Attachment 12- EXHIBIT K RMRS Plot Location Non-Disclosure Policy (Contracts).pdf

Rocky Mountain Forest Inventory and Analysis April 18, 2017 Plot Location Non-Disclosure Policy and FAQs Updated February 11, 2025 for RMRS Contract Crews

INTRODUCTION

All Rocky Mountain Forest Inventory and Analysis (RMRS-FIA) employees, contractors, collaborators, and volunteers authorized to visit or access digital or hardcopy format confidential FIA plot locations are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). The NDA indicates that signees understand and agree to protect the confidential nature of FIA plot locations. Other individuals, collaborators, contractors, and partners may be granted conditional access to confidential plot locations under special circumstances and with additional certification requirements.

BACKGROUND

FIA plot locations are confidential and protected by federal legislation similar to U.S. Census data.

In 2000, the Department of the Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations Act (H.R. 3423) amended the Food Security Act of 1985 (H.R. 2100) to include the USDA Forest Service’s FIA program in a list of activities that cannot make data available to the public if the owner of the land on which the data were collected can be identified. Penalties for violating the law can include fines up to $50,000 and/or up to 5 years in federal prison.

Food Security Act of 1985:

CONFIDENTIALITY OF INFORMATION

SEC. 1770. (a) In the case of information furnished under a provision of law referred to in subsection (d), neither the Secretary of Agriculture, any other officer or employee of the Department of Agriculture or agency thereof, nor any other person may-

(1) use such information for a purpose other than the development or reporting of aggregate data in a manner such that the identity of the person who supplied such information is not discernible and is not material to the intended uses of such information; or

(2) disclose such information to the public, unless such information has been transformed into a statistical or aggregate form that does not allow the identification of the person who supplied particular information.

(b)(l) In carrying out a provision of law referred to in subsection (d), no department, agency, officer, or employee of the Federal Government, other than the Secretary of Agriculture, shall require to furnish a copy of statistical information provided a person to the Department of Agriculture.

(2) A copy of such information-

(A) shall be immune from mandatory disclosure of any type, including legal process; and

(B) shall not, without the consent of such person, be admitted as evidence or used for any purpose in any action, suit, or other judicial or administrative proceeding.

(c) Any person who shall publish, cause to be published, or otherwise publicly release information collected pursuant to a provision of law referred to in subsection (d), in any manner or for any purpose prohibited in section (a), shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned for not more than 1 year, or both.

http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/7/55/2276

The plot locations are kept confidential for several reasons: 1) To comply with federal privacy legislation by protecting the identity of landowners who allow FIA field crews to collect data on their property, 2) To ensure continued access to plot locations and maintain the integrity of the FIA sample. Access to private property is granted voluntarily. Permission to collect data on private lands is vital to the continued credibility of the FIA program, and 3) To preserve the integrity of the plot. If the plot locations were freely available, motivated individuals could deliberately visit them and intentionally or unintentionally alter the ecological conditions on the plot, impacting the integrity of data collected when the plot is remeasured. The expectation is that landowners will not intentionally manage the plot area differently than adjacent lands.

Please do not:

1. Email or text actual FIA plot coordinates, or transmit in any format (shapefiles, feature classes, spreadsheets, text files, etc.) outside the secure computing environment.

2. Disclose actual FIA plot coordinates to any other party.

3. Use Google Maps, Google Earth Engine, Google Cloud Platform, Azure, MapQuest, Parcel

Quest or any other commercial web map application, analysis platform, cloud computing environment or web-based artificial intelligence or neural network model by entering single actual coordinates or batches of actual coordinates. These applications may capture coordinates and information associated with the area being viewed. Browsing a specific geographic area to extract information or imagery around a plot location is acceptable if the actual FIA plot coordinates are not entered and used to provide the area of interest for the request.

4. Create and/or use KML files online involving FIA plot coordinates.

5. Input actual FIA coordinates to smart phones, GPS receivers or any electronic devices or computing environments that can transmit information wirelessly or are connected to the internet or third-party servers (WWW).

6. Create, display or publish a map or infographic showing actual FIA plot locations or related inventory data such that a user may determine the plot location by digitizing and georeferencing the image.

DISCLOSURE SCENARIOS

A range of circumstances might occur under which confidential FIA plot locations may or may not be disclosed, or for which geographic coordinates in digital files or hardcopy format require special handling. The following frequently asked questions should address most scenarios. For specific situations not covered here, contact the appropriate state coordinator.

1. Under what circumstances may FIA plot locations be disclosed to a collaborator, contractor, or volunteer?

• Only if the requesting individual or group has a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA), a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA), Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC), or a Service-wide Agreement (SA) with the FIA unit and has signed and received approval for the MOA, MTA, MOC, SA, the NDA or LOI for participants, and as necessary a site certification/data security plan for the agreement.

