Imperium Systems Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

This policy is from Imperium Systems, LLC ("Imperium Systems", "we", "us"), 50 Virgilina Road, Suite A, Roxboro, NC 27573. We make Event Translator and the other apps that run on our Imperium One platform. If you have a question about this policy or your information, please write to support@imperiumsystems.net.

2. Whose information this policy covers

• Our customers and their people. An organization signs up for one of our apps. Its staff, volunteers and members who sign in have an Imperium One account. We call them account holders. People the organization invites, before they accept, are covered here too.
• Speakers. During a live event, whoever speaks into the organization's console microphone, and anyone else the microphone picks up.
• Listeners. People who open an organization's listening page on their own phone to read captions or hear a translation. Listeners are guests: they are not our customers, they do not have an account, and we do not ask who they are.
• Visitors to our websites.

For what an organization puts into our apps (its events, its transcripts, its glossary, its files), the organization decides what is saved and for how long, and we handle it on the organization's behalf. For account holders' sign-in details and for billing, we decide how the information is used.

3. What we collect about account holders, and why

What	Why
WhatYour email address, your name if you give it, your language and time zone	WhyTo sign you in, to confirm your email address with a code, to send invitations and account notices, and to show the app in your language and time
WhatYour password. You type it to sign in, and our server uses it at that moment; we store only a one-way scrambled form of it (Argon2id), never the password itself	WhyTo sign you in
WhatWhen you set a new password, the first 5 characters of a scrambled form of it are sent to the Have I Been Pwned service, which answers whether that password has appeared in known data breaches. The password itself and your email address are never sent	WhyTo stop passwords that criminals already know
WhatA sign-in cookie, which lasts up to two weeks, and a security cookie that protects forms	WhyTo keep you signed in and to protect your account. We use no advertising or tracking cookies
WhatWhich workspaces you belong to and your role in each; invitations, including the email address an invitation was sent to	WhyTo let the right people in, and only them
WhatA history of changes to many records (who changed what, and when), such as your account details, roles, settings and billing records	WhySo the organization and we can see what changed and put mistakes right
WhatFor the organization: its billing email, its address (for sales tax), its plan, its purchases, its credit and its usage. Card details are entered on Stripe's page and go to Stripe; we never see or store a card number	WhyTo bill the organization correctly and keep the records the law requires
WhatThe organization's events and their records: when each ran, its languages, its minutes and cost, which signed-in person's console was speaking and when, and how many phones listened in each language	WhyTo run the events, bill for them, and show the organization its history
WhatThe organization's transcripts, only if the organization has turned saving on (section 4)	WhyBecause the organization asked for them
WhatThe organization's glossary (names and terms it wants translated correctly) and files it uploads, such as its logo	WhyTo translate names correctly and show the organization's page
WhatTechnical records of requests to the app (the time, the kind of page, whether it worked, how long it took, and the network address the request came from)	WhyTo keep the service working and secure, and to investigate problems

4. What happens to speech during a live event

When the organization starts an event, its console sends the speaker's audio to our media server. From there, as it happens:

1. A speech-to-text provider turns the audio into text in the spoken language. It also receives the organization's glossary terms, so it hears names correctly, including names no one has spoken yet.
2. A translation provider turns that text into each language the event offers, using the organization's glossary and the last few sentences for context.
3. For languages the organization offers as spoken audio, a voice provider reads the translation aloud.
4. The captions and audio go to the phones listening in each language.

Which provider serves depends on the language. For most languages each stage has a main provider and a backup from a different company; for some languages only one company offers that stage, and it serves alone. Section 7 names every provider that may receive an organization's speech.

• We do not record audio. We keep no recording of the event.
• Transcripts are saved only when the organization chooses. Saving is an organization setting, on unless the organization turns it off, and the organization can turn it off for any event. When it is on, the start screen says so: "This event's transcript will be saved." Nothing is saved until the organization has chosen how long to keep transcripts (section 8), and nothing new is saved while the organization is at its storage limit.
• This setting controls our copy, not the providers' own short-term records. Some providers keep what they process for a short time for their own safety checks, as section 7 says.
• Speech often includes personal things: people's names, health news, children's names. If the organization saves transcripts, these are saved too. That is why saving is shown at the start and can be turned off for any event.
• Who may see transcripts. In the organization's workspace, its operators and administrators may read and download transcripts; only an administrator may delete them or change how long they are kept. A downloaded copy is outside our reach: deleting a transcript does not delete copies people have already downloaded.
• Machine translation can be wrong, names and specialized terms especially.

