Referrals to other programs

Investigators can refer your tip to the program that serves the right area. Sometimes a tip belongs with a different program: the crime happened somewhere else, or another agency is the one that can act on it. A referral sends a copy of the tip to that program. The things that connect you to your tip stay where you submitted it.

How a referral works

A referral is never automatic and never public. An investigator at your program decides to send it, and an investigator at the receiving program agrees to take it before your tip moves. There is no public directory of tips or programs.

To decide, the receiving program first sees a short description of the tip: its category, an approximate date, and whether files are attached. None of what you wrote moves until an investigator there agrees to take it.

Before the copy travels, it is re-encrypted so only the receiving program’s investigators can read it. The keys that protect your tip at your program stay at your program. The receiving program stores what you wrote without unlocking it.

Any files you attached are unlocked once when they arrive, to re-seal them under the receiving program’s keys. Every read at the receiving program, by a person or by automatic triage, is recorded.

What stays with your program

A referral carries what you reported, never who you are on the platform. Your tip code, your passphrase, and your messages stay with the program where you submitted. The receiving program gets none of them.

Your tip code and passphrase keep working where you submitted, even after a referral. They do not work anywhere else. You check your tip the same way as before.

The honest limits

A referral is a decision made by investigators at both programs. You do not request or approve it.

The protections above cover the things that connect you to your tip, not the words inside it. What you wrote travels with the referral. If your wording includes details that could point to you, those details travel inside the copy.

These protections last as long as your tip does, not forever. Your tip code and messages stay with your program for as long as that program keeps the tip. How long tips are kept is covered in Retention.

Related

• Encryption: how tips are sealed and who can read them.
• Operator accountability: how reads of a tip are recorded.
• Retention: how long tips are kept.

If this page does not answer your question, contact the program where you submitted your tip.