News Aggregation Policy

Last updated: 26 April 2026

1. Purpose of this policy

Strait Up Maritime publishes a news section at api.straitupmaritime.com/news consisting of automatically generated summaries of recent maritime sanctions announcements. This policy explains how we source, generate, and present that content; what we do not do; and how to request corrections or takedowns.

2. Sources

We aggregate exclusively from public-domain government publications. We do not aggregate, scrape, or republish content from commercial maritime publications.

Current sources:

• U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Press releases and recent actions are works of the U.S. Federal Government and are in the public domain under 17 U.S. Code § 105.
• U.S. Federal Register — OFAC and Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) Entity List notices. Federal Register documents are works of the U.S. Federal Government, public domain under 17 U.S. Code § 105.
• UK Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI), HM Treasury. Guidance and notices are published by the UK Government and licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0, which permits reuse with attribution.
• UN Security Council press releases. Published by the United Nations and freely redistributable for news reporting purposes.
• Global Affairs Canada news releases. Published under the Open Government Licence — Canada, which permits reuse with attribution.
• Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) departmental media releases. Published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (Commonwealth of Australia Copyright), which permits commercial reuse with attribution.

If we add additional sources in the future, this section will be updated to list them. We will only add sources that publish under a licence permitting commercial redistribution, or that are otherwise in the public domain.

3. How summaries are generated

Each news article on our site is generated by the following automated pipeline:

• A scheduled task fetches recent items from the source feeds listed above.
• The full article body is extracted from the source page.
• The text is passed to a self-hosted large language model, which produces a 3–4 paragraph summary in our own words.
• The resulting summary is published with a link back to the original source, attribution, and the date of the original announcement.

Each article page is clearly labelled with an "AI-WRITTEN SUMMARY" badge. The model used and the date of generation are recorded internally and can be disclosed on request.

4. What we do not do

• We do not link entity names to specific records in our sanctions database. Where the same name appears in both, no inference of identity should be drawn. We do not perform name-based matching.
• We do not add commentary, analysis, or opinion to news summaries. The summary describes what the source said and nothing more.
• We do not publish breaking news ahead of the source. We summarise announcements after the official issuing authority has published them.
• We do not warrant accuracy. AI-generated summaries can contain factual errors, omissions, or hallucinations. We make no representation that any summary is accurate, complete, or current.
• We do not provide legal or compliance advice. Nothing on the news section constitutes legal, regulatory, sanctions, financial, or professional advice. Use of the news section does not create a professional, advisory, or fiduciary relationship.

4a. IMO citation links

Where an IMO number is explicitly cited in the source publication, and the same IMO number appears in our sanctioned-vessels database, we may render it as a hyperlink to that record on our site. We apply two safeguards before linking:

• The IMO must appear in the original source body — not only in the AI-generated summary. This guards against any AI-generated numerical errors.
• The IMO must conform to the standard 7-digit vessel format (1000000–9999999). Treasury entity-identification numbers (which begin with a leading zero) are not linked.

IMO numbers are globally unique vessel identifiers issued by IHS Markit on behalf of the IMO and are not reused. A hyperlink on an IMO citation is therefore a navigational convenience pointing to a record about the same vessel — it is not an editorial assertion. Even so, you should always verify against the official issuing authority before relying on any record for a compliance decision.

5. AI disclosure

All news summaries on our site are generated by artificial intelligence. This is disclosed:

• On every article page via a visible "AI-WRITTEN SUMMARY" badge near the title
• On every article page via a notice bar above the article body
• On the news index page via a banner above the article list
• In the per-article disclaimer at the foot of each article

This disclosure is provided to comply with the EU AI Act, US state-level AI disclosure laws (where applicable), and as a matter of editorial standards.

6. Use of public-domain government works

OFAC press releases are works of the U.S. Federal Government and are in the public domain. UK OFSI publications are licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0, which permits commercial reuse with attribution. We provide attribution by displaying the source name and a link to the original publication on every article page. We do not claim ownership of the underlying source content.

7. Corrections, errors, and takedown requests

If you believe a news summary contains a factual error, mischaracterises a source, misattributes information, or that you are the rights-holder of source material that should not be republished, please contact us:

Email: [email protected]

Please include:

• The URL of the article in question
• A description of the issue (correction, takedown, or other)
• Your contact details and, where relevant, your authority to make the request

We will acknowledge correction requests within 5 business days. Takedown requests will be actioned promptly, typically within 24 hours, pending verification of the requester's standing.

8. No professional reliance

Strait Up Maritime is not a law firm, legal services provider, regulated financial services provider, or sanctions authority. The news section is a journalism and information service. Nothing in any news summary should be relied upon as the basis for any compliance, regulatory, commercial, or legal decision. Always verify the underlying announcement against the official issuing authority's website before acting.

9. Limitation of liability

Use of the news section is governed by our Terms of Service. The disclaimers, limitations of liability, and indemnification clauses in those Terms apply with full force to the news section and to any reliance you may place on its content.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by an updated "Last updated" date. The current version of this policy is always the version published at this URL.

11. Contact

Questions about this policy: [email protected]