5. Listeners: what we keep about you

We designed the listening page to know as little about you as it can. We do not ask your name, email or phone number, and we do not give your phone an identifier that follows it from one visit or one organization to the next. We do receive your network (IP) address, as every website does, and the details below can, in some cases, relate to you as a person. This is the complete list:

Where	What	For how long
WhereOur database	WhatA count of phones listening in each language, each minute, and how many were turned away when the room was full. No identity and no network address	For how longKept with the organization's record of the event
WhereOur short-term memory store	WhatA random code for your phone's seat, made when you join, the language you chose, and the page's request codes. It is not linked to your name or to any earlier visit	For how longYour seat ends 80 seconds after it was made if your phone never connected, 11 minutes 20 seconds after your phone was last seen in the room, about 30 seconds after you close the page, or at once if you tap Leave. The stored codes are erased within 8 hours of the event's last activity
WhereOur short-term memory store	WhatYour network address, as a counter, to stop any one address from overloading the service	For how longOne to two minutes
WhereOur application logs	WhatNever your network address, and never the page address you opened. They record only that an organization's listening page was asked for, whether it worked and how long it took	For how longAs in section 8
WhereOur media server's connection log	WhatIf your phone's secure connection to our media server fails, the server's front door records your network address with the error	For how longRolls over by size; no fixed time limit
WhereOur error reports	WhatIf something fails on a listening page, the report names the organization's page but not the page address you opened or the event code	For how longAs in section 7, under Sentry
WhereYour phone	WhatIn that browser tab, until you close it: the event's access key, the event and connection details, your language and a record of the join in progress. On your phone, for that organization's page: your chosen language and caption size. What your phone sends us: the language you choose, the codes that prove your seat, and the bot check's answer	For how longUntil you close the tab; until you clear the site's data
WhereCookies	WhatNone. The organization's listening page sets no cookies of ours
WhereOur media server	WhatThe server that delivers captions and audio connects to your phone, so it sees your network address while you are connected. Its logs use the random seat code, not your name	For how longIts logs roll over by size; no fixed time limit
WhereCloudflare (bot check)	WhatEach time your phone takes a new seat, Cloudflare Turnstile runs an invisible check that you are a person, not a script. Cloudflare receives your network address (from your browser, and from us when we ask Cloudflare for the result) and technical details of your browser and connection. Cloudflare uses them to detect bots and, as the decision-maker for that purpose, to improve its bot detection. Cloudflare's Turnstile Privacy Addendum explains its part	For how longUnder Cloudflare's own terms
WhereOthers listening to the same event	WhatAnyone with the link can listen to a live or paused event, not only people in the building. Each phone in an event can see the random seat codes of the others and the language each is listening in. It cannot see a name, a phone number or a network address. In a small audience, "one phone listening in Farsi" could still point to a person, and we cannot control what other listeners note down	For how longWhile the event runs
WhereDigitalOcean (our host)	WhatThe organization's logo on the page is loaded from our file storage, so the storage service sees your network address when it sends the image	For how longUnder DigitalOcean's terms

The listening page never uses your phone's microphone or camera: a listener's connection can receive captions and audio, and cannot send any. The page runs no analytics or advertising scripts.

6. What we do not collect or do

• We do not record or keep audio of any event.
• We do not ask listeners who they are, and we do not track them from one visit to the next (section 5).
• We run no analytics, advertising or tracking scripts on our pages, and we set no advertising cookies.
• We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for advertising.
• We do not see or store card numbers.
• None of our speech, translation or voice providers may use the organization's audio, text or translations to train their models.

7. The companies that handle information for us

We use the companies below to run the service. Each receives only what its job needs.

Company	What it does for us	What it receives	Where	What it keeps
CompanyDigitalOcean	What it does for usHosts our servers, our database, our file storage and our encrypted backups	What it receivesEverything the platform stores (the database, files, encrypted backups) and every connection to our servers	WhereUnited States (New York)	What it keepsAs our host, what we store (section 8)
CompanyAssemblyAI	What it does for usSpeech to text	What it receivesThe speaker's live audio and the organization's glossary terms; it returns text	WhereUnited States	What it keepsWith our opt-out, no audio or transcripts; it keeps records for logging and billing
CompanyDeepgram	What it does for usSpeech to text	What it receivesThe speaker's live audio, when it serves that language	WhereUnited States	What it keepsWith our opt-out, only "for the duration necessary to process the request"
CompanyOpenAI	What it does for usTranslation	What it receivesThe text to translate, the organization's glossary and the last few sentences for context	WhereUnited States	What it keepsSafety-monitoring logs, which can include what it was sent and what it returned, up to 30 days, longer only where the law requires or to prevent harm
CompanyMicrosoft Azure	What it does for usTranslation (Azure OpenAI) and voice (Azure AI Speech)	What it receivesText to translate, with the glossary and recent sentences, or text to read aloud	WhereVoice: United States (East US). Translation: Microsoft may process it in any region where the model runs	What it keepsVoice: nothing. Translation: content its safety system flags may be stored for review by Microsoft staff
CompanySoniox	What it does for usVoice: reads translations aloud	What it receivesTranslated text; it returns audio	WhereUnited States, or other countries where Soniox operates	What it keepsNothing, for live requests
CompanyCloudflare	What it does for usThe bot check on listening pages (Turnstile), our domain names (DNS) and our websites' hosting	What it receivesListeners: section 5. Website visitors: their connection to our websites. For DNS, it answers which server a name points to and carries none of our pages' content		What it keepsUnder Cloudflare's terms
CompanyStripe	What it does for usPayments and invoices	What it receivesThe organization's billing email, address, payment details and purchases	WhereUnited States and elsewhere, under Stripe's terms	What it keepsUnder Stripe's terms
CompanyResend	What it does for usSends our emails	What it receivesThe email addresses of account holders and invitees, and the emails we send them	WhereUnited States	What it keepsEmail and log data for 30 days; backups for 7
CompanySentry	What it does for usError reports, so we can fix problems	What it receivesTechnical details of a failure. We configure it not to receive passwords, cookies, request bodies or the values inside our code; the speech system sends it no transcript text and no listener codes	WhereUnited States	What it keepsFor the period our Sentry plan keeps error reports
CompanyHave I Been Pwned	What it does for usThe breached-password check	What it receives5 characters of a scrambled password, and nothing else (section 3)
CompanyGoogle Workspace	What it does for usOur support email	What it receivesWhat you send to support@imperiumsystems.net

