Interesting Note on the FOIs

Eli Rabett has a great post over at Rabett Run on the FOI requests and the CRU data issue.

Here, for old time’s sake, is the link to the CA thread on the CRU data, in which Steve McIntyre urges people to issue FOI requests for confidentiality agreements.

Here is McI:

Let me review the request situation for readers. There are two institutions involved in the present round of FOI/EIR requests: CRU and the Met Office. Phil Jones of CRU collects station data and sends his “value added” version to the Met Office, who publish the HadCRU combined land-and-ocean index and also distribute the CRUTEM series online. [my emphasis — note the term “present round of FOI requests”]

I requested a copy of the “value added” version from the Met Office (marion.archer at metoffice.uk.gov) which has been refused for excuses provided in my last post. On June 25, 2009, learning that Phil Jones had sent a copy of the station data to Peter Webster of Georgia Tech, I sent a new FOI request to CRU ( david.palmer at uea.ac.uk) requesting the data in the form sent to Peter Webster. This too was refused today.

And later in the post:

This is the first time that we’ve heard that their supposed confidentiality agreements merely restrict “further transmission to non-academics”. A couple of observations on this. I’m sure that CRU will soon receive a similar request from someone to whom this excuse does not apply.[referring to McK?]

However, aside from that, there are other troubling aspects to this refusal. If there actually are confidentiality agreements, I would expect the relevant language to be framed in terms of “academic use” as opposed to guild membership i.e. I’d be surprised if the language were framed in terms of institutional affiliation as opposed to use. I’ve published relevant articles in peer reviewed literature, acted as an IPCC reviewer, been cited in IPCC AR4, been invited to present to a NAS panel – my use of data is “academic” by any legal standard.

Note: he’s clearly not an academic and he has stated that his goal is to “audit” the IPCC. It is not be become an academic. He doesn’t mention that most of his peer-reviewed work is in a journal (E&E) that is not a science journal and that publication of his work was rushed through by its self-admittedly biased editor and that all it takes to be an IPCC reviewer is to sign a confidentiality agreement. His McAuditing is not academic.

Secondly, over at the Met Office, they say “it cannot be determined which countries or stations data were given in confidence as records were not kept.” But over at CRU, they purport to “know” nuanced details of the contractual language of the confidentiality agreements – clauses that have the effect of justifying the refusal of the data.

Weak. The two are not mutually exclusive. It’s entirely possible to remember details of agreements but not have access to them. I remember my grade 4 report card quite well, but it is no longer in my possession.

What’s of interest is this:

Steve McIntyre

Posted Jul 24, 2009 at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Reply

I sent the following follow-up today:

Dear Mr Palmer,

I am not satisfied with your response to my request.

In your letter, you stated that the “Information is covered by a confidentiality agreement” and that the terms of this(these) agreements “prevent further transmission to non-academics”.

I requested the data for academic purposes. I have published relevant articles in peer-reviewed literature; I was a reviewer for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report; I have been invited to make presentations to a panel of the US National Research Council, at a Union session of the American Geophysical Union and to several universities. I undertake that my use of the data will be for “academic” and not commercial use. In addition, it is my expectation that any restrictive language in the relevant confidentiality agreements will apply only to the “use” of the data and my use is academic; I doubt that the restrictive language is explicitly framed in terms of affiliation. Accordingly, I request that you review the actual restrictive language in the various confidentiality agreements and, if the language, as I surmise, pertains to “use”, I request that you re-consider your decision and provide the requested data.

In addition, I hereby make a separate FOI request in in respect to the confidentiality agreement(s) upon which you based your decision for the following countries: Canada, United States, Australia, U.K., and Brazil:

1. the date of any applicable confidentiality agreements;
2. the parties to such confidentiality agreement, including the full name of any organization;
3. a copy of the section of the confidentiality agreement that “prevents further transmission to non-academics”.
4. a copy of the entire confidentiality agreement,

Thank you for your attention.

Yours truly,

Stephen McIntyre

And then this:

If you do so, please post up a copy of your letter so that we can keep track of requested countries.

I suggest that interested readers can participate by choosing 5 countries and sending the following FOI request to david.palmer at uea.ac.uk:

Dear Mr Palmer,

I hereby make a EIR/FOI request in respect to any confidentiality agreements)restricting transmission of CRUTEM data to non-academics involing the following countries: [insert 5 or so countries that are different from ones already requested]

1. the date of any applicable confidentiality agreements;
2. the parties to such confidentiality agreement, including the full name of any organization;
3. a copy of the section of the confidentiality agreement that “prevents further transmission to non-academics”.
4. a copy of the entire confidentiality agreement,

I am requesting this information for the purposes of academic research.

Thank you for your attention.

