The call to Angela Rasmussen came out of the blue and asked a disturbing question. Had she heard the rumor that important data records would be removed from the US centers for the control of the disease control and prevention the next day?
It is something that Rasmussen had thought could never happen.
“It was never really thought that CDC would actually delete some of these decisive data records for public health,” said the virologist at the University of Saskatchewan. “This data is really, very important for the health of everyone – not only in the USA, but all over the world.”
The following day, January 31, Rasmussen began to see how data disappeared. She knew that she had to take measures.
Rasmussen turned to a bioinformatic friend who knew how to keep data and create backup copies of websites. With others, they tried to keep the data if they have been deleted.
At Data Purge Eva, many people stayed late to store the CDC website. @Charles_gaba Download the whole thing.
A group of us is working on making these data obtained an accessible and publicly available resource. More come, but catch here at https://t.co/cljgv1u9lp
“We sat down to archive the entire CDC website,” said Rasmussen.
Since then, Rasmussen and her colleague have teamed up with others such as the American health data analyst Charles Gaba and made themselves aware of other locations with health data, with information from departments and agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Rasmussen said that the publication of some studies, such as three that would illuminate the H5N1 bird flu, also seem to be influenced by the change in administration.
Rasmussen is just one of several Canadian residents who have joined an international archiving effort to preserve copies of the US government’s websites and data that quickly become offline from the management of US President Donald Trump.
An analysis of the New York Times identified thousands of pages that were recorded in the days after Trump’s inauguration, partly due to Trump’s executive regulations, which were aimed at diversity initiatives.
On the pages that have disappeared observers are those who monitor HIV infections, deal with health risks for young people and contain census data, educational data and information on supported reproductive technologies. A website with the names of those who were charged with January 6, 2021 was also removed.
A comparison of the usdata.gov start page on January 17th before Trump’s inauguration and Wednesday shows 522 fewer data records.
Some commentators on social media compare the disappearing data to book burning in the 1930s.
When asked about the changes to the CDC website, the agency became part of the changes in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
“All changes to the websites/manuscripts of the HHS and HHS department correspond to President Trump’s instructions on January 20,” said the high -ranking press spokesman Rosa Norman in an E -Mail response.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) still has to be answered on questions from CBC News.
It is not known whether the data is still available on government servers.
Those who archive the data argue that they were paid with US tax money and should be open to the public and are accessible to researchers and everyone else.
The government has argued that the deletions are not necessarily final and that information about the Wayback machine of the Internet archive can be accessed.
On Tuesday, a US federal judge granted a temporary order that the CDC and the FDA cited to restore public information on its websites, while the courts hear a lawsuit that questions the Trump government’s decision.
Internet archives sometimes miss data
Brewster Kahle is the founder of the Internet Archive (IA), which creeps in the web and archive copies of websites. Its non-profit organization is part of the season web archive project of the year, which has documented the US government websites since 2004 at the end of each administration and the project of the Democracy Library started a collection of state research and publications from all over the world.
However, the crawlers of the Internet archive do not always include data records and databases.
Those who work on preserving the US government data records download and store them in many cases with the help of the internet archive.
“This time the efforts of these cooperative units have produced a lot, much more data than other times,” said Kahle. “I think this is an indication that people are very enthusiastic to ensure that the government recording is kept entirely.”
So far, Kahle said that the US government did not go according to the state data stored by the Internet Archive.
“That would be very unusual. We have never happened,” said Kahle.
However, if this occurs, the US data center in British Columbia is supported by the Internet Archive Canada and vice versa. Kahle said the Democracy Library project was also housed in Canada.
“That is what libraries do. We are there to keep an recording of what happened – that’s a role we play,” said Kahle. “Canada is always there to help the United States internet archive.”
At the University of Guelph, Geography Professor Eric Nost works with the Environmental Data Governance Initiative (EDGI) to obtain data from the EPA – especially in connection with climate change and environmental level.
“This data has very important that it is able to pursue environmental changes and, for example, to identify which places are most stressed in the USA by pollution in the USA where the pollution is,” said Nost. “This is obviously very important for Americans, but it also has real relevance for Canadians.”
For example, some Canadian cities are against the wind of American factories, he said.
“It is also very important for us to have access to what comes from the Smokestacks.”
Nost said he knows of at least three other people in Canada who also work on archiving environmental data. He said his group had prioritized 60 data records or tools, archived most of them and reconstructed tools like the EJScreen of the EPA.
Nost said his group also found that some websites are currently blocked on everyone that accesses them from outside the United States, such as the National Risk Index Map of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Matt Price, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, who also works with Edgi, says that the preservation of data is important because the USA is the largest scientific power plant in the world.
“We should take care of American data because the American federal government was the supply of large amounts of data that the whole world needs,” said Price.
Jessica Mahr is an employee of the Innovation Center for Environmental Policy in Toronto, which helps to coordinate various groups that try to archive the U.S. government environmental data. She says that the removal of data and tools influence research that influence the guidelines to improve the quality of life.
“Without those tools, you cannot have a sound understanding of who is suffering and where you can provide you with funds or programs that would improve your life,” said Mahr.
