Last updated: September 17, 2026

DeFlock Metro Detroit exists because we believe people should have more control over information about their lives.

We try to apply that same principle to this website.

Collect as little as we reasonably need. Use it only for the purpose people gave it to us. Keep it only as long as it remains useful. Do not turn supporters into a marketing database.

Information you choose to give us

Most of this website can be used without providing personal information.

If you choose to join, contact us, volunteer, submit information, register for an event or participate in another activity, we may ask for limited information such as:

  • a name, display name or alias;
  • email address;
  • municipality or general area;
  • Matrix ID for member-community access;
  • participation interests;
  • information you include in a message;
  • records, documents, photographs or other material you intentionally submit;
  • and information needed to coordinate a task you voluntarily take on.

Different activities may require different information.

We try not to ask for information simply because a form could collect it.

Information created when you use the website

Like nearly every website, the infrastructure that delivers this site must process limited technical information when your browser connects.

That can include IP address, browser type, device information, requested page, date and time, basic security information and technical logs needed to operate, protect and troubleshoot the site. Cloudflare also uses network and browser/security signals to operate Turnstile and our rate limits.

Our Contact, Join and event-signup form code does not copy your connecting IP address into your form submission or email it to us.

Hosting and infrastructure providers may process technical connection information as part of providing their services. We do not intend to use ordinary access logs to build advertising profiles.

Encrypted Contact, Join and event-signup forms

Our current Contact, Join and event-signup forms encrypt the readable personal form contents in your browser using DeFlock Metro Detroit’s public OpenPGP key before the form payload is submitted.

The encrypted payload can include your name or alias, email address, municipality, Matrix ID, message or participation interests, event membership answer, supporting URL and an optional public OpenPGP key you choose to provide for encrypted replies.

Our Cloudflare Pages Function receives the encrypted PGP block along with the Turnstile token and a non-sensitive spam-trap field. Event signups also send the public event slug, title, date and time outside the ciphertext so the delivery email can be labeled correctly. After Turnstile validation, the encrypted block is forwarded through Resend to our Proton mailbox. Contact and Join submissions use a generic subject. Event-signup subjects contain only the already-public event title, date and time so registrations can be sorted without exposing attendee details. We do not put the visitor’s email address into the outbound email’s Reply-To header.

This protects the contents of the form message from the ordinary form-delivery intermediaries. It does not make the visitor anonymous. Cloudflare and other network providers still necessarily handle technical connection information needed to deliver and protect the service.

For more detail, read How Our Encrypted Forms Work.

Cookies, analytics and similar technology

Our goal is to keep tracking on the public site to a minimum.

We do not use third-party behavioral advertising, remarketing or advertising-personalization trackers.

Cloudflare Web Analytics

We use Cloudflare Web Analytics for privacy-focused aggregate traffic and performance measurement. Cloudflare states that this service does not collect or use visitors’ personal data, does not use cookies or localStorage for usage metrics, and does not track individual users across Cloudflare customer sites.

Cloudflare Web Analytics is separate from Cloudflare’s hosting, security, Turnstile and rate-limiting functions. Those infrastructure and security services still necessarily process technical connection information needed to deliver and protect the site and may use limited technical mechanisms where necessary for those functions.

We do not intentionally send Contact, Join or event-signup form contents, names, email addresses, Matrix IDs, form-entered municipalities, messages or uploaded OpenPGP keys to Cloudflare Web Analytics.

Read Cloudflare’s Web Analytics documentation →

Optional Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 does not load until you explicitly choose Allow analytics in the site’s analytics notice. If you choose No thanks, we do not send site-use analytics to Google. You can change your choice at any time using Analytics choices in the site footer.

If your browser sends a Global Privacy Control signal and you have not already made an analytics choice on this site, we treat analytics as declined. Your browser’s own privacy protections may also block Google independently of the choice you make on this site.

When enabled, Google Analytics helps us understand which pages people use, how far pages are read, which downloadable files are useful, which external links are followed, and whether the Contact, Join and event-signup forms are started and successfully submitted. We use that information to improve the site and decide where to spend our time and resources.

