Terms of use

1. What this service is

brink.watch shows, for pairs of states, the escalation phase, the heat, the direction of change, and the unfolding of every number down to the source event. Everything is computed from open sources by a published method.

The open part of the barometer is free and stays free. Some capabilities — extended history, notifications, the full list of pairs — may be offered on a paid subscription.

2. What this is NOT

This matters more than the rest of the document, which is why it comes second.

• This is not a forecast of war and not a prediction of events. The service measures the observable state from open data. The index does not assert what will happen next.
• This is not investment, legal or military advice. The numbers of the service must not be used as grounds for decisions about transactions, travel, evacuation, insurance or the safety of people.
• This is not the official position of any state or organisation. We are independent and authorised by no one.
• A heat of 50 does not mean “halfway to war”. It is the deviation of a pair from its own norm. The scale is explained on the site, and reading it otherwise is a mistake whose consequences are not ours to answer for.

Take decisions about your own safety on the basis of official warnings from the competent authorities, not on the readings of a barometer.

3. The data and its limits

We show the completeness of the data honestly: every pair displays its coverage, and unmeasured blocks are marked as unmeasured rather than replaced by zeros. Sources can be wrong, can lag and can stop working; automatic event coding gets things wrong — by our own check, noticeably often, and we say so plainly.

The service is provided “as is”. We do not guarantee uninterrupted operation, completeness, accuracy, or fitness of the data for any particular purpose.

4. How it may be used

Reading, quoting, linking, discussing and checking are all allowed and welcome. When quoting numbers, please give the source and the date: values change daily, and a quotation without a date misleads.

Not allowed: passing our data off as your own, using the service for unlawful purposes, attempting to disrupt its operation, circumventing the limits of paid capabilities, or pulling the site down by automated means in volumes that get in the way of other readers. Reasonable machine reading of the open barometer files breaks no limit.

The design, the texts and the mark belong to brink.watch. The source data belongs to its sources and is distributed on their terms.

5. Accounts

An account is opened against an email address, which you confirm by a link from a message. Look after your password: a sign-in with your password counts as your sign-in. If you notice access by someone else, change the password — that closes all previous sessions — and write to us.

One account is for one person. We may suspend access in the event of break-in attempts, abuse or breach of these terms; where possible we will give warning first.

You can delete the account at any time by writing to support@brink.watch.

6. Subscription and money

Payments are handled by Paddle acting as merchant of record. Paddle also issues invoices, charges taxes and processes refunds; Paddle's own terms apply to the payment itself.

A subscription renews automatically until cancelled. It can be cancelled at any time — access remains until the end of the paid period. If the service was down through our fault for a substantial time, or you took out a subscription by mistake, write to us: we will look into it and refund you.

Prices may change. We will give advance notice by mail of a price change affecting an existing subscription.

7. Liability

We answer for what is genuinely within our power: the operation of the service and the safekeeping of the data you have entrusted to us, within the limits described in the privacy policy.

We do not answer for decisions taken on the basis of the barometer's readings, for errors and outages in external sources, or for indirect losses and lost profit. For paid subscriptions our liability is in any event limited to the amount you paid for the last paid period.

8. Changes to these terms

These terms may change: we will update the date and the revision number at the top. Account holders will be told of substantial changes by mail. By continuing to use the service after a change, you accept the new revision.

9. Contact

All questions, complaints, bug reports and vulnerability reports go to support@brink.watch. A live human answers a live human.