Privacy
Names of private people are withheld for 75 years in San Francisco and 92 years in Vancouver.
Rule
Names of private people are withheld for 75 years in San Francisco and 92 years in Vancouver (table privacy_rules). The rule applies to everything published: the SQLite file, the Parquet files, the JSON documents and this site, including names inside the one-line summaries written by a model. Raw quotes of embargoed records are not published.
How it is applied
- Each table's free-text columns of rows with a year are filtered before export (
41_public_scrub.py). The build stops if a name pattern is left. - Public officials acting in office (supervisors, mayors) are named. Their roster is in
persons. - Rows from 1952 on that carry a quote are marked
privacy_flag = may_name_private_person_after_1950.
Known gaps
- The name finder is a pattern with a list of first names. It can miss a lone surname ("Smith gets a permit") and can hide some phrases that begin with a first name.
- The earlier staging copies (v0.1, v0.2) showed private names and were withdrawn on 14 October 2026. They are not republished.
Requests
To ask for a record to be withheld or corrected, see Corrections and takedown.