does not knowingly collect personal information from a person under 13 and will delete such information on becoming aware of it.

§2.11.1

Operator will post the effective date and a summary of changes, and will display material changes prominently for 30 days. The current version is 2026.5, effective July 29, 2026.

§3.1.1

This Organization Access Agreement ("Agreement") is entered into between Louisiana Husky Rescue, Inc., a Louisiana nonprofit corporation ("Operator"), and the organization that accepts it ("Organization"). It governs Organization's access to and use of the petOffenders registry ("Registry"). It supplements, and does not replace, the Terms of Use (§1) and the Privacy Policy (§2), each of which Organization also accepts.

§3.1.2

Where this Agreement and the Terms of Use address the same subject and cannot both be given effect, this Agreement governs as between Operator and Organization. Nothing in this Agreement reduces any right this Registry gives to a person named in a record.

§3.1.3 · Assent and version

Organization accepts this Agreement by an authorised representative affirming it during application or, where a new version is issued, on next sign-in. Operator records the version accepted, the date, and the name and address of the individual accepting. The version in force at the time of a given lookup or submission governs that lookup or submission. The current version is 2026.5, effective July 29, 2026.

§3.1.4

The individual accepting represents that they are authorised to bind Organization. Access is granted to Organization as an entity, not to that individual.

§3.2.1

Record access is granted to shelters, rescue organizations, and veterinary clinics, each verified in person before activation.

§3.2.2

Breeders may apply for access and are additionally verified against state licensing and inspection records; access is granted at our discretion, reviewed annually, and revoked on any lookup outside a placement decision.

§3.2.3 · Verification is continuing, not a gate passed once

Organization warrants that the credential, licence or registration it presented remains current, and will notify Operator within fourteen days of its lapse, suspension, revocation, or of any enforcement action concerning animal welfare against Organization or a person holding access. Failure to notify is itself grounds for revocation under §3.10.

§3.3.1

Operator grants Organization a non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable right to search the Registry and to view records returned, for the purposes stated in §3.4 and for no other purpose, for so long as this Agreement is in force.

§3.3.2

No ownership, licence or other interest in the Registry, its records, or its structure passes to Organization. Access may not be assigned, sublicensed, resold, or extended to another entity, including an affiliate, a partner organization, or a successor, without Operator's prior written agreement.

§3.3.3 · No warranty of completeness

THE REGISTRY IS PROVIDED AS IS. A SEARCH RETURNING NOTHING IS NOT A FINDING THAT A PERSON HAS NO HISTORY OF ANIMAL ABUSE; IT MEANS THIS REGISTRY HOLDS NO SCREENED RECORD MATCHING THE DETAILS SEARCHED. OPERATOR DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE REGISTRY IS COMPLETE, CURRENT, OR FREE OF ERROR, AND ORGANIZATION MUST NOT REPRESENT A CLEAR RESULT AS A CLEARANCE, A BACKGROUND CHECK, OR A CERTIFICATION.

§3.4.1 · The only permitted purposes

Organization may search the Registry only in connection with an actual, contemplated decision concerning a specific animal — an adoption, placement, foster placement, transfer, sale, surrender, reclaim, or a decision about the care or custody of an animal in Organization's charge — or where required to respond to a lawful request from a governmental authority.

§3.4.2 · Uses that are forbidden outright

Organization shall not search the Registry, or use anything learned from it, for any of the following:

1. any decision concerning employment, tenancy or housing, credit, insurance, or any other purpose regulated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act or a state analogue — the Registry is not a consumer reporting agency, does not follow those procedures, and must not be used where they apply;
2. assessing a person for a volunteer, contractor, staff or board role, INCLUDING a foster role where Organization treats fostering as a volunteer position rather than as the placement of a specific animal — see §3.4.4;
3. screening a person who is not a party to a decision about a specific animal, including a neighbour, a relative, a former partner, a competitor, a critic, or a person known to Organization personally;
4. curiosity, testing, demonstration to a third party, or training, other than on data Operator supplies for that purpose;
5. compiling, exporting, scraping, or reproducing any portion of the Registry, or building or contributing to any list, database or derived work from it;
6. identifying, contacting, approaching, or attempting to identify a person who submitted a report;
7. harassing, threatening, shaming or retaliating against any person, or enabling another to do so.

§3.4.3

A lookup with no corresponding decision is a breach whether or not the result was acted on or shared. Operator is not required to show that harm followed.

