# Third Agency Rule The **Third Agency Rule**, as ACIN defines it, is an interagency dissemination control: the network must not disclose one agency's information without that agency's approval. The final production includes the rule in recurring participation terms and the policy manual, rather than only in public-facing summaries. ## How it appears in the corpus - The standard MOU states: "The Network shall utilize the 'Third Agency Rule' and not disclose an agency's information without the approval of that agency" ([[ACIN Agreements and Participation Terms]], `AGR-201_El_Dorado_PD_MOU_EXECUTED_2026-05-15.pdf`, p. 3). - The manual applies the security policy to agencies, contractors, vendors, users, and connected networks and repeats the same approval rule ([[ACIN Policy and Operations Manual]], `POL-301_ACIN_Policy_and_Operations_Manual_REDACTED_2026-01.pdf`, p. 13). - A later data-governance section requires the originating agency to approve redistribution to third parties and requires interagency requests to be documented through ACIN's audit-logging function ([[ACIN Policy and Operations Manual]], `POL-301_ACIN_Policy_and_Operations_Manual_REDACTED_2026-01.pdf`, p. 43). - The MOU routes ACIN-received FOIA requests to the originating agency, assigns the Sixth Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney's Office a legal-sufficiency and record-consistency review, and separately allows ACIN to release its own nonexempt internal documents ([[ACIN Agreements and Participation Terms]], `AGR-201_El_Dorado_PD_MOU_EXECUTED_2026-05-15.pdf`, p. 4). ## Stakeholders - Originating and recipient agencies. - [[Arkansas Criminal Intelligence Network]] and its governing body. - [[Sixth Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney's Office]]. - Vendors and contractors with access to connected systems. - Arkansas records custodians responding to requests involving interagency or centrally generated data. ## Notes The production establishes ACIN's written rule and referral procedure. It does not establish that the phrase itself creates an Arkansas FOIA exemption, nor does it fully resolve custody for central audit logs, vendor-held records, derived alerts, or analyses involving multiple agencies. The policy manual itself calls the Prosecuting Attorney's Office custodian of ACIN records while routing contributed-data requests to originating agencies ([[ACIN Policy and Operations Manual]], `POL-301_ACIN_Policy_and_Operations_Manual_REDACTED_2026-01.pdf`, p. 22).