We deliberately limit what is sent. We do not send Google the contents of Contact, Join or event-signup forms, names, email addresses, Matrix IDs, municipalities entered into forms, messages, uploaded OpenPGP keys, or other personal information a visitor types into those forms. Event analytics may include the public event slug so we can tell which event page produced a form start or successful signup. Our page analytics use paths without query strings and do not include form-field values.

Advertising and personalization features are disabled in our Google tag. We do not use Google Signals, remarketing, advertising personalization or user-provided-data features for this site.

Google necessarily receives network information when an analytics request is delivered. Google states that Google Analytics 4 uses IP addresses transiently for functions such as coarse geolocation and then discards them rather than logging or storing individual IP addresses. We do not add visitor IP addresses to our Analytics events.

Your analytics choice is stored locally in your browser so we can remember it. We currently ask again after approximately 180 days. If analytics is allowed, Google Analytics may set first-party analytics cookies. Our current configuration sets those cookies to expire after approximately 90 days from their initial creation rather than continually extending them on every visit.

We retain event-level Google Analytics data for up to 14 months. Aggregated reporting may remain available for longer under Google’s standard Analytics reporting system.

Read Google’s Analytics privacy and data-safeguard information →

If we add a feature that materially changes visitor tracking, we will update this policy to explain it.

Why we use information

Information submitted to DeFlock Metro Detroit may be used to:

  • respond to questions;
  • provide member-community access and requested information;
  • provide local campaign updates through the private member community;
  • coordinate volunteer work;
  • connect people with relevant local tasks;
  • avoid unnecessary duplicate research or records requests;
  • organize events;
  • review submitted records and sources;
  • maintain municipal research;
  • protect the site and participants from abuse;
  • investigate security problems;
  • and comply with legitimate legal obligations.

We do not collect information so we can quietly find unrelated ways to market to people later.

Private member community

DeFlock Metro Detroit uses a private, invite-only Matrix community, typically accessed through the Element client, as the primary place for member updates, event coordination, local organizing and discussion. We do not currently operate a general supporter email newsletter.

The Join form asks for a Matrix ID so we can invite the correct account after a join request is reviewed. A Matrix ID and display name are visible to people who share rooms with you. Matrix and Element are separate services with their own infrastructure, terms and privacy practices.

Private Matrix rooms can use end-to-end encryption for message content. That does not make participation anonymous or eliminate service metadata. Members should use a display name they are comfortable sharing with other participants and should keep passwords, recovery keys and access tokens private.

Email may still be used when necessary for form delivery, troubleshooting, direct follow-up or a specific operational matter, but the private member community is the normal channel for ongoing member updates and event information.

We do not sell supporter information.

We do not sell or rent supporter lists.

We do not provide member information to commercial advertisers so they can market unrelated products.

We do not intend to build advertising profiles based on campaign participation.

We do not use DeFlock Metro Detroit supporter information to market unrelated businesses, political candidates or causes.

When information may be shared

We use outside services for website hosting, security, aggregate site analytics, optional consent-based analytics and email delivery. Our current Contact, Join and event-signup forms use Cloudflare Pages Functions and Cloudflare Turnstile, and encrypted messages are relayed to our Proton mailbox through Resend. Member communication and private event coordination use Matrix/Element after an approved member is invited.

Turnstile processes browser and security signals needed to distinguish legitimate visitors from automated traffic. Cloudflare necessarily handles technical connection information to deliver and protect the site. After browser-side encryption, our form handler and Resend receive the encrypted PGP message rather than the readable personal form fields. Event-signup delivery also exposes the public event title, date and time in the email subject.

We do not intentionally write ordinary form submissions to a DeFlock Metro Detroit website database, CRM, KV store or analytics profile.

We may also share information when you ask or authorize us to, when necessary to complete a requested task, when reasonably necessary to investigate abuse or protect security, or when legally required through valid process applicable to us.

We do not promise that information or metadata can never be legally obtained.

Information submitted for research

If you submit public records, contracts, photographs, government documents, meeting information or research, we may use that material in our research and public education work.

That can include updating municipality pages, verifying facts, creating summaries, identifying deadlines, supporting public statements and sharing useful public-government records with the wider DeFlock community where appropriate.

Submitting a government document does not automatically mean every piece of unrelated personal information inside it will be republished.

Information about other people

Please be thoughtful before submitting somebody else’s personal information.