§3.4.4 · Fostering, which is both

A foster placement is a decision about a specific animal and is a permitted purpose under §3.4.1. It is also, in most organizations, an unpaid volunteer role, and screening a person for that role is prohibited by §3.4.2. The line is the animal: Organization may search when it is placing a named animal with this person, and may not search to decide whether to admit them to a foster panel, a volunteer roster, or a general approved-homes list in advance of any animal. Where Organization cannot say which of the two it is doing, it is the second.

§3.5.1 · The core obligation

Everything Organization learns from the Registry about an identified or identifiable person — the existence of a record, its absence, its tier, its content, and the fact that a search was run — is confidential. Organization shall not disclose it to any person outside Organization, and shall not redistribute, publish, post, broadcast, screenshot, photograph, print for circulation, or otherwise reproduce it.

§3.5.2 · Inside Organization

Disclosure within Organization is limited to those individuals who need the information to make or approve the specific decision for which the search was run. Organization shall not circulate registry content to its board, its membership, its volunteers generally, its social media, or any mailing list.

§3.5.3 · The only exceptions

Organization may disclose registry content only:

1. to a law-enforcement agency or licensed veterinarian where Organization believes in good faith that an animal is at immediate risk of serious harm;
2. where compelled by a subpoena, court order, or other legally binding demand — in which case Organization shall, unless prohibited by law, notify Operator at intake@petoffenders.org before producing anything, and produce no more than is compelled;
3. with the prior written authorisation of Operator.

§3.5.4 · What may be said without authorisation

Nothing in this section prevents Organization from communicating its own decision. Organization may tell an applicant that it is declining a placement, and may discuss its own first-hand knowledge of a person. It may not attribute a decision to the Registry, quote or characterise a record, or state that a person appears in the Registry.

§3.5.5 · Survival

This section survives termination of this Agreement and closure of Organization's account, without limit of time, and binds Organization in respect of anything learned while access was held.

§3.5.7 · Refer, do not certify

Where an agency or a court seeks registry records, Organization shall refer them to Operator's law-enforcement channel, which issues a certified record with its chain of custody intact. Organization shall not certify, authenticate, attest to, or hold out its own screenshots or notes as a record of the Registry. An uncertified copy produced by a third party is weaker evidence than the certified original, and can taint the prosecution it was meant to help.

§3.5.6 · On termination

Within thirty days of termination Organization shall destroy every copy, note, extract and record of registry content in its possession, other than the minimum it must retain in the file of a specific decision already made, and shall confirm in writing that it has done so. Retained material remains subject to §3.5.

§3.6.1

A person named in the Registry may ask what is held about them and may dispute it. Those rights are set out in §1.13 and §2.9 and are not qualified by anything in this Agreement.

§3.6.2 · Cooperation with a request or dispute

Where a person's request or dispute concerns a record Organization submitted, Organization shall respond to Operator's enquiry, and provide the documents supporting the submission, within fourteen days. Silence is treated as an inability to substantiate, and the record is amended or withdrawn accordingly.

§3.6.3 · Downstream correction

Where a record is corrected, re-tiered, or removed, Operator notifies every organization whose lookup returned that record. On receiving such a notice Organization shall cease relying on the superseded version, correct its own file, and where a placement decision turned on the record, reconsider that decision within 30 days.

§3.6.4 · Tier 1 is never sufficient on its own

A TIER 1 RECORD IS UNCORROBORATED CONTEXT. ORGANIZATION SHALL NOT REFUSE A PLACEMENT, SALE OR SERVICE ON THE BASIS OF A TIER 1 RECORD ALONE, AND SHALL NOT DESCRIBE ANY UNADJUDICATED REPORT AS AN ESTABLISHED FACT.

§3.6.6 · The Registry matches on a name, and a name is not a person

RECORDS ARE HELD AND SEARCHED BY NAME. THE REGISTRY DOES NOT HOLD A DATE OF BIRTH, A GOVERNMENT IDENTIFIER, OR ANY OTHER FIELD THAT DISTINGUISHES TWO PEOPLE WITH THE SAME NAME, AND A RESULT IS THEREFORE A CANDIDATE AND NOT AN IDENTIFICATION. BEFORE ORGANIZATION ACTS ON A RECORD IT MUST SATISFY ITSELF, FROM THE PLACE, DATES AND CIRCUMSTANCES IN THE RECORD AND FROM WHAT IT KNOWS OF THE PERSON IN FRONT OF IT, THAT THEY ARE THE SAME PERSON. WHERE IT CANNOT, IT MUST TREAT THE RECORD AS NOT MATCHING.

