WHO WE ARE
AUDIT VERITAS IS A LEGAL ORGANIZATION. WE USE THE PUBLIC RECORDS LAWS — STATE AND FEDERAL — TO FIND OUT WHAT GOVERNMENT AGENCIES HAVE RECORDED ABOUT PEOPLE, AND TO MAKE THOSE AGENCIES PRODUCE IT.
Our first service is records. If you believe an agency has watched you, followed you, photographed your car, logged your movements, or written something down about you, we will file the request that makes them answer. We draft it, we send it, we track the statutory deadline, and we pursue it when the deadline passes.
Other services will follow. Records is where we begin.
WHY WE EXIST
Surveillance records exist. License plate reader databases, camera networks, intelligence bulletins, referrals between agencies, notes in files — these are real records, kept by real agencies, subject to disclosure laws that already give you the right to see them.
Most people never ask. The laws are written for people who know they exist, know which agency holds what, know the deadline, and know what to do when it is ignored. We do it for them.
WHAT WE BELIEVE
That a record about you is your business.
That "we have no responsive records" is an answer with legal consequences, and so is silence.
That the correct first step is documents — not theories, not a narrative, not an argument about what is happening. Documents first. What they show, and what they refuse to show, is where the analysis starts.
That an agency which will not answer a lawful request has told you something.
WHAT WE ARE NOT
We are not an advocacy group. We do not campaign, lobby, or organize.
We do not diagnose, and we do not offer opinions about what any person's experience means.
We do not sell anything, and we do not ask for donations from the people we work for.
HOW WE ARE FUNDED
This is a public service.
We charge the people we work for nothing. We take no share of anything they recover. We accept no money from any government agency.
HOW THIS STAYS FREE
Filing a public records request through Audit Veritas costs you nothing. Submitting a request does not create an attorney-client relationship, and no one will ask you for a payment method.
Here is how that is possible.
Under California law, when a public agency improperly withholds records and the requester prevails in litigation, the court shall award the requester court costs and reasonable attorney’s fees, to be paid by the agency (Government Code section 7923.115). The public records laws of many other states contain comparable provisions. The Legislature assigned this cost to the agency by design: the expense of enforcing the right of access falls on the agency that withheld the records, not on the member of the public who requested them.
Our work accordingly proceeds in two stages. In the first, we prepare and file the request and pursue it to completion, including follow-up correspondence, monitoring of statutory deadlines, and responses to any denial. The second stage arises only if the agency continues to refuse disclosure and judicial relief is required. That stage commences only under a separate written engagement, entered case by case, which states its terms before any filing is made. Where the court orders the records produced, the law requires the agency to pay the attorney’s fees.
FOR ATTORNEYS
We are looking for licensed attorneys to take matters through this organization. Records matters first, and other areas as we open them.
If you hold an active bar license in any jurisdiction and want to do this work, write to us.
