Eric Worrall writes: It looks like NOAA have found a new way to stifle FOIA inquiries from the public. According to Steve Goddard, NOAA have just demanded a $262,000 administrative fee for zipping up a few raw data files.
Steve Goddard has published a scan of the outrageous fee demand he and fellow FOIA requestor Kent Clizbe received from NOAA administrator Maria S Williams. The letter, sent on March 17th, demands $262,000 by March 24th, or further communication – otherwise Maria says they will consider the matter closed.
https://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/fee-notification-letter-2014-001602.pdf
The NOAA staff directory lists Maria Williams as the Chief of Staff Support Services Branch. https://nsd.rdc.noaa.gov/nsd/pubresult?LNAME=wil
For the full story read Steve’s post – https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/freedom-isnt-free/
As an IT expert with over 20 years of experience, my expert opinion on the claim by NOAA that it would require $262,000 to gather up a few computer files and send them to Steve is that it sounds like a complete crock. Even if some of the files are in printed form, they can just be run through a scanner – my automatic page feed scanner can process a page every few seconds, even cheap scanners can process thousands of pages per day. If the files are too big to put in an email (likely), for trivial cost NOAA could publish them on a password protected web page – it would take at most a day to set up such a web page, and add the files to it.
If NOAA’s data files really are so poorly catalogued that several man years of effort would be required to find them, this is something NOAA should be fixing on their own time. If this is the case, NOAA should not be attempting to charge FOIA petitioners outrageous fees to cover NOAA’s own incompetence.
Well so much for the “Free”-dom of Information Act, and transparency in government.
I became a partner in a business with paper records going back to the 1920’s, I came in in 1985, not a computer in sight.
If you wanted me to chase down data since 1920, I’d give you a number resembling $262K, and if you wouldn’t relent I would hire 10 people to work on it (at public expense).
Try to imagine what Barack Obama would do if he wanted to get the same information. And do the same thing.
Ah, but he’s the President? He didn’t learn his tactics in the Oval Office. He learned them before he got there.
Even if he only wants the raw temperature record, the cost is probably accurate. They probably just overwrote the raw record with the corrected, so finding the file version with the raw record will be very difficult.
All govt agencies are gonna be using this tactic.
Monthly temperature data???? That is all he is asking for???
No. Here is the relevent letter. You can see the request is MUCH broader than temperature data
https://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/fee-notification-letter-2014-001602.pdf
OK, case closed.
Are there no whistle blowers at NOAA?
I’m confused.
1.9 yrs at $37/hr times 1.16 (16% overhead) is only $163,096
Assuming the low value of $25/hr, it is only $110,200.
And they quoted $262,000 !!!
What am I missing?
those pesky “indirect” costs for golfing vacations?
Actually had a dean once that did that . . . and got caught.
Adjustment.
Union fees, average pay for the workers doing the slow down because they aren’t paid enough at the port of Portland 80K a year. That’s a lot of money for a HS diploma and driving a forklift, I would think someone who can use a computer would rate more.
Overhead and profit.
Thanks, Eric Worrall and Steve Goddard.
This is a ridiculous and inept response from NOAA.
I agree as to the quality of the reply.
But, just out of curiosity, what was the request?
Yepp the FOI game!
Here in the UK we FoI `d The Environment Agency (think EPA)- first time around $2000 = many embarrassing disclosures
Second time around 20% of the data and a price tag of $55000 duh!
FoI needs fitting with some sharp teeth – willful misconduct in delivery should attract personal sanctions onto the perpetrator(s)
I just read the request. It’s a pretty big request.
Hi evan,
We pay pretty big taxes. On top of that, what do you think of the charge of $262,000?
Maybe that’s chump change for the NOAA. But it would buy a lot of employee time — and with about $260,000 left over, IMHO.
Tell the truth, now: do you really think that’s an honest charge for what was requested?
Do you even know what was requested dbstealey?
In most cases I’m a big fan of full and complete transparency but this time the request was stupid. As if any organisation can effectively identify all the documentation relating to “discussions” about a broad and long term subject like temperature adjustment.
YES
timthetoolman,
Apparently they can provide the info. They gave their cost, didn’t they?
This is just the government’s version of stonewalling. Either there is transparency, and the government must follow its own laws, or the whole thing is a sham.
Which?
Too many computer savvy people here have said they can provide the requested data with no problem. Who are you gonna believe? Them, or the bureaucrats?
Frankly I think the request could never be properly satisfied as it stands. There will always be something that will be missed when the request is so broad. What is “discussion” on temperature adjustment and what isn’t? Where do I look to find it all?
You added… “Too many computer savvy people here have said they can provide the requested data with no problem.”
Irrelevant. What about memos? What about written documents? What about archived records? On old media that cant easily be read now? Too many computer savvy people here aren’t old enough to remember life before computers…
Under normal circumstances I agree, this is an unreasonable request. The request was answered with a matching unreasonable cost, although the reasonable cost would surely still be cost prohibitive.
Having said that, the request is (unfortunately) born from what many feel is data tampering. It would be reasonable to request the original raw temperature values, but many of us feel that we can’t trust what is provided due to pure manipulation of numbers to fit a desired outcome. Therefore, there is a need to verify and validate. This is a government agency which operates via tax payer money, and there should be a purity in terms of operational protocol.
