Privacy Policy
Effective date: September 18th, 2026
Last updated: September 18th, 2026
1. Who we are
The Capitol Ledger ("Capitol Ledger", "we", "us") is an independent civic transparency project operated by Kartik Tyagi at capitolledger.com.
For any privacy question or request, contact: support@thecapitolledger.com
We are a small independent project. We do not sell personal data, we do not run advertising, and we do not use your data to build advertising or marketing profiles.
2. The short version
Capitol Ledger is a read-only publication. There are no user accounts and nothing to sign up for. You can read everything on the site without telling us who you are, and we make no attempt to identify you.
The only way we receive personal information from you is if you choose to send it, through our feedback form or by emailing us. Everything else we collect is aggregate and anonymous. Our database holds congressional documents and our analysis of them; it holds nothing about you.
3. Information we collect
3.1 Feedback form submissions
Our feedback form is provided by Formspree, a third-party form service. When you submit the form, we collect:
- your name
- your email address
- the content of your message
Formspree also receives technical metadata alongside your submission, which may include your IP address and browser information, and uses it for delivery and abuse prevention. This is Formspree's processing under their own privacy policy, which you can read at https://formspree.io/legal/privacy-policy/. We do not use a CAPTCHA on this form, so no CAPTCHA provider receives your data.
Your submission is stored on Formspree's servers and forwarded to us. We use it to read and act on your feedback, to correct errors you report, and to reply to you. We do not add you to any mailing list, we do not use your address for marketing, and we do not share it with anyone.
Please don't include sensitive personal information in the form. For anything concerning your personal data, contact us at support@thecapitolledger.com instead. That reaches us directly and does not pass through Formspree.
3.2 Analytics
We use Vercel Web Analytics to understand how the site is used. It records:
- pages viewed
- the country the request came from
- the referring source (for example, whether you arrived from Google, Facebook, or a direct link)
- general device and browser type
Vercel Web Analytics is designed to be privacy-preserving. It does not set tracking cookies and does not create a persistent identifier that follows you across sites or sessions. We see aggregate patterns (how many people read a given article, roughly where in the world they are, how they found us) rather than individual browsing histories. We cannot use it to identify you.
We also use Vercel Speed Insights to measure how quickly pages load. It records page performance measurements (such as load and rendering times) along with the page visited and general device, browser, and connection type. Like Web Analytics, it is cookieless, does not identify you, and is reported to us only in aggregate.
3.3 Server logs
Our hosting and backend providers automatically log technical request data, including IP addresses, timestamps, and user agent strings. These logs exist for security, abuse prevention, and debugging, and are retained only for a short period under our providers' defaults. We do not use them to track individuals and we do not combine them with anything else.
3.4 Cookies
We do not use advertising, marketing, or cross-site tracking cookies, and we do not use cookies to build a profile of you. Our analytics is cookieless.
Our hosting provider may set strictly necessary cookies for security and load balancing. Because we use only strictly necessary cookies, we do not display a cookie banner. If we ever add anything beyond that, this policy will be updated and consent obtained first.
If you switch between light and dark mode, the site remembers your choice in your browser's local storage. That setting stays on your device, is never sent to us, and you can clear it at any time through your browser settings.
3.5 What we do not collect
There are no user accounts, so we do not collect names, email addresses, passwords, or profile information for the purpose of authentication. We do not take payments or donations, so we never receive payment information. We do not ask for or knowingly collect any special category data such as health, biometric, religious, or political affiliation information.
4. Why we process your information, and our legal basis
If you are in the UK, EU, or another region with similar law, these are our purposes and legal bases:
| What we do | Why | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Publish and serve the site | Core service | Legitimate interests |
| Read and act on feedback submissions | You chose to contact us | Legitimate interests |
| Reply to you, if you gave us an address | You asked for a response | Legitimate interests |
| Aggregate analytics | Understand what's useful and improve the site | Legitimate interests |
| Security, abuse prevention, and rate limiting | Keep the service available and safe | Legitimate interests |
We do not use your data for automated decision-making that produces legal effects for you.
5. AI processing
Capitol Ledger uses Google's Gemini models to analyse public congressional documents and produce the summaries you read on the site.
This processing operates on government documents, not on you. Your feedback submissions, your IP address, and your browsing activity are not sent to any AI model, and are not used to train any AI model.
For what this means about the reliability of what you read, see our Terms of Service.
6. Who we share information with
We do not sell your personal information and we do not share it for advertising. We disclose it only to the service providers we need to operate, and only for that purpose:
| Provider | Role | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Vercel Inc. | Website hosting and analytics | United States |
| Formspree, Inc. | Feedback form submissions | United States |
| Supabase Inc. | Database storage for published congressional content; holds no personal data about visitors | United States |
| Google Cloud Platform | Backend compute for our publishing pipeline | United States |
| Google LLC (Gemini API) | AI analysis of public government documents | United States |
We may also disclose information where we are legally required to, in response to a valid legal process, or where necessary to protect our rights, safety, or the integrity of the service. If the project is ever transferred to another operator, this data may transfer with it, and we will post notice before that happens.
7. International transfers
We operate from the United States and our providers are primarily in the United States. If you access the site from outside the United States, your information will be transferred to and processed in the United States, which may not offer the same level of data protection as your home jurisdiction.
Where required, these transfers rely on the Standard Contractual Clauses or equivalent safeguards in our providers' data processing terms.
8. How long we keep information
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Feedback submissions | Held in our Formspree account, subject to Formspree's retention settings; we delete submissions we no longer need and honour deletion requests |
| Email correspondence | 2 Years |
| Analytics | Aggregate only, retained per Vercel's default retention |
| Server logs | Short-term, per our providers' defaults (typically days to weeks) |
You can ask us to delete a feedback submission sooner. See below.
9. Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to:
- access the personal information we hold about you
- correct inaccurate information
- delete your information
- object to or restrict our processing
- receive a copy of your data in a portable format
- not be discriminated against for exercising these rights
To exercise any of these, email support@thecapitolledger.com. We will respond within 30 days.
In practice, the only personal information we are likely to hold about you is a feedback form submission or an email you sent us. If you want it deleted, tell us roughly when you sent it and what it was about, and we will remove it from our Formspree account and our inbox.
California residents: we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under the CCPA/CPRA, and we do not process sensitive personal information for the purpose of inferring characteristics.
UK/EU residents: you also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.
10. Security
We protect information using HTTPS in transit, encryption at rest through our providers, row-level security on our database, credentials held in a managed secret store rather than in code, and access limited to the operator of the project.
No system is perfectly secure. If we become aware of a breach affecting your personal information, we will notify you and any required regulator as the law requires.
11. Children
Capitol Ledger is a public information site and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13.
Reading the site requires nothing from you. Please do not use the feedback form if you are under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has sent us personal information, email support@thecapitolledger.com and we will delete it.
12. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy as the project develops. In particular, we expect to add user accounts and other features in future. The "last updated" date at the top will change, and any new category of data collection will be reflected here before that collection begins.