obscuring observations of new invaders during biosecurity responses

[Jon Sullivan]

Hi iNat,

I'm thinking there needs to be another category in what is currently called "Conservation status" for taxa. At the moment, we (restricted to curators, I think) can assign a conservation status to a taxon on the edit taxon page. This includes assigning whether or not locations should be obscured for the taxon's protection across the whole site, or within a designated Place.

In New Zealand the pathogen myrtle rust has just arrived in the country and triggered a national biosecurity response. As part of this, government staff have requested that the exact locations of all new detections not be made public during their official response. I've started obscuring per observation as the NZ site admin. If eradication or containment is deemed impractical (as increasingly seems likely in this case, unfortunately), then the response will be called off and exact locations can be made public.

Ideally I'd like to see something analogous to the IUCN equivalent conservation status categories for new incursions of high threat pests. That way we could give a pest species the status in NZ of "Invasive species high alert" (or similar wording) and set all NZ observations of it to get automatically obscured (or private). The wording of that status needs to describe pests that have just arrived or are predicted to arrive soon (as is the case with brown marmorated stink bug in NZ, which is not yet established but has been detected at our ports). We could turn off that status once the response is over and the pest is either eradicated or established.

Also, some NZ government biosecurity staff have expressed concern that our iNat community could mid-identify or mis-report a trade sensitive species in New Zealand and trigger a trade incident. I'm not sure how real that risk is. Regardless, we could then assign trade-sensitive pests (e.g., foot and mouth disease, Mediterranean fruit fly) to the status "Invasive species high alert" and geoprivacy "Private" for NZ. That way, any potential records of them could get properly investigated before their locations were made public (they'd go public if the ID was correct and the pest established).

That would all be very helpful and I expect would be of use to many countries and other place units within iNaturalist.

A complication here is that approved response staff would still want to see the exact locations. For myrtle rust, we have government staff set up as managers on our myrtle rust reporter project, and we've set up an app that sends obscured observations directly to that project. All observations coming from the app therefore have their exact locations publicly obscured but visible to the approved biosecurity response staff. It works well. Obscuring myrtle rust observations site-wide for NZ would break that.

I see an analogous problem for endangered species and government conservation staff. Here in NZ we've been supplying exact coordinates for site-obscured threatened species to Department of Conservation staff on request (but never user obscured observations, of course--those require the users' permission).

Some way to approve official government users to see site-obscured coordinates would be helpful. Perhaps that could be via officially trusted projects that allowed that project's managers to see site-obscured observations. (Again, this would not allow officials to see the exactly location of observations that the users themselves chose to obscure or make private.)

Cheers,

Jon

[James Bailey]

I know this isn't up to us to discuss but why would they want to obscure the locations of new invaders? Are they at least taking that data before making us hide it? It seems very counter-intuitive in a few ways.

[Charlie Hohn]

I had the same response. If our government decided to hide the locations of a new invasive... well first of all i am not all that happy with our (USA) government right now, but I'd be pissed as hell and tell them to GTFO of iNat. I don't think we should be obscuring stuff for reasons like that. 

In any event if the fear is creating false alarms, I don't think people knowing 'this bad invasive was just found in New Zealand! OMG! But we won't tell you where' is going to make that any better.

Though someone did post a 'test' hemlock wooly adelgid observation in the middle of Vermont and I didn't much like that.

FWIW i'm not in favor of obscuring stuff like this. I could see if there was a credible security risk, like someone live posting the location of a politician as an iNat observation or sneaking onto a military base to create observations with sensitive top secret stuff in the background... but that would be a really dumb thing to do anyway. And as long as it only applies to New Zealand I guess i don't care too much.

[tony rebelo]

There are various reasons for obscuring the locations of new invaders.

- e.g. 

Trade sanctions: 

on iSpot someone posted an old record of a caterpillar from 15 years ago that almost got our crops banned from exporting out of South Africa.  The date was clearly displayed (and the infestation annihilated with that season with no records subsequently) but the incident still triggered a whole lot of unnecessary paperwork and diplomatic concern.  It was solved by merely adding a note.   However, had it been a recent observation, there would be very strong political pressure to destroy the record.  Hiding it until the government is ready to tackle the issue is often desirable.   it took over six months for South Africa to acknowledge the presence of the American Maize Bollworm in the country - during that time there was an embargo where no officials where allowed to admit knowing anything.  Partly just bureaucracy but also to manage farmer panic and food prices and put in place control strategies

.

Legal issues:

it may be illegal to have an alien on ones land. But if someone adds the record there (because it is there, or even maliciously) then land values can be affected, and in fact sale may become illegal.  Unless iNaturalist wants to spend time in court proving that it is merely serving data and that the loss in potential revenue because of them hosting the data has nothing to do with them making the data available, it might be wise to have the option of obscuring the localities for this reason.  Yes, this is a case where "criminals" manipulate the legal system to their nefarious ends, but it happens.

I would shy away from creating a special list for aliens.   Why not just have a single list of "Sensitive Species" which would include species vulnerable to extinction due to trade, but also species with legal or political implications.  In some communities or Networks this could override the IUCN Red List which iNaturalist users indiscriminately for species that are not threatened by collecting or trade at all.

