The call to Angela Rasmussen came out of blue and asked a disturbing question. Had she heard the rumor that key data sets are deleted from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website the next day?
This is something Rasmussen had thought could never happen.
“It had never really been thought before that the CDC would really start to delete some of these crucial public health data sets,” said Virologist at the University of Saskatchewan. “These data are really very important to everyone’s health – not just in the United States but in the world.”
The next day, January 31, Rasmussen began to see the data disappear. She knew she had to act.
Rasmussen contacted a bioinformatician friend, who knew how to preserve data and make copies of websites. With others, they rushed to preserve the data in case it has been deleted.
On Data Purge Eve, many people stayed late to record the CDC website. @Charles_Gaba Downloaded everything.
A group of us work to make this data kept a resource accessible and accessible to the public. More to come, but start here https://t.co/cljgv1u9lp
“We started to archive the entire CDC website,” said Rasmussen.
Since then, Rasmussen and his colleague have teamed up with others such as the American analyst of health care data Charles Gaba and have turned their attention to other sites with health data, preserving the information from the departments and agencies like Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and centers and centers for Medicare & Medicaid services.
Rasmussen said that the publication of certain studies, such as three that would shed light on the H5N1 bird flu, also seems to be affected by the change of administration.
Rasmussen is only one of the many Canadian residents who have joined what has become an international guerrilla archiving effort to preserve copies of web pages and US government data which are quickly offline by the administration of the president American Donald Trump.
An analysis by the New York Times Identified thousands of pages deleted in the days that followed the inauguration of Trump, partly following Trump’s executive decree targeting diversity initiatives.
Among the pages, observers have seen disappear those who monitor HIV infections, process youth health risks and contain census data, education and information on assisted reproductive technologies. A website containing the names of the people billed in relation to the attack of January 6, 2021 on the Capitol was also deleted.
A comparison of the USDATA.GOV The home page on January 17, before the inauguration of Trump, and Wednesday, displays 522 less data sets.
Some commentators on social networks compare data from the burn of books in the 1930s.
Asked about changes to the CDC website, the agency said it was part of the changes through the Ministry of Health and Social Services (HHS).
“All changes in websites / manuscripts in the HHS and HHS division comply with the executive decrees of January 20 of President Trump,” said Rosa Norman, press manager, in an email response.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not yet answered CBC News questions.
We do not know if the data still exists on government servers.
Those who have archived the data maintain that it has been paid with American taxes and should be in the public domain, accessible to researchers and everyone.
The government has argued that deletions are not necessarily final and that the information is accessible via the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive.
Tuesday, an American federal judge granted a temporary prescriptionOrdering the CDC and the FDA to restore public information on their websites while the courts hear a trial contesting the Trump administration to delete it.
Internet archives sometimes miss the data
Brewster Kahle is the founder of the Internet Archive (IA), who explores the web and ark copies of websites. Its non -profit organization is part of the end -of -term web archive project which documented the American government’s websites at the end of each administration since 2004 and launched the library project of democracy, a collection of research and government publications around the world.
However, the robots of the Internet archives do not always choose data sets and databases.
Those who work to preserve the data sets of the American government download them and, in many cases, store them with the help of Internet archives.
“The efforts of these cooperative entities have given much more archived data this time,” Kahle said. “I think this is an indication that people are extremely enthusiastic about trying to make sure that the government’s file is held whole.”
Kahle said that to date, the US government has not followed government data stored by Internet archives.
“It would be very unusual. We never had anything like it,” said Kahle.
However, if this happens, its American data center is saved in British Columbia by Internet Archive Canada and Vice Versa. Kahle said that the library project for democracy is also hosted in Canada.
“This is what the libraries do. We are here to keep a trace of what happened – it’s a role we play,” said Kahle. “Canada is still there to help the United States Internet archives.”
At the University of Guelph, the professor of geography Eric Nost works with the Environmental Data Governance Initiative (EDGI) to preserve EPA data – in particular linked to climate change and environmental justice.
“These data are very important to be able to follow environmental changes, to identify, for example, the places most overwhelmed by pollution in the United States, where pollution is, where climatic risks exist,” said Nost . “This is obviously very important for Americans, but it also has real relevance for Canadians.”
For example, some Canadian cities are in the wind of American factories, he said.
“Having access to what comes out of chimneys is also very important for us.”
Nostle said that he knew at least three other people in Canada who also work to archive the environmental data. He said that his group had prioritized 60 sets or data tools, archived most of them and rebuilt tools like the EPA ejscreen.
Nosti said that his group also finds that some websites are currently blocked to anyone who accessing it outside the United States, such as the Federal Urgery Management Agency Risk index national card.
Matt Price, an associate professor at the University of Toronto who also works with Edgi, says that the preservation of data is important because the United States is the greatest scientific power in the world.
“We have to worry about American data because the American federal government has been the default guardian of large amounts of data that the whole world needs,” Price said.
Jessica Mahr is an employee based in Toronto for the Environmental Policy Innovation Center helping to coordinate different groups trying to archive the environmental data of the United States government. She says that data and deleted tools affect research that informs policy to improve quality of life.
“Without these tools, you are unable to have an enlightened understanding of who suffers, then where to provide them with funding or programs that would improve their lives,” said Mahr.
