Automated Discovery & Integration System
Current Status: What’s Automated NOW
✅ Currently Automated (FREE Tier)
1. Known Public Files (Monthly)
What it does:
- Fetches 22 FBI Vault PDFs automatically
- Downloads DOJ flight logs (when URLs configured)
- Processes and indexes new files
- Updates search index
Workflow: .github/workflows/fetch-public-files.yml
Schedule: Monthly (1st of each month)
Cost: $0 (GitHub Actions free tier)
Limitations:
- Only fetches from pre-configured URLs
- Does NOT discover new sources automatically
- Does NOT search for images automatically
- Requires manual URL updates for new sources
2. Image Processing (Every 4 hours)
What it does:
- Indexes images YOU upload to
data/images/
- Analyzes content with AI
- Verifies authenticity
- Organizes by category
Workflow: .github/workflows/image-management.yml
Schedule: Every 4 hours
Cost: $0 (if Azure keys not configured) or minimal Azure costs
Limitations:
- Only processes images YOU manually add
- Does NOT search the web for new images
- Does NOT download images automatically
What You’re Asking About: Automated Discovery
❌ NOT Currently Automated
Automated web scraping/discovery for:
- Image files from various sources
- New document releases
- Court filings as they’re published
- News article images
- Social media content
Why not included:
- Legal/ethical concerns - Web scraping can violate ToS
- Rate limiting - Many sites block automated access
- Storage limits - GitHub has 1GB limit (100GB with LFS)
- Verification challenges - Need human review for authenticity
- Privacy concerns - Images may contain victim information
Option 1: Semi-Automated Discovery (RECOMMENDED)
What I Can Add (Safe & Legal)
A. Known Source Monitoring
Monitor official sources for new releases:
Sources:
- ✅ FBI Vault (already configured)
- ✅ DOJ releases (already configured)
- 🆕 PACER court filings (check daily)
- 🆕 Archive.org collections
- 🆕 Government FOIA repositories
- 🆕 DocumentCloud
- 🆕 Internet Archive
How it works:
- Workflow checks RSS feeds/APIs daily
- Detects new files
- Creates GitHub Issue with download link
- You approve (comment “approve”)
- Bot downloads and processes
- Automatically indexes
Cost: $0
Risk: Low (only official sources)
Human oversight: Required for approval
B. Image Source Registry
Maintain list of verified image sources:
Example sources:
- Court exhibit databases
- News agency photo archives (with permission)
- Government websites
- Academic repositories
How it works:
- You add sources to
data/image_sources.yml
- Workflow checks for new uploads monthly
- Downloads with proper attribution
- Human approval required before publishing
Option 2: Full Automation (NOT RECOMMENDED)
What Full Automation Would Require
Automated Web Scraping
Would need:
- Scrapy/BeautifulSoup crawlers
- Proxy rotation ($50-200/month)
- CAPTCHA solving ($20-100/month)
- Large storage (Cloud storage $10-50/month)
- Legal review
Risks:
- ToS violations
- IP bans
- Legal liability
- False positives (unrelated content)
- Privacy violations
Cost: $100-400/month
Recommendation: ❌ NOT RECOMMENDED
Recommended Implementation
Phase 1: Expand Known Sources (Easy, $0, Legal)
I can add monitoring for these official sources:
Government Sources:
Archive Sources:
News/Research:
How to implement:
- Update
scripts/fetch-public-files.py with new sources
- Add RSS/API monitoring
- Create approval workflow
- Test with each source
Time: 4-6 hours
Cost: $0
Risk: Low
Workflow:
- Users submit image URLs via GitHub Issues
- Template validates source is public/legal
- Bot downloads and analyzes
- AI checks relevance (70%+ threshold)
- Human moderator approves
- Auto-integrates into collection
Time: 8-10 hours
Cost: $0
Risk: Low (human approval required)
Phase 3: Monitored Discovery (Advanced)
Safe automated discovery:
- Monitor specific subreddits (r/Epstein, etc.)
- Track Twitter/X hashtags
- RSS feeds from news outlets
- Academic paper repositories
- All with human approval step
Requirements:
- API keys (Reddit, Twitter)
- Relevance filtering AI
- Human moderation queue
- Storage management
Time: 20-30 hours
Cost: $0-50/month
Risk: Medium
What I Recommend Adding NOW
I can create:
- Known Source Expander
- Add 10+ official government sources
- RSS/API monitoring
- Daily checks for new files
- Approval workflow
- Image Source Registry
- YAML file with approved sources
- Attribution tracking
- Monthly checks
- Human approval required
- Community Submission System
- GitHub Issue template
- Automated validation
- Relevance checking
- Moderation queue
- Discovery Dashboard
- Weekly digest of potential sources
- Suggestions from AI monitoring
- One-click approval system
All of this:
- ✅ FREE ($0/month)
- ✅ Legal and ethical
- ✅ Human oversight
- ✅ Respects ToS
- ✅ Privacy-conscious
Decision Time
Would you like me to implement:
Option A: Safe Automation (Recommended) ⭐
- Expand to 10+ official sources
- Add approval workflow
- Create discovery dashboard
- Cost: $0, Time: 4 hours
Option B: Current Setup Only
- Keep existing FBI/DOJ only
- No new automation
- Manual additions only
Option C: Full Research Required
- You provide specific sources you want monitored
- I’ll configure each one
- Custom solution
Summary
Current answer to your question:
“Will it start searching for records containing image files to integrate and anything else not currently available?”
Short answer: Not automatically searching/discovering yet. Currently only fetches from pre-configured URLs (FBI Vault, DOJ).
What I can add: Monitoring of 10+ official sources with human approval, safe and free.
What I don’t recommend: Automated web scraping without oversight (legal/ethical concerns).
Let me know which option you prefer, and I’ll implement it!