Acceptable Use Policy

What Overhead is for

Overhead is a documentation and dispatch tool for residents to file first-person noise reports about aircraft they personally observed flying over their neighborhood. The reports are sent through your own mail account to public officials at the City of Long Beach and Long Beach Airport. Each one is constituent correspondence in your own name.

Things you must do

Be honest

• Only report flights you personally observed, at the time and place shown on the capture.
• Don't edit the photo, video, timestamp, location, or decibel reading before sending. The whole value of the report is that it's unaltered evidence.
• If you didn't capture an aircraft (e.g., the camera missed it but you heard it), say so honestly in the optional note.

Be specific

• One report per overflight. Don't bundle a half-hour of traffic into a single send.
• Stick to facts: time, location, what you observed, why it mattered. Save general policy advocacy for separate channels.

Be lawful and respectful

• Aim the camera at the sky, not at neighbors' homes, yards, or windows.
• California is a two-party-consent state for confidential conversations. Don't deliberately record private conversations while capturing.
• Treat city staff, council members, pilots, and flight schools as people doing a job, even when you disagree with that job.

Things you must not do

• Don't fabricate or alter reports. Faking captures, editing timestamps, or sending reports for events you didn't witness undermines the entire system and may be unlawful (false statements to a government agency).
• Don't bulk-send. Sending dozens of identical reports in quick succession to flood government inboxes is harassment, not advocacy. Reports must reflect real overflights.
• Don't impersonate. Don't sign someone else's name, claim official affiliation with the City of Long Beach, LGB, the FAA, or any other agency, or send reports from accounts that don't belong to you.
• Don't threaten, harass, or defame. Reports must not contain threats of violence, slurs, doxxing, or false statements of fact about identifiable people.
• Don't doxx pilots. Tail numbers and aircraft types are appropriate (they're public registry data). Personal information about identified pilots, flight-school students, or their families is not.
• Don't include media of children as a focal subject. If a child is incidentally in the frame because you were shooting up at the sky, that's fine — but don't make people the subject of a noise report.
• Don't use Overhead for commercial purposes. Reports are for individual constituent communication, not marketing, fundraising, or political campaigning.

Public records reminder

Anything you send to a government inbox may become a public record under the California Public Records Act. Don't include anything in a report that you wouldn't be comfortable seeing disclosed.

What happens if you violate this policy

Because reports are sent from your own mail account, we have no ability to intercept, edit, or recall a message after you tap Send — the consequences (legal, reputational, or otherwise) are entirely yours. On our side, we may:

• Restrict your access to the Service if we become aware of violations.
• Cooperate with lawful requests from law enforcement or government agencies.
• Update the Service to make repeated abuse harder (rate limits, confirmation prompts, etc.).

Reporting abuse

If you believe someone is misusing Overhead — fabricating reports, harassing people, or otherwise violating this policy — please email hello@overhead.app with details and we'll look into it.