I doubt it, but I don’t know.
The raw and and adjusted NOAA USHCN data, which is all I need, I got for free. I can figure out the “tampering” from that. And I have — it’s real, but not intentional; it’s a mistake I could easily have made. But it is a mistake.
Do you speak COBOL! Safe to say, no, and no NOAA manager can speak nor has knowledge of COBOL.
And then there are the “hard copy” from the late-40s through late-90s (USA Archives).
And that is just the tip of the iceberg problems in the ‘Federal.’
“Hoy Hoy! Berg Off Port And Closing.”
Helmsman [comparing Wishy to Vodka]: “Did E say Ort ? Ain’t know Ort! Bloody Liverpoolie!”
Shipmate sweating buckets [the only one looking out the window]: “Just spins der dial and pray to God.”
Ha ha.
NOAA could ask the US Department of the Treasury to print a 100 billion dollar bill. This bill would be wrapped around and glued on a USB flash drive. This flash drive would contain the password for an encrypted file in which all the data of NOAA and other organizations who want to stonewall FOIA requests would be stored. The password could only be obtained by unpacking the flash drive and destroying the bill. Therefore any request would have a price tag of 100 billion dollars.
FOIA was set up to have pretend that there is some sort of transparency. To be serious it would require continuous disclosure- no silly request process required- they put the all information straight out with some other body doing the vetting of what should be openly available.
I guess the science has settled to the point that its now buried.
Is NOAA configuring their data servers to block archive.org?
For shame, for shame.
A good discussion from various perspectives that gives food for thought.
A broad request from a known, possibly hostile source, received an indeterminate answer. Perhaps a more simple request would have opened a door. I wonder why NOAA didn’t say we can provide “X” for “$Y” but everything requested is difficult/impossible. They didn’t say that. So the question arises: “Do they actually have all the information requested?” They might, but probably in a very mixed format. Phone logs for example, may well be in handwritten diaries or computer notes depending on the individual or the group procedures. It might be that the request was guaranteed to fail with its broad scope. Undoubtedly NOAA knows who Goddard is, so they would be cautions in any case.
Hey – they could have just destroyed the hard drives, like the EPA administrator did.
Or, better yet, don’t keep any ‘official’ information on the NOAA servers. Just keep the ‘official’ data and communications on a private server….. and wipe it clean, if anyone tries to subpoena the information, the same way ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just did!
Open corruption and lawlessness, by the ‘most transparent administration’ evah….. yeah.
I can’t dispute the likelihood that at least part of NOAA’s motive in stonewalling Goddard’s request is to hide the process of data manipulation from professional scrutiny, but that may not be the most accurate reason such data was first made inaccessible to ordinary citizens.
Weather and climate are personal hobbies and for fun Some years ago, I used to scan the NCDC web site for historical( and recent) rainfall and temperature data to detect trends, make comparisons, etc. or for no particular reason at all :). Then, all of the sudden, that information was largely inaccessible, except, as best I can remember, to select academics, professionals, etc., or pay walled., I was, as a mere taxpayer, not privileged and thus not happy.
I seem also to recall researching the matter, or perhaps just adding 2+2, and came up with the reason behind NCDC’s new policy being an attempt to prevent the burgeoning private weather sector from benefiting from public scientists hard work – and even threatening to supplant said scientists’ jobs or others’ depending on government contracts and grants. There were those, at the time( and no doubt still) calling for much of the federal government’s climate and weather functions to be privatized..In other words, making climate data hard to obtain may originally have been a mechanism to protect bureaucratic turf and livelihoods.
My personal hobby horse is that bureaucracy is, by its very nature, totalitarian and obstructive. That goes for governmental or corporate. Fascism used to be known by the left as corporatism (but by golly the trains ran on time! and folks dressed in fancy uniforms) Now we have left wing corporatism and its called environmentalism (trains are a little rickety and the uniform has allowed for tattoos, piercings, and odd hair styles).
When I was a kid in the fifties there was a truism kicking about that one could do things the “right way, the wrong way or the Army way” as the rebuke to mindless bureaucratic behavior that one learns to accept. I think it would be real important if this generation could get beyond democrat or republican and take back our government (of the people, by the people, and for the people) from the mindless bureaucracies and lawyers whose ultimate objective is, by accident or design, every bit as oppressive as any dictator to plague our planet in the past
That is probably a reasonable approximation of their cost to produce the erroneous data. They do not want honest debate. They do not want to learn. They already KNOW the truth. This is the nature of religion.
Anyone here with good contacts to the NSA? They -supposedly- know more about data and its retrieval than most people here. And, not improbable, they do have the requested data already in store. So ask them…
good point,:) Seriously, though I have to wonder at what point the NSA’s data will become the next Nixon tapes
They’ll be known as “The Barmy Records”.
I’ll do it in 1.3 years for $220,000. 🙂
It’s gonna take peasants with pitchforks for us to get our country back. Write your Congressman? Hah!
Yepper, like spreading the revisions around between different websites. I made a comparison between websites that give “local conditions” for public consumption. The computer changes the numbers back to the previous reading. It can be seen if you graph them in real time (shows up as a straight line). Nature isnt a straight line! They also leave out conspictious readings (another form of filtering).
I think it should be “Blarney Records”.