[Charlie Hohn]

Obscuring isn't going to solve those problems though. It's just going to confuse people.

While I tend politically liberal I think letting a government hide information like that 'until they deal with it' is a horrific idea. Seriously. I know lots of countries out there do things different ways and I am NOT trying to say the US has the best way of doing things, especially recently. But our government is if anything an example of why we should NOT hide things like this and iin terms of openness, hiding anything that isn't an immediate natural security issue (as in a terrorist or enemy army) pretty much always does more harm than good.

Please note I'm just talking about auto obscure. Anyone can opt to obscure on their own for whatever reason they choose.

In terms of people using iNat, sneaking onto private land, and documenting something the landowner doesn'tw ant people to know abut, yeah it may happen at some point, and will cause a legal issue for someone. But property values is one of the LESS worrisome of all the things I can imagine (which i won't post her, why encourage people?). But there is a very clear precedent which seems global where social media sites aren't held responsible for MUCH worse things than posting an invasive plant on someone's land.  You name it, all the way up to threatening nuclear war! If twitter isn't getting sued for people threatening nuclear war (and having a billion bombs to back it up) I find it hard to imagine inaturalist will be sued because someone posts a weed on someone else's land. What will happen is you will incriminate yourself and be prosecuted for trespassing.

Anyhow is it better for landowners to be able to hide invasive species on their land? Wouldn't that bring up non-disclosure issues too?

At the very least this stuff should not be global. If you set up a South Africa network and want to hide weeds, none of my business.

[Ian Toal]

This is an interesting problem, as here in Winnipeg we have just learned that the Emerald Ash Borer (invasive from Asia) has just been found. I have not heard anything from local or Federal governments about hiding data, but I've never been faced with this before. If I happen to find an adult next spring, do I post it with location, or hide the location? And do I inform the local authorities? 

Ian

[Chris Cheatle]

The opposite, they want to know. There was a major article on CBC about it : http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-emerald-ash-borer-1.4440451

One of the sidebar articles points to a municipal website with contact info.

It is depressing how much damage they have done in my area in just 2 or 3 years. Entire woodlots and parks have been devastated or proactively removed.

[Ian Toal]

Thanks. I had read that, but missed the sidebar. I assumed they wanted to know, and that's why this thread kind of puzzles me - in Canada biosecurity has usually involved large advertising campaigns to stop or slow the spread. 

I can only imagine (at this point) the damage they can do. I'm probably going to remove a young ash tree from my front yard, and plant an oak while there is time for it to grow. Zebra mussels and other invasive species have caused a lot of damage here. 

[Charlie Hohn]

This thread is the first time i've ever heard of a government wanting to hide information about an invasive. I think it IS important to note that things submitted to iNat especially non research grade things are tentative data without review and should not inspire panic without further investigation. But that's true for anything. I don't think iNat needs to shelter government employees from anxiety over invasives or whatever

[Patrick Alexander]

I share Charlie's concerns. I don't think it is desirable for iNaturalist to make data management decisions on a political basis. If it's a good thing to do for non-political reasons, and a government or other political entity also happens to want us to do it, sure, no problem. Hiding data because a group wants to shelter itself from politically inconvenient information... bad idea.

With regard to potential land value litigation--it doesn't seem really likely to me, but what's the alternative? That iNaturalist hides data in order to prop up real estate values? There seem to be obvious legal and ethical problems with that course of action.

[James Bailey]

I'm glad some reasons have been raised, it has helped me understand this situation a bit better -- I was clueless, honestly.

As much as I like to ignore politics, they do have to be considered sometimes, even if they don't make sense. For instance, there are times where I have done surveys and was not allowed to post any iNat sightings or even share photos of what I saw, even though I was really doing nothing different to anyone else just hiking on the land and documenting nature. But it triggered logistic / political issues in that the survey was "secret", and the data during it should not be shared publicly, even if it is irrelevant.

In any case, I guess this is good to think about for future. We'll take these cases as they come.

[Reuven Martin]

I absolutely agree with several of the above posters - observations should never be auto-obscured for reasons other than conservation. If there is a good reason why obscuring would help prevent the spread of an invasive then temporarily auto-obscuring seems alright, although I find it difficult to imagine what scenario that would be. Beyond that, I don't really see why the opinion of the New Zealand government (for example) is relevant to what should be obscured. 

[Donald Hobern]

In regard to biosecurity concerns, the Atlas of Living Australia wrestled with this at an early stage.  Tony is correct that there are legislative issues in some countries if certain pests are found.  These can cause shutdown of international trade between countries.  The main concern should be cases where a platform like iNaturalist reaches consensus that the pest species is found but where this may still be mistaken.  In such cases, it is conceivable that the observation might serve as a false-positive and cause a country to enact sanctions.  Removing such sanctions would be time-consuming and costly.  In practice, I am not sure that citizen science records are likely to be picked up and to have such consequences.  However, a certain degree of caution may be wise.  I would suggest that the right approach in such cases would be for the putative observation to be funneled to a responsible national authority to review and handle.  It could be that we should adopt an approach of only obscuring species for biosecurity reasons if such a notification path and response mechanism is in place.