§3.6.7

Organization shall notify Operator at intake@petoffenders.org where it has reason to believe a record has been matched to the wrong person, whether by Operator or by Organization itself.

§3.6.5

Organization shall not require a person to consent to a registry search as a condition of any service unrelated to an animal placement, and shall not charge a person a fee attributable to a search.

§3.7.1 · Accuracy warranty

Organization warrants that each report or document it submits is truthful to the best of its knowledge, is based on Organization's own observation or on records it holds, and is submitted in good faith for the protection of animals.

§3.7.2

Organization shall not submit a report to gain advantage in, or to retaliate in connection with, a personal, employment, commercial or legal dispute.

§3.7.3 · Correction duty

If Organization learns that something it submitted was inaccurate, incomplete, or has been overtaken by an acquittal, dismissal, expungement or reversal, it shall notify Operator within fourteen days. This duty continues after termination.

§3.7.4

Operator screens every submission before it becomes a record and may decline, tier, edit or remove any submission at its discretion. Acceptance of a submission is not a finding that its contents are true, and Organization shall not represent it as one.

§3.7.5 · Confidential material must not be submitted

Organization shall not submit Social Security or other government identification numbers, financial account numbers, medical or veterinary records concerning a person, biometric data, information concerning a minor beyond what is necessary, or the personal details of any person other than the subject and Organization's own contact. Operator may redact or destroy anything submitted in breach of this clause.

§3.8.1

Access is granted to named individuals at Organization. Organization shall maintain an accurate list of those individuals and shall notify Operator within five days when a person with access leaves or changes role, so the account can be closed.

§3.8.2 · No shared credentials

Each individual shall have their own credentials. Organization shall not share, disclose or reuse credentials, and shall enable any additional authentication Operator requires. A shared device is permitted — a front counter is how a shelter works — provided each person signs in under their own account and signs out or locks the device before leaving it. What is prohibited is a shared ACCOUNT, and a session left open is treated as one.

§3.8.3 · Organization is answerable for its people

Organization is responsible for every act and omission of its officers, employees, volunteers, contractors and agents in connection with the Registry as if they were its own, and this responsibility is not reduced by an individual acting outside the scope of their role.

§3.8.4 · Instruct before granting

Before an individual is given access, Organization shall inform them of the obligations in §3.4, §3.5 and §3.6, and shall keep a written record that it has done so. Operator may ask to see that record.

§3.8.5 · Suspected compromise

Organization shall notify Operator at intake@petoffenders.org without undue delay, and in any event within seventy-two hours, on becoming aware of any unauthorised access to its accounts, any loss or disclosure of registry content, or any use of the Registry in breach of this Agreement, whether by its own people or another. Operator will likewise notify Organization of any incident affecting Organization's data.

§3.9.1

Organization consents to Operator recording each search, including the account that ran it, the time, the details searched, and the records returned, and to Operator retaining that log for the purposes of security, audit, downstream correction, and enforcement of this Agreement.

§3.9.2 · What logging is and is not

The log makes every search attributable to an account. It is not continuous monitoring: Operator does not undertake to detect misuse as it happens, and Organization may not treat the absence of an enquiry from Operator as approval of its use of the Registry.

§3.9.3

Organization may request its own log at any time and shall receive it within fourteen days. Operator may require Organization to explain a particular search, and Organization shall respond within fourteen days.

§3.10.1 · Immediate suspension

Operator may suspend access immediately and without prior notice where it believes on reasonable grounds that the Registry is being used in breach of §3.4 or §3.5, that credentials are compromised, or that suspension is necessary to protect a person named in a record. Disclosure cannot be undone, so suspension does not wait on the outcome of an enquiry.

§3.10.2 · Notice and response

Operator shall state the reason for suspension within five days and shall consider any response Organization makes. Where the concern is not made out, access is restored and the suspension recorded as withdrawn.

§3.10.3

Either party may terminate on thirty days' written notice. Operator may terminate immediately for a material breach of §3.4, §3.5 or §3.7, for loss of the credential on which verification rested, or where Organization ceases to operate.

§3.10.4 · What termination does not end

Sections 3.5 (confidentiality), 3.6.3 (downstream correction), 3.7.3 (correction duty), 3.11 (liability and indemnity) and this clause survive termination. Records Organization submitted remain in the Registry, subject to the retention and expiry rules in §1.10 and §2.7.

