Legal
Privacy Policy
Effective date: April 2025
Short version: First Reading collects no personal data, has no accounts, and stores nothing about you. Name and email you enter on the contact page live only in your browser tab and disappear when you navigate away.
No accounts or authentication
First Reading has no user accounts, no login, no registration, and no authentication of any kind. You do not need to identify yourself to use this tool. No user profile is created, stored, or associated with your activity.
Cookies and session state
First Reading does not set tracking cookies or advertising cookies. The only browser storage used is minimal session-level state required for navigation (for example, remembering which bill you were viewing so the back button works correctly). This state is not sent to any server and is cleared when your browser session ends.
Name and email on the contact page
The contact page asks for your name and email address to pre-fill the subject line of an email to an Oklahoma legislator. This information:
- Exists only in your browser’s component state — it is never sent to First Reading’s servers.
- Is cleared automatically when you navigate away from the contact page.
- Is never logged, stored, or transmitted except as part of the mailto link you choose to open.
When you click “Contact this official,” your device opens your own email client with a pre-addressed message. First Reading has no access to that email or any message you send.
Analytics
First Reading does not use any analytics service that identifies individual users. No heatmaps, no session recording, no fingerprinting, no cross-site tracking. Aggregate, anonymous page-view counts may be collected by the hosting platform (Vercel) solely for infrastructure purposes — this data is not used to identify or profile users.
Third-party API calls
First Reading uses several third-party services to retrieve legislative data and generate summaries:
- Open States API — Bill data is fetched server-side. Your IP address or location is not transmitted to Open States.
- Groq AI — Bill text is sent to Groq to generate plain-language summaries and Socratic questions. No personally identifiable information is included in these requests.
- Google Custom Search / Brave Search — Search queries (bill titles and keywords) are sent server-side to surface research sources. No user data is appended to these queries.
All third-party API calls are made from First Reading’s server, not from your browser. Your device does not contact these services directly.
Student data and FERPA/COPPA
Because First Reading collects no user data and requires no accounts, it does not process any student education records under FERPA, and it does not collect personal information from users under 13 as defined by COPPA. Teachers can use this tool with students without creating data-sharing agreements.
Questions about this policy
This tool is open source. You can review all data handling in the source code directly. If you have questions about this privacy policy or how First Reading handles data, contact Broadsheet Educational Tools at broadsheet.education.