Policy
Acceptable Use Policy
This policy forms part of the Terms of Service. It applies to every agency using Leopard Dispatch and to every Member acting through it.
1The short version
Use it to run your operation. Do not use it to follow people around, to build a file on somebody, to break into anything, or to do anything you would not want to explain to a judge or a journalist.
2Not for emergencies
Leopard Dispatch must not be used for emergency dispatch, life-safety operations, or anything covered by the restriction in section 3 of the Terms of Service. This is the most important rule in this policy and it is not negotiable.
3Use it for your own operation
The Service is licensed to one agency for its own operational use. You must not:
- resell, sublicense, rent or share access with anyone who is not a Member of your agency;
- use it as a back end for a different product, or expose its data through another service;
- create accounts for people who do not work for or with your agency;
- share one callsign among several people;
- open a new agency account to avoid an unpaid balance, or to get around a suspension or termination of an existing one.
4Surveillance and people data
The Service records where your officers are and lets you record details of the public. Both are capable of misuse, so the limits are explicit. You must not use Leopard Dispatch to:
- Track a person outside your legitimate operation. Officer positions are for deploying and protecting officers on duty. Using them to monitor an individual's personal movements, to check up on someone off duty, or for any purpose unconnected to the work is prohibited.
- Build a dossier on an individual. The people and vehicle records exist to document a call. Compiling them into a profile of a person's movements, habits or associations is prohibited.
- Operate an automated plate reading or bulk collection programme. Plate fields are for recording the vehicle involved in a call. Systematically entering plates that are not connected to a call — sweeping a lot to log every vehicle present, for example — is prohibited.
- Target people on protected characteristics. Recording or deploying on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age or any other protected characteristic, except where a description is genuinely relevant to a specific call, is prohibited.
- Harass, stalk, intimidate or retaliate against any person, including your own Members.
- Record information you have no right to record, or keep it beyond what your purpose and the law allow.
5Telling your people
If you record your Members' positions, you are responsible for giving them whatever notice the law where you operate requires — in several US states that means written notice before tracking begins, and in California it also means limiting tracking to working hours and to what is strictly necessary for the job. Our location notice is written to be handed to officers, but adopting it is your decision and confirming it is sufficient is your responsibility.
6Security
You must not:
- attempt to access another agency's data, or any account you were not given;
- probe, scan or test the Service's security without our prior written permission, except as permitted by section 8;
- circumvent or attempt to circumvent authentication, permission rules or rate limits;
- upload malicious code, or use the Service to distribute it;
- scrape the Service, or access it through automated means other than the interfaces we provide;
- place unreasonable load on the Service or on the third-party map, routing and address services it depends on;
- reverse engineer the Service except where that right cannot lawfully be excluded.
7Content
Do not put into the Service anything unlawful, defamatory, or infringing of someone else's rights. Remember that notes fields are read by colleagues and may end up in a disclosure request, a public-records response, or a courtroom. Write them accordingly.
8Reporting a vulnerability
If you find a security flaw, tell us at contact@leopardmfg.com. We will not pursue legal action against anyone who reports a flaw in good faith, provided you: stop as soon as you have confirmed it, access only data that is your own, do not modify or destroy anything, do not degrade the Service for others, and give us reasonable time to fix it before telling anyone else. We would much rather hear it from you.
9What happens if this is breached
Depending on what happened and how serious it is, we may contact you to sort it out, require you to stop, suspend an individual Member's access, suspend the agency's account, or terminate the agreement. Where there is a credible risk of harm to a person we may act immediately and without notice, as section 14 of the Terms allows. Where the law requires us to report something, we will.
10Telling us about a problem
If you believe someone is using Leopard Dispatch in breach of this policy, write to contact@leopardmfg.com with enough detail for us to look into it.