§3.11.1 · Organization's decisions are its own

OPERATOR DOES NOT MAKE, APPROVE OR PARTICIPATE IN ANY PLACEMENT DECISION. ORGANIZATION IS SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR ITS DECISIONS AND FOR MEETING ITS OWN LEGAL OBLIGATIONS. NOTHING IN THE REGISTRY IS LEGAL, VETERINARY OR PROFESSIONAL ADVICE.

§3.11.2 · Indemnity

Organization shall indemnify Operator against any claim, loss, liability and reasonable legal cost arising from: what Organization submitted; Organization's use or disclosure of registry content in breach of this Agreement; a decision Organization made; or an act or omission of a person for whom Organization is responsible under §3.8.3.

§3.11.3

Operator's aggregate liability to Organization under this Agreement is limited to the amounts Organization paid Operator for access in the twelve months preceding the claim, or one hundred dollars where no amount was paid. This limit does not apply to Operator's own wilful misconduct, and does not purport to limit any liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

§3.11.4

Nothing in this section limits the rights of a person named in a record, who is not a party to this Agreement and whose claims are unaffected by it.

§3.12.1 · Changes

Operator may issue a new version of this Agreement. Organization will be given notice of a material change at least 14 days before it takes effect, and will be asked to accept the new version at next sign-in. Continued use after the effective date without acceptance is not assent; access is suspended until the new version is accepted.

§3.12.2

Notices to Operator are given at intake@petoffenders.org. Notices to Organization are given to the administrative contact then on record, and Organization shall keep that address current.

§3.12.3

This Agreement is governed by the law of the State of Louisiana, and the parties submit to the courts of the parish in which Operator maintains its registered office, without prejudice to Operator's right to seek injunctive relief wherever necessary to prevent a disclosure in breach of §3.5.

§3.12.4

If a provision is held unenforceable, it is severed or narrowed to the minimum extent necessary and the remainder continues in force. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.

§3.12.5

This Agreement, with the Terms of Use, the Privacy Policy, and the Evidence & Content Policy, is the entire agreement between the parties concerning access to the Registry, and replaces the conditions previously accepted at application.

§4.1.1

Operator is a private nonprofit corporation and not a law-enforcement agency. It holds no official authority and its Records supplement rather than substitute for official investigation. Animal cruelty is a felony offence in all fifty states and is prosecuted principally under state law; in Louisiana, principally under La. R.S. 14:102.1. A narrow category of extreme conduct may fall within 18 U.S.C. § 48 where interstate commerce or federal jurisdiction is present.

§4.2.1

Sheriff's offices, police departments, district attorneys, courts, and animal-control authorities, in each case acting in an official capacity in relation to an identified matter.

§4.2.2 · Verification

Operator verifies the requesting agency against the applicable official directory and corresponds only with an official agency address. Requests from personal electronic mail addresses are refused without exception.

§4.3

1. agency name, type, and official address;
2. the requesting official's name and badge or bar number;
3. case or docket number;
4. identification of the Records sought with reasonable particularity; and
5. attestation that the request is made for an official purpose in relation to that matter.

§4.4.1

A records package contains the verbatim report as filed, hash-verified evidence files, and a complete access and handling log, exported as a single PDF. It also carries the Tier assignment and its stated basis, and any dispute correspondence.

§4.4.2 · Limits of certification

Operator certifies only provenance and integrity: that the Report is as filed, that Evidence is unaltered since intake as demonstrated by hash comparison, and that the access log is complete. petOffenders is not a law-enforcement agency and makes no representation as to the admissibility of any record. Admissibility is a determination for your agency and the court. What we can attest to is provenance: who filed a report and when, what evidence accompanied it, every change made to it, and every release of it.

§4.5.1 · Anonymous reports

Where a Report was filed anonymously, Operator holds no identifying information and none can be produced. This is a property of the system rather than a policy choice: there is nothing in the record to hand over.

§4.5.2 · Sealed information

Sealed Reporter contact information is produced only under subpoena or court order. An agency request, however urgent and however framed, is insufficient.

§4.5.3 · Notice

Operator will notify the Reporter prior to production and afford 14 days to seek protective relief, except where a court has ordered otherwise or notification would create a risk to any person.

§4.6

Operator will refuse or defer a request where:

1. the agency or requesting official cannot be verified;
2. the Report has not completed Screening and is not yet a Record;
3. release would compromise an active enforcement matter or disclose the existence of an investigation to a Subject, in which case Operator will state that it is withholding and why;
4. the request is not particularised, or seeks Records by geography, category, or in bulk rather than in relation to an identified matter; or
5. Reporter identity is sought without legal process.

