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Accurint Files

Explainer

How it works.

A complete walkthrough of the data pipeline that connects your local police department to federal customers through a private broker. Plain-English, with the contract terms cited inline.

The system is called AVCC.

The Accurint Virtual Crime Center — “AVCC” for short — is a LexisNexis Risk Solutions product. It is sold to law enforcement agencies as a crime-mapping and intelligence platform. Agencies that subscribe gain access to a national pool of police data: incident reports, jail bookings, traffic stops, and (when contributed) the narrative fields of those reports.

The national pool is fed by the agencies themselves. AVCC is not a database LexisNexis fills with its own data. It is a database LexisNexis aggregates from the records management systems (RMS) of contributing agencies. The aggregated pool is known as the Public Safety Data Exchange — “PSDEX.”

The fee structure works like this: an agency pays a subscription for AVCC access. The subscription includes a “Database Interface” — the technical connection that lets LexisNexis ingest the agency’s data automatically. The data contribution is treated as part of the subscription, not as a separate paid feature.

How local police data reaches federal agenciesFive-stage flow: a 911 call generates a police report; the department's records system feeds LexisNexis every 15 minutes; LexisNexis aggregates data nationally; federal agencies and paying users access it; the original local jurisdiction has no visibility into who sees the data.911 callVictim, witness,or suspect dataentered01Local RMSPolice recordssystem storesthe report02LexisNexisPSDEX ingestsevery ~15 min,permanently03Federal accessICE, FBI, DHScustomersquery the data04ReuseHundreds ofthousands ofusers nationwide05The data laundering pipelineLocal police data is uploaded automatically to a private broker. The originating city has no visibilityinto who later accesses it. Sanctuary laws restricting cooperation with federal agencies do not apply to the broker.

Three signals identify a contributor.

When we read a LexisNexis contract obtained via FOIA or procurement records, we look for three specific signals. Their presence — particularly all three — indicates the agency is contributing data to PSDEX, not merely consuming it.

1. Database Interface line item

In the contract’s Schedule A, the section that enumerates purchased line items, look for:

AVCC Annual Subscription Fee shall include one (1) Database Interface

Database Interface is the bidirectional technical connection. Its presence indicates a data feed is configured.

2. Customer Data Contribution clause

In the AVCC XML Addendum — typically Section I.2 — look for:

Customer hereby agrees to contribute public safety information (“Customer Data Contribution”)…

This is the contractual commitment to feed the database.

3. Irrevocable license

In the AVCC XML Addendum — typically Section II.1 — look for:

[an] irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive license to use, adapt, compile, aggregate, create derivative works, transfer, transmit, publish and distribute the Customer Data Contributions…

This grants LexisNexis perpetual rights to the data, even if the agency later cancels the contract. Termination ends new contributions; it does not retrieve the data already contributed.

What gets uploaded.

The contractual terms are explicit about the rights LexisNexis receives. They are less explicit about the specific data fields included in the upload. To know what fields a given department uploads, you need an additional document called an Interface Control Document (ICD), or its equivalent — a field-mapping table or data-translation schema.

ICDs are rarely included in FOIA returns by default. When obtained, they typically show the upload includes incident report fields, jail booking fields, person records, vehicle records, narratives, and supplementary report data. The presence of narrative fields is significant because narratives routinely contain victim and witness identifying information, even when victim and witness aren’t explicit field headers.

For the language to request an ICD, see the action page.

Who reads the data.

PSDEX is a multi-tenant database. Once data is contributed, it becomes searchable to other AVCC subscribers and to non-AVCC LexisNexis Accurint users via licensed access. The user base spans roughly:

  • Local police departments with AVCC subscriptions
  • State investigative agencies
  • Federal agencies — ICE, FBI, DHS, ATF, CBP, USMS, DEA
  • Prosecutors and public defenders
  • Private investigators, attorneys, and insurance investigators with Accurint licenses

Federal access is a critical point. The FBI’s and ICE’s contracts with LexisNexis are public; the contracts grant federal users the right to query the aggregated pool, which includes contributions from local agencies, including agencies in sanctuary jurisdictions.

Why the sanctuary-law gap exists.

Sanctuary policies are designed around the assumption that local police choose whether and how to share data with federal agencies. Most sanctuary policies do not regulate the sale or transfer of data to a third party — particularly a third party characterized as a service provider rather than an information recipient.

When a local department uploads data to LexisNexis, the local department is not sharing data with ICE. The local department is purchasing a service from a private vendor. The vendor subsequently sells access to that data to other customers, including ICE, under a separate commercial contract. The structural arrangement does not violate the letter of most sanctuary policies.

We refer to this gap as data laundering. The term is deliberate. The local government’s sanctuary commitment is, in practical effect, undone by the procurement decision — even when the procurement decision is made by a different office than the one accountable for sanctuary compliance.

The opt-out you keep hearing about.

LexisNexis publishes a consumer opt-out form. The form removes you from LexisNexis’s consumer-marketed products. Per LexisNexis’s own published policy, the opt-out does not apply to its law enforcement, government, or fraud-prevention products.

The data PSDEX holds about you as a victim, witness, or subject of a police report is in the law enforcement product tier. The consumer opt-out has no effect on it.

What you can do about it.

The most effective leverage is at the city or county level, before a contract is signed or renewed. Sanctuary ordinances that explicitly cover third-party data sales — as some jurisdictions have begun to enact — close the gap. Procurement rules that require council review of data-broker agreements force transparency.

At the individual level, you can FOIA your local department for their AVCC agreement and ICD, and you can ask your council member or county supervisor whether the contract excludes victim and witness data.

The action page has templates for both.

Where the project goes from here.

We are documenting contributors agency-by-agency, with primary sources. The agencies directory contains every agency for which we have published a confirmed or strong-signal record. The document library indexes the contracts and FOIA returns we’re working from.

If you have a contract, an ICD, a council packet, or a FOIA return that should be in here, the tip line is open.