Donald

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[Charlie Hohn]

the other side of this 'false positive' issue is if these are not displayed iNat might cause an even worse problem which would be to NOT cause a sanction that needs to be in place, despite available info, and this cause a spread of a horrible invasive species that could have been prevented. In other words, the risk of hiking an invasive species infestation is greater than the risk of making it public, in pretty much any case (not true for many rare species, which is why we obscure those). In other words, yelling fire in a theatre is wrong if you know there is NOT a fire, and anyone creating false data on purpose should be banned immediately. However in this case you think there IS a fire and not yelling fire is the least ethical response because you think there is a fire and everyone is going to burn to death. 

I think the best compromise would be to funnel any high importance observations directly to someone who can look at them quickly, and if there is uncertainty that person can use the data quality assessment or add a different ID to remove the observation until verified - which is how the site is designed to be used anyway.

[Patrick Alexander]

I continue to agree with Charlie. :-) Supposing country A will stop trade if species X is seen in country B, and there is an observation of species X in country B, country A has an interest in getting that information as quickly as possible and country B has an interest in suppressing that information. If we send the data to country B and hide it from country A, we're making a deliberate choice to value the interests of one country over another. That does not seem like an appropriate role for iNaturalist.

Making sure data is accurate, though, is non-partisan and clearly aligned with iNaturalist's mission. Having a process in place that would prioritize speedy accuracy of potentially contentious observations makes sense. I think we already have a good way of doing this. Anyone who wants to be sure observations of a particular taxon in a particular area are reviewed and QCed promptly can just set up a subscription, right?

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[tony rebelo]

A lot of emotional responses here.

Firstly, any data is always accessible to the network curators. So the data are not entirely hidden, only obscured to the same degree as anyone has the right to obscure data.  Just like individuals can obscure data, so can the network curators.  And where the network curators are affiliated to the national organizations dealing with such issues, any such observation will trigger the appropriate action.

.

A national list of sensitive species will cater for this, just like the IUCN Red List and local threatened species lists caters for the majority of sensitive species (and many more than actually need it!). 

The discussions above are valid if the data were to be permanently hidden or banned.  That is not what is proposed: the data are still there for the curators and authorities to use, and the record is still visible to all for identification and discussion, just the locality details are obscured or hidden.  Ultimately, the embargo on the locality will have to be lifted, such as after the properly is sold, or after an invasive pest species has been contained and eliminated or has gone out of control and is a national crises.  In both cases, most countries would then enlist their citizen scientists to help document that the species is eliminated, or to help monitor the spread of the pest.  No doubt a few countries would not be sensible, but they will be the exception. 

The fact remains that any citizen science operation has to be aware of and compliant with the laws of any country in which it operates.  Not only because not doing so can become extremely expensive litigiously,  but also because most sponsors will not be willing to support a project that is not both compliant and sensitive to such issues. Rant and rave about principles and rights as much as you like, but ignore these at your peril! 

[Charlie Hohn]

well, like i said, i've never heard of any other social media site getting in trouble for much more heinous things than refusing to hide data to benefit private landowners, i suppose maybe it's possible that issue comes up in some countries but i am not aware of it nor of the ability of other countries to sue a US-based website for sharing free information with no national security implications. I don't really care what the other data portals that are country specific do, if you want to set up a South Africa portal or use the New Zealand portal to obscure other people's data, that's none of my business. But i certainly hope it wouldn't be applied to the whole site, especially the 'property values' thing which in my mind is not acceptable. That being said that's for the iNat lawyers to worry about not me, and I doubt there's much else I can say about it. 

I do know that Project Noah let curators even do such things as move mapped locations of other people's observations, and I was not OK with that. Didn't stick around there long, but that wasn't the only reason.

[Patrick Alexander]

Hello Tony,

To the extent that there is a legal requirement in one country or another that iNaturalist manage data in a certain way, well, sure, I don't think anyone's advocating that iNaturalist engage in criminal behavior. In the hypothetical examples we've been talking about so far, though, I don't think anyone has mentioned that kind of legal requirement.

For instance, in the real estate example you've mentioned, it's hard for me to imagine that there's a law saying, e.g., "third parties must withhold any information that may affect real estate valuation". Maybe there is such a law somewhere, but I doubt it. There is a conceivable risk of a civil lawsuit, though. In the U.S., it seems like the requirement to bring a lawsuit is basically a sense of grievance and enough money to hire a lawyer. In that context, I can imagine either a seller suing iNaturalist (if releasing data were to harm property values) or a buyer suing iNaturalist (if withholding data helps the seller mislead the buyer). It seems like you're saying iNaturalist should side with the seller in order to comply with local law, but that doesn't make any sense to me. My feeling is that, if there's some risk of pissing someone off either way, it's better to just continue business as usual. It's hard to see how a lawsuit would have much realistic chance if we're inadvertently favoring one side or another just by going about our normal business. On the other hand, if we change our behavior specifically to aid the seller in deceiving the buyer, well, you can at least see how a reasonable buyer would feel wronged by that, right?

Regards,
Patrick