Legal

Law Enforcement and Government Requests Policy

How Advotecate handles law enforcement and government requests while protecting user privacy, civil liberties, and lawful political activity.

Last updated: October 8, 2026

Advotecate is a platform built to support lawful political participation, advocacy, organizing, and fundraising. We take user privacy and civil liberties seriously. We do not voluntarily assist efforts to identify, monitor, suppress, or detain individuals or groups based solely on lawful political speech, political association, political organizing, issue advocacy, campaign participation, or other protected civic activity.

We will scrutinize all government and law enforcement requests carefully. Unless legally required to do so, Advotecate will not provide user information for requests that appear aimed at facilitating political repression, retaliation, intimidation, or arrest related to lawful political activity. We may reject, narrow, or legally challenge requests that are invalid, overbroad, or directed at protected political activity, and we will not voluntarily comply except where required by binding legal process or necessary to prevent imminent serious harm.

1. Request Requirements

Requests must be sent from an official government email address and should include, where applicable:

The identity of the requesting agency and the individual making the request.
The legal authority or basis for the request.
A copy of the subpoena, warrant, court order, or other legal process relied upon, signed where the law requires it.
The specific account, content, or category of data sought.
A sufficiently narrow date range and scope.
For emergency requests, a clear explanation of the nature of the emergency and why immediate disclosure is necessary.

Sending a request to Advotecate does not waive objections to jurisdiction, service, validity, scope, or enforceability. Informal requests do not substitute for legally sufficient process.

2. Preservation Requests

We may preserve specifically identified account records in response to a valid preservation request made under applicable law. Requests must identify the account and records to preserve, state the legal authority, and specify the requested preservation period. Preservation does not authorize disclosure; separate valid legal process is required before preserved information is produced.

3. Review of Legal Process

We review requests for legal sufficiency, jurisdiction, scope, and consistency with constitutional, statutory, and civil liberties protections. We may reject, seek to narrow, or challenge requests that appear to be:

invalid,
overbroad,
unsupported by adequate legal authority,
inconsistent with applicable law, or
directed at lawful political speech, association, advocacy, organizing, fundraising, or participation rather than genuine criminal conduct.

Advotecate does not voluntarily cooperate with requests whose apparent purpose is to facilitate political surveillance, intimidation, retaliation, or arrest for protected political activity. We will challenge such requests where we reasonably believe there is a legal basis to do so, unless and until compliance is required by a binding court order or other mandatory legal obligation.

4. Emergency Requests

Advotecate may disclose information without ordinary legal process only when we reasonably believe disclosure is necessary to prevent imminent death, serious physical injury, child exploitation, or another comparably grave and imminent danger to a person.

Emergency requests based solely on political activity, protest activity, advocacy, campaign participation, controversial viewpoints, or alleged reputational harm will not be treated as qualifying emergencies absent specific facts showing imminent and serious criminal harm to a person.

Advotecate is not a proper channel for generalized intelligence gathering, protest monitoring, or pretextual emergency requests.

Emergency requests must come from an authenticated government official and describe the specific facts, people at risk, information sought, and why the information is necessary to address the emergency. Submission does not guarantee disclosure.

5. Criminal Conduct Versus Political Activity

Advotecate distinguishes between protected political activity and genuine criminal threats or acts of harm.

We may respond to lawful requests concerning specific and credible evidence of:

Threats of violence,
Stalking,
Targeted harassment,
Doxxing intended to facilitate harm,
Child exploitation,
Fraud, extortion, or other serious criminal conduct, or
Imminent plans to cause physical injury or substantial property destruction.

We will not treat lawful dissent, organizing, criticism of public officials, campaign activity, issue advocacy, protest participation, or controversial political speech, standing alone, as a basis for voluntary disclosure.

6. User Notice

Where legally permitted and operationally appropriate, Advotecate may notify affected users before disclosing their information so they may seek legal relief. We may delay or withhold notice when notice is prohibited by law, ordered by a court, or would create a substantial risk of death, serious physical injury, flight from prosecution for a serious violent crime, or destruction of evidence in connection with a legally valid investigation.

7. Transparency and Minimization

When Advotecate discloses information, we will seek to limit production to the specific information legally required or necessary under the circumstances. Where appropriate, we may publish aggregate transparency information about the volume and type of requests received, subject to legal restrictions.