Yours truly,

yourname

What follows in the comment thread is request after request from CA readers.

Here is a link to the response to the FOIA request for the number of FOIAs to CRU.

The table below lists all FOIA requests we have received relating directly to the CRU or staff who work in the CRU from 1 January 2005 until 22 December 2009.

The following 58 requests were of a similar nature requesting details about the confidentiality agreements associated with data sources used by the CRU. Most of these requests were refused.

Here is a link to the page with a summary of the above.

Here is the request:

Dear University of East Anglia,

I request a list of FOI requests that have been made to UEA
relating to the Climate Research Unit, including the content of the
request, and its status (answered, turned down, pending, etc),
going back to the commencement of FOI.

Here, out of interest, are some emails that are pertinent:

At 17:07 29/07/2009, you wrote:

Hi, Phil,
Yes, Friday-Saturday I noticed that ClimateFraudit had renewed their
interest in you. I was thinking about sending an email of sympathy, but
I was busy preparing for a quick trip to Hawaii – I left Monday morning
and flew out Tuesday evening and am now in the Houston airport on my way
home.
Data that we can’t release is a tricky thing here at NCDC. Periodically,
Tom Karl will twist my arm to release data that would violate agreements
and therefore hurt us in the long run, so I would prefer that you don’t
specifically cite me or NCDC in this.
But I can give you a good alternative. You can point to the
Peterson-Manton article on regional climate change workshops. All those
workshops resulted in data being provided to the author of the
peer-reviewed paper with a strict promise that none of the data would be
released. So far as far as I know, we have all lived up to that
agreement – myself with the Caribbean data (so that is one example of
data I have that are not released by NCDC), Lucie and Malcolm for South
America, Enric for Central America, Xuebin for Middle Eastern data,
Albert for south/central Asian data, John Ceasar for SE Asia, Enric
again for central Africa, etc. The point being that such agreements are
common and are the only way that we have access to quantitative insights
into climate change in many parts of the world. Many countries don’t
mind the release of derived products such as your gridded field or
Xuebin’s ETCCDI indices, but very much object to the release of actual
data (which they might sell to potential users). Does that help?
Regarding AR4, I would like to be part of it. I have no idea what role
would be deemed appropriate. One thing I noticed with the CLAs in my
old chapter is that if one isn’t up to doing his part (too busy, or a
different concept of timeliness, or …) it can make for a difficult
job. You and I have worked well together before (e.g., GSN) so I’d be
delighted to work with you on it and I know you’d hold up your side of
the tasks. We touched on this briefly at the AOPC meeting. If I get an
opportunity, I would say yes.
But I also don’t know what the U.S. IPCC nominating approach would be or
even who decides that. There is an upcoming IPCC report on extremes and
impacts of extremes and I wasn’t privy to any insights into the U.S.
nominations other than when it was over it was announced in NCDC staff
notes that the nominations had been made. However, Kumar had earlier
asked if he could nominate me, so he did (I provided him with the details).
Regards,
Tom

Tom,

If you look on Climate Audit you will see that I’m all over it!
Our ftp site is regularly trawled as I guess yours is. It seems that
a Canadian along with two Americans copied some files we put there
for MOHC in early 2003. So saying they have the CRU data is not
quite correct. What they have is our raw data for CRUTEM2 which
went into Jones and Moberg (2003) – data through end of 2002.
Anyway enough of my problems – I have a question for you. I’m
going to write a small document for our web site to satisfy (probably the
wrong word) the 50 or so FOI/EIR requests we’ve had over the weekend.
I will put up the various agreements we have with Met Services.
The question – I think you told me one time that you had a file
containing all the data you couldn’t release (i.e. it’s not in GHCN). Presumably
this is not in your gridded datasets? Do you know off hand how much
data is in this category? Would NCDC mind if I mentioned that you
have such data – not the amount/locations/anything, just that there is some?
On something positive – attached is the outlines for the proposed Chs in AR5/WG1.
Ch1 is something Thomas thinks he can write himself – well with Qin Dahe, so
only 13 chapters. There are a lot of issues with overlaps between some of the
data chapters 2 with 3, 2 with 5 and 2 with 14.
I’m still thinking about whether to get involved. It would be 2 if I decide. At the
moment I’d say yes, but I might change my mind tomorrow! Nominations are
from Nov09 thru Jan10 with the selection made in April 10. Are you considering
getting involved?
I have got the IPCC Secretariat and Thomas to raise the FOI issues with
the full IPCC Plenary, which meets in Bali in September or October. Thomas
is fully aware of all the issues we’ve had here wrt Ch 6 last time, and others in
the US have had.
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784

So, whaddya think?  Vexatious? Nuisance? Or legitimate academic interest?