§4.7.1

Where a requesting official represents that an animal or person faces immediate risk of death or serious harm, Operator may release Records necessary to address that risk before completing verification.

§4.7.2 · Documentation

Every emergency release is documented within 24 hours with the representation relied upon, the identity of the official, the Records released, and the approving staff member, and is logged in the record's chain of custody.

§4.7.3 · Not applicable to reporter identity

The emergency exception does not extend to sealed Reporter contact information, which remains available only under §4.5.2. There is no urgency that converts a subpoena requirement into a telephone call.

§4.8.1

On written request Operator will preserve identified Records beyond their scheduled retention for 90 days pending legal process, renewable on request. A preservation hold suspends the retention clock, and nothing under hold is purged by any automated process.

§4.9.1 · Chain of custody

Every release is recorded permanently in the Record's chain of custody with date, recipient, scope, and authorising staff member. That log is never purged.

§4.9.2 · Annual reporting

Operator publishes annually the number of agency requests received, granted, refused, and deferred, and the number of subpoenas received, complied with, and resisted. No identifying detail is published.

§4.10.1

No fee is charged to a verified agency.

§5.1.1

At least one photograph is required. You may attach up to five image files and two document files per report, each no larger than 10 MB. Accepted formats are stated in the submission interface.

§5.2.1 · Ownership retained

You retain all right, title and interest in Evidence you submit.

§5.2.2 · Grant

You grant Operator a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to store, reproduce, and display Evidence solely to (a) conduct Screening, (b) make it available to Verified Organizations for a placement decision, and (c) include it in a records package released to a verified agency.

§5.2.3 · Limits of grant

The licence extends to no other use. Operator will not publish Evidence, use it in fundraising, advocacy, or social media, or license it onward. The licence terminates when the associated Record is purged.

§5.3

You represent and warrant that:

1. you own or hold sufficient rights to grant the licence at §5.2;
2. no item of Evidence was obtained by trespass, unauthorised entry, or unauthorised access to any premises, device, or account;
3. any audio or audiovisual recording was made with the consent required by the law of the jurisdiction in which it was made — Louisiana permits recording with the consent of one party, but many states require the consent of everyone recorded, and a recording made without it is unlawfully obtained wherever it is later sent; and
4. submission infringes no copyright, privacy, publicity, or confidentiality right of any person.

§5.4

You must not submit:

1. any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a minor;
2. any image in which a minor is identifiable;
3. medical, financial, or identity records of any person other than yourself;
4. full residential addresses, Social Security numbers, financial account numbers, vehicle registration numbers, or comparable identifiers;
5. any recording obtained in breach of §5.3(c);
6. content depicting violence against a person rather than an animal, which should be reported to law enforcement; or
7. malicious code or content designed to compromise Operator's systems.

§5.5.1

Geolocation and device metadata embedded in image files is stripped at intake, before the file is stored, so that the geographic rounding required by §1.11.2 of the Terms is not defeated by coordinates travelling inside a file later disclosed to a Verified Organization or an agency.

§5.6.1

Where Operator becomes aware of apparent content within §5.4(a), it will preserve the content and associated data without further review, restrict all access, and report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and to law enforcement as required by law.

§5.6.2 · No independent review

Staff must not view, copy, forward, or discuss such content beyond what is strictly necessary to identify and escalate it.

§5.7.1

Operator computes a cryptographic hash (SHA-256) of each file at intake and retains it, enabling later demonstration that the file is unaltered since it was received. Evidence is stored in private buckets, encrypted at rest, and served only through short-lived authenticated links.

§5.8.1 · Copyright

Notices of claimed copyright infringement under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3) may be sent to support@petoffenders.org, attention Records Lead. Operator has not registered a designated agent with the U.S. Copyright Office and does not claim the § 512 safe harbour; this clause states a channel, not a status.

§5.8.2 · Privacy takedown

Any person may request removal or restriction of Evidence containing their personal information by writing to intake@petoffenders.org. Operator restricts access pending review.

§5.8.3 · Discretionary removal

Operator may remove or restrict any Evidence at any time for any reason.

§5.9.1

Evidence is retained for as long as the Record it belongs to. A Tier 1 Record and all of its Evidence expire twenty-four months after filing unless corroboration raises the Record to Tier 2, and are then purged. See §1.10 of the Terms and the retention schedule in the Privacy Policy.