We generally do not need private home addresses, personal telephone numbers, family information, private email addresses, medical information or unrelated personal details about government employees, residents or other individuals.

If information is not relevant to documenting the surveillance issue, there is usually no reason for us to collect it.

Public participation is different from private participation

Speaking at a government meeting, signing a public petition, filing a public-record request or communicating directly with a government body may create public records.

DeFlock Metro Detroit cannot control how a government agency handles information you submit directly to it.

Before participating in a public-government process, consider what information is required and what may become public.

Data retention

We try to keep personal information only as long as it remains reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected.

A general contact message may no longer be useful after it is resolved. An active member or volunteer record may remain useful while the person participates. Research submissions may need to be retained longer to preserve sourcing and project history.

Technical infrastructure providers may retain security or operational logs according to their own systems and policies. Our code does not intentionally add the visitor’s IP address to the form message.

Resend may retain the email transaction according to its service policies, but the body we send through Resend is the OpenPGP ciphertext rather than the readable form contents. Our Proton mailbox may retain the decrypted message until we delete it or while it remains useful for the purpose for which it was submitted.

Security

We take reasonable steps to reduce unnecessary exposure of information we control.

That includes minimizing collection, limiting access, strong authentication, separating public and private information, restricting administration, using browser-side OpenPGP encryption for our public forms and choosing appropriate providers.

No website, encryption system, email service, cloud provider or online device can guarantee perfect security. Browser-side encryption also depends on the integrity of the website code delivered to the visitor. A compromised device or compromised website could undermine protections before encryption occurs.

Encryption is not anonymity

Our Contact, Join and event-signup messages are encrypted in the browser, but they should not be assumed to be anonymous.

Network and security infrastructure still handles technical metadata needed to deliver the connection, and endpoint security matters. DeFlock Metro Detroit does not currently claim to operate an anonymous whistleblower or secure-drop service.

If you use Proton Mail, continuing the conversation from Proton to Proton provides the easiest automatic end-to-end encrypted email path. If you use another provider and have an OpenPGP key pair, you can optionally include your public key in the encrypted form submission so we can configure encrypted replies.

Never send us your private encryption key.

Read How Our Encrypted Forms Work for the details and limitations.

Children

DeFlock Metro Detroit is primarily intended for adults participating in civic advocacy and community research.

We do not knowingly seek to build profiles of children or collect children’s personal information for marketing.

This site links to government websites, news organizations, DeFlock resources, court materials, vendors, research organizations, maps and other services. It also links to Element and Matrix documentation because our private member community uses that ecosystem.

Our dedicated Videos page at /resources/videos/ embeds videos using YouTube’s youtube-nocookie.com privacy-enhanced player. Loading that page may still cause your browser to contact YouTube or Google and disclose ordinary technical connection information. Playing or interacting with a video may allow YouTube to use cookies or browser storage under its own policies. The general Resources page does not load the video players. These video embeds are separate from our optional Google Analytics choice.

Those sites have their own privacy practices.

Following an external link or using third-party content can cause your browser to communicate directly with that provider. Those providers have their own privacy practices.

Requests about information you provided

If you previously provided personal information directly to us and want to ask about updating or deleting it, contact us.

We will make a reasonable effort to address appropriate requests involving information we control.

There may be reasons to retain particular records, including project history, security, legal needs or information already incorporated into public-government records.

We cannot delete information from systems controlled by independent government agencies, news organizations or other third parties.

Changes to this policy

Our tools and project structure may change.

If our information practices materially change, this policy should change too.

We do not want a privacy policy that says one thing while the website quietly does another.

Our basic rule

DeFlock Metro Detroit is asking governments to question whether they really need to collect so much information about ordinary people.

We should ask ourselves the same question.

If we do not reasonably need the information, our preference is not to collect it.

Our current public Contact, Join and event-signup forms encrypt the readable personal message contents in the visitor’s browser before submitting ciphertext to our server-side form endpoints. Accepted ciphertext is sent through Resend to our Proton mailbox. We do not intentionally create a separate website database record, RSVP database or CRM contact from an ordinary form submission, and our form code does not copy the visitor’s IP address into the message. If the technology we use changes materially, we update this policy to match what the site actually does.