Privacy Policy

What the MinbarLive application does with audio, text and settings, and what this website collects.

In short: MinbarLive runs on your own computer. The project operates no servers, has no user accounts, and receives no data from you: not audio, not transcripts, not usage statistics. What does leave your machine, by design, is the material needed to produce subtitles: audio, transcripts and recent session context. That goes directly to the AI service you choose, using your own API key. The section below lists it in full.

Who is responsible for this policy

Responsible (Verantwortlicher) within the meaning of Art. 4(7) GDPR for this website:

mosait
E-mail: minbar.live@outlook.com

This concerns the website only. The MinbarLive application runs on the computer of whoever installs it; for a running installation, that operator is the controller, not this project. The section Who is responsible for the recording explains what that means in practice.

The application

What is sent to the AI services

Producing subtitles requires sending material to the AI service configured by the person running the software, currently Google Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic or Deepgram. Each connection goes directly from that computer to that provider, authenticated with the operator's own API key. The MinbarLive project never sees any of it. Specifically, the following is transmitted:

Audio. In real-time mode the microphone signal is streamed continuously while the session runs; in segmented mode it is sent as short recorded segments. In batch mode the audio file you select is sent segment by segment.
The transcribed text, which is sent on for translation.
Recent context. Each translation request also carries the last few transcribed segments and a running summary of what has been said so far in the session, so that the translation stays coherent. A translation request is therefore not limited to the current sentence.
Verse matching. When Islamic mode is enabled, each transcription is additionally sent to an embedding service to compare it against Quranic verses. Depending on configuration this may be a different provider than the one chosen for translation.
Session summaries. If you use the "summarise session" function, the stored transcript of that session is sent to the provider to be summarised.

Once data reaches a provider, that provider's own terms and privacy policy apply. Anyone deploying MinbarLive should read them for the service they select. Nothing is sent while a session is stopped.

Who is responsible for the recording

MinbarLive captures whatever the microphone hears, which in practice includes the voice of the speaker and possibly people nearby. The person or organisation operating the software, typically the mosque, decides what is recorded and transmitted, and is responsible for informing those present and for meeting any legal obligations that apply to them. The software is a tool; it cannot make that judgement for you.

In GDPR terms that operator is the controller (Verantwortlicher) and the chosen AI service is a processor (Auftragsverarbeiter) acting on their instructions. Running MinbarLive in an institution therefore requires a data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR with the provider whose API key is being used; OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and Deepgram each publish one. In Germany, recording the non-public spoken word without consent is additionally a criminal matter under § 201 StGB. The disclaimer goes into this in more detail.

What is stored, and where

Transcripts, translations, logs and optional recordings are written to a folder belonging to the user account on the computer running the software, on Windows %APPDATA%\MinbarLive. They stay there. Nothing is uploaded, and old files are cleaned up automatically after a retention period. They can be deleted at any time by deleting that folder.

Deleting everything. Settings → Delete everything removes that folder and, unlike deleting it by hand, also removes the API keys from the operating system's credential store. It reports what was removed and then closes the application; the next start behaves like a new installation. Updating does not need any of this — replacing the program file keeps your settings.

API keys

Provider API keys are stored in the operating system's own credential store (Windows Credential Manager, macOS Keychain, or the Linux Secret Service), not in configuration files. On a system with no credential store available at all (typically Linux without GNOME Keyring or KWallet), the key is not written to disk anywhere: it is kept in memory for that session only, must be entered again after a restart, and MinbarLive tells you so.

Update check

At startup the application makes one request to the GitHub releases API to find out whether a newer version exists. It sends nothing about you or your installation; GitHub sees only that a request arrived, as it would for any web request. The check can be switched off in the settings.

Other connections

Apart from the AI services and the update check, the application contacts the internet in only two situations, both started by you:

ffmpeg download. Batch processing of video and compressed audio needs the ffmpeg tool. If it is not already installed, MinbarLive offers to download it from gyan.dev, a third-party publisher of ffmpeg builds for Windows. This happens only after you agree to it, and only on Windows.
Links you click. The setup wizard offers buttons that open a provider's API key page or a tutorial video in your normal browser, and the settings window has a button that opens our anonymous feedback form. After three completed sessions the control panel asks once whether you would like to give feedback; that notice can be dismissed or switched off for good, and it opens nothing unless you click it. In every case the link opens in your normal browser and nothing about your installation travels with it — the form's operator sees what it would see if you had typed the address yourself.

What the application never does

No analytics, telemetry, crash reporting or usage tracking.
No user accounts, registration or licence checks.
No advertising and no bundled third-party offers.
No background services and no changes to system configuration.

This website

minbarlive.info is a set of static pages hosted on GitHub Pages. It sets no cookies, and it runs no analytics or tracking of any kind.

Hosting. GitHub serves these pages and, like any web server, processes the requesting IP address in order to deliver them. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR: making the site available at all is not technically possible without it. GitHub is based in the United States, so this involves a transfer to a third country, which GitHub covers through the EU Commission's standard contractual clauses. See the GitHub Privacy Statement.
Embedded videos. Some pages embed YouTube videos through youtube-nocookie.com, which does not set advertising cookies before you press play. Your browser still contacts Google's servers when such a page loads, so Google receives your IP address at that point. If you would rather avoid that, do not open the pages containing videos.
Outbound links. Links to GitHub, Linktree, a feedback form and similar services lead to third parties with their own privacy policies. They are only contacted if you follow the link.

Your rights

Where personal data of yours is processed, the GDPR gives you the right to ask what is held about you (Art. 15), to have it corrected (Art. 16) or erased (Art. 17), to have its processing restricted (Art. 18), to receive it in a portable form (Art. 20), and to object to processing based on legitimate interests (Art. 21). You may also complain to a data protection supervisory authority, in particular the one for the country you live or work in (Art. 77).

In practice this website holds almost nothing to ask about: it sets no cookies, runs no analytics and keeps no visitor records of its own, and the application sends the project no data at all. If you attended an event where a mosque used MinbarLive and want to know what was recorded, that request has to go to the mosque; it holds the material, and this project has no access to it and no way to identify you.

Questions

Questions about this policy can be raised as an issue at github.com/MinbarLive/MinbarLive/issues, or sent to the address given at the top of this page. See also the disclaimer for liability and responsible use, and the code signing policy for how released binaries are built and authorised.