The media server that carries captions and audio to phones (LiveKit) is software we run ourselves, on our own server at DigitalOcean, so no other company operates it.

We may also disclose information when the law requires it, to protect people's safety, or as part of a sale or merger of our business, in which case this policy keeps applying to it.

8. How long we keep information

• Transcripts: the organization chooses, before any is saved: 30 days, 1 year, or until the organization deletes them. Every transcript shows the date it will be deleted, and an administrator can delete any transcript at any time.
• When an organization deletes a transcript, the app tells it, and we say the same here: "Removed from Event Translator now. Copies in our encrypted backups expire within 60 days; if we ever restore the service from a backup, it could reappear."
• Download files. A transcript download is made when it is asked for and our copy of the file expires within an hour; if its transcript is deleted, the file goes with it.
• Backups. Our database keeps a rolling 7 days of recovery points, and we make an encrypted copy of the database each night. Each nightly copy expires after 30 days and is fully gone 30 days after that, so something deleted leaves our backups within 60 days, unless we restore from a backup in that time, in which case it could reappear, as the line above says. The unencrypted copy exists on our server only for the seconds it takes to encrypt it.
• Deleted files (such as a replaced logo) are purged automatically, in a nightly job, once they have been deleted for 30 days.
• After an organization cancels, an app's events and settings are deleted 365 days after its subscription ends, so an organization that comes back within a year finds its events and settings as it left them. Transcripts keep the organization's own chosen period, so some may expire during that year, and transcripts the organization chose to keep until it deletes them are deleted with its events, 365 days after its subscription ends. The organization's billing records, its workspace and its people stay.
• Accounts are kept while they exist. To close yours, please write to support@imperiumsystems.net.
• Billing records are kept indefinitely.
• Invitations are kept for a year after they are accepted, declined or withdrawn.
• Technical logs on our servers roll over by size, not by date, so there is no fixed time limit; at today's volume they last weeks to months.
• Listener information: section 5.

9. Security

We are a small company, and we will be plain about what we do. Connections from your browser or phone to our servers are encrypted, and so are our servers' connections to the database; connections between programs on the same server do not leave it. Passwords are stored only in scrambled form. Backups are encrypted on our server before they leave it, with a key held offline. Administrative access to our servers is limited to one network address and to keys, and our providers' keys are kept in restricted files, never in our code. We have not yet had an independent security audit or certification, and no system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a breach that affects your information, we will tell the affected organizations promptly.

10. Children

Imperium One accounts are for adults, 18 or older, acting for an organization. The listening page does not ask anyone's age or name, and it is open to anyone with the link, children included. What it receives from a child's phone is what section 5 lists for every phone. Events can include children: if a child speaks near the console's microphone, their words are transcribed and translated like anyone else's, and they appear in the transcript if the organization saves it. We encourage organizations to keep this in mind when deciding whether to save an event's transcript.

11. Your choices and rights

• Account holders can see and change their account details at any time, and may ask us for a copy of their information, a correction, or its deletion.
• If your words or name are in an organization's transcript, the organization controls that transcript. Please ask the organization first; we will help the organization answer you.
• Listeners may ask too. Because we do not know your name, we can usually find information about you only by the network address or the time and organization you give us, and most of it is gone within hours (section 5). Closing the tab removes what the tab holds; clearing the site's data in your browser removes your saved language. For Cloudflare's bot check, Cloudflare's addendum (section 5) says how to reach it.

To ask, please write to support@imperiumsystems.net. We answer within 30 days.

12. Changes to this policy

We may change this policy at any time. The current version is always on this page, with its effective date.

13. Contact

Imperium Systems, LLC, 50 Virgilina Road, Suite A, Roxboro, NC 27573, support@imperiumsystems.net.