API Acceptable-Use Policy

The OpenWatch API is designed to support legitimate intelligence research, journalism, and professional analysis. Approved use cases include:

• Academic research, investigative journalism, and policy analysis using geopolitical signal data.
• Professional risk analysis, corporate due diligence, and country-risk monitoring for business operations.
• Integration into internal tools, dashboards, and automated alerting systems within your organisation.
• Building derivative intelligence products or publications that include proper attribution to OpenWatch as the underlying data source.

Access to the API is a privilege, not a right. OpenWatch reserves the authority to deny or revoke access for any use that conflicts with this policy, regardless of whether it is explicitly listed below.

The following uses are strictly prohibited. Engaging in any of them will result in immediate key revocation and may expose you to legal liability:

• Individual surveillance. Using signal data to target, surveil, profile, track, or build dossiers on specific private individuals who are not acting in a public or official capacity.
• Automated trading without human review. Feeding OpenWatch signals directly into algorithmic or automated trading systems without human oversight and without explicit written disclosure to your counterparties that OSINT-derived data is informing trade decisions.
• Resale of raw signal data. Scraping, mirroring, bulk-downloading, or redistributing raw signal records for commercial resale or as a competing data product, without a written commercial license from OpenWatch.
• AI and ML model training.Using OpenWatch API output to train, fine-tune, or evaluate machine-learning models — including large language models, classifiers, and embedding models — without a separate written license.
• Sanctioned jurisdictions. Access from, or on behalf of entities in, jurisdictions subject to comprehensive U.S. OFAC sanctions: Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, and Russia. This mirrors the geo-block applied to the OpenWatch platform itself.
• Rate-limit circumvention. Attempting to evade rate limits by operating multiple API keys, rotating proxy accounts, shared-key pools, or any other mechanism designed to exceed the limits of your tier.
• Unlawful use. Any use that violates applicable law in your jurisdiction, including data-protection law, export-control law, or laws governing surveillance and interception.

OpenWatch data is assembled from hundreds of public OSINT sources and enriched with AI-assisted structuring. If you publish work that is materially based on or derived from OpenWatch API output, you must credit the source.

• Any published report, article, dataset, or media product that uses OpenWatch data must include the attribution: “Intelligence sourced from OpenWatch (openwatch.io)”.
• Direct embedding of OpenWatch data in public-facing dashboards, websites, or published reports requires the attribution to be visible to end users — it may not be buried in footnotes or metadata that a typical reader would not encounter.
• Attribution for internal-only tools is encouraged but not required, provided the tool is not published or shared externally.

Rate limits exist to ensure fair access and platform stability for all users. Current limits by tier:

• Free tier: 60 requests per minute; 10,000 requests per day.
• Analyst tier: 300 requests per minute; 100,000 requests per day.

Exceeding your tier limits will trigger a temporary key suspension for the remainder of the rate-limit window. Repeated or sustained limit violations — including patterns that suggest deliberate scraping rather than incidental spikes — will result in permanent key revocation without refund of any paid subscription fees.

If your use case legitimately requires higher throughput, contact api@openwatch.io to discuss an enterprise arrangement before exceeding your tier limits.

OpenWatch intelligence is derived from public OSINT sources (news wires, government feeds, RSS, social media archives, regulatory filings, and similar) and processed through AI-assisted enrichment pipelines. This means:

• Signals may contain errors, omissions, translation artifacts, or reflect bias present in the underlying source. OpenWatch does not independently verify every signal.
• Scores, threat assessments, and country indices are model outputs. They reflect patterns in the ingested data, not ground truth. They will sometimes be wrong.
• Data latency varies by source. Some signals may appear hours after the underlying event. Do not rely on OpenWatch as a real-time alerting system for safety-critical decisions.

You bear sole responsibility for decisions made using OpenWatch data. OpenWatch is not a substitute for professional intelligence analysis, licensed financial advice, legal counsel, or any other regulated advisory service. To the maximum extent permitted by law, OpenWatch and its operators disclaim all liability for losses arising from your reliance on API output.

OpenWatch actively monitors API usage patterns for policy violations, abuse signals, and anomalous consumption. Enforcement actions include:

• First violation: API key revocation without refund of any subscription fees for the current billing period.
• Repeat or severe violations: Permanent account termination and blocking of associated email domains and IP ranges.
• Legal referral: Where violations involve unlawful surveillance, export-control breaches, or commercial data theft, OpenWatch reserves the right to refer the matter to relevant authorities.

OpenWatch reserves the right to modify this policy at any time with 30 days’ notice via email to the address associated with your API key. Continued use of the API after the notice period constitutes acceptance of the revised policy. For material changes that restrict existing permitted uses, you may terminate your account within the notice period for a pro-rata refund.

API policy questions: api@openwatch.io. For general legal inquiries, see our Terms of Use or contact legal@openwatch.io.