• A MTA, MOA, or MOC undergoes extensive review before it will be approved by the program manager(s) and the disclosure of coordinates will be expedited from the lab/office.

2. What if a landowner requests the exact location of a plot or plots on their property in digital or hardcopy format?

• Requests by companies, organizations, agencies, or owners (private and public including federal, state, regional, county, local government, and military) for an exact location or group of locations in digital or hardcopy format are evaluated on a case-by-case basis. These requests should be referred to the appropriate coordinator or Contracting Officer Representative (COR) and will be expedited from the lab/office.

3. If a private landowner wants to see the location of the plot, can I provide it to them or show it to them on a hardcopy or digital map?

• Do not provide a hardcopy or digital map to the landowner with actual plot locations.

The map could be geo-referenced and the locations extracted accurately with readily available GIS software. It is acceptable to indicate the approximate location of the plot to the landowner on a map by pointing to it or drawing a box or circle without giving away the map and actual location.

• During the permission process small-holder private owners are provided legal descriptions (Township, Range, and Section) of the actual plot location.

• If a landowner with a plot or plots on their land requests a map with approximate locations on it, contact the appropriate coordinator or COR and the request will be expedited from the lab/office. The map will depict the publicly available perturbed locations.

4. What if a private landowner insists on knowing the exact location of one or a few plots located on their property?

• If a private owner insists, they may accompany the FIA field crew to the plot(s) to observe fieldwork on their property and will then know the location of the plot(s) on their property. In this case the field crew should emphasize the expectation that the plot area should not be managed differently than adjacent lands.

5. Can any other groups or individuals accompany an FIA field crew to a plot on public or private land?

• Only if they are authorized employees, contractors, collaborators, or volunteers who have signed NDA agreements, or authorized collaborators who have a MOU or MOC and have signed NDA agreements. In very rare cases an adjunct inventory agreement requiring program manager approval may be granted and expedited from the lab by program management.

• A proxy designated by the owner, like a ranch or property manager, may grant access or accompany a field crew to the plot on the owner’s behalf.

• Contractors like horse packers, helicopter pilots and boat captains may out of necessity accompany field crews to the plot location or its vicinity, and use coordinates for navigation purposes, but must sign non-disclosure agreements before doing so.

6. May National Forest System employees accompany a field crew to the plot or receive digital or hardcopy format confidential locations on NFS lands?

• All NFS employees are covered by a national Service-wide Agreement that allows them access to confidential data for FIA plots on NFS lands. Requests for confidential data from NFS employees for plots on NFS lands should be made through the NFS liaisons in each region However, they cannot accompany FIA crews to the plot location, or visit the plot location on their own without prior agreement with FIA.

• Inventory personnel and contractors who have signed NDA agreements are authorized for data collection, QA/QC and contract administration activities on FIA plot locations within previously established parameters.

7. For field planning, navigation, visualization, analysis, or mapping purposes, is it appropriate to enter confidential FIA plot location coordinates into a free or subscription information service or geographic information system via the internet or any other electronic information network or database, public or private?

• Confidential FIA plot location coordinates may not be input to or stored on any software system, information network, or database not authorized by the Forest Service and the FIA program. This includes but is not limited to Parcel Quest, Google Earth, Google Earth Engine, Bing and public or private local or wide area networks (LANs or WANs including university systems), or anything on the World Wide Web (WWW).

• On-line information systems like Google Earth, Parcel Quest and possibly even ArcGIS Pro rely on a two-way real time data connection to private corporate servers, and any information entered may be captured and potentially disclosed.

• The national director of FIA has specifically mandated that no confidential plot locations be entered in Google Earth. Parcel Quest now uses Google for its mapping and search engine and can therefore no longer be used in conjunction with FIA plot coordinates.

• It has been deemed safe to use the PDF Maps application developed by the Avenza Company for navigation. The Forest Service has obtained corporate licensing and the company president confirmed Avenza does not track or collect specific location information. The app may be used with geo-PDF documents created in a secure ArcMap environment with plot locations included as graphics in the geo-PDF. It is not appropriate to enter actual plot coordinates or location “pins” directly to the PDF Maps application, or to upload geo-PDF docs containing plot locations to the Avenza “Map Store” on-line.

• Location tracking and navigation software should be disabled after reaching the plot location on smart phones and fitness trackers.

8. Can I email digital coordinate files or send them via peripheral data drives or external media like flash drives, mini hard drives, or digital media cards?

• Plot locations should not be emailed or transferred on any peripheral or external device or media unless they are password protected with encryption software.

• Coordinates should not be stored on the Pinyon/Box system indefinitely. If the Pinyon/Box system must be used for transfer of confidential information, it should be deleted as soon as the transfer or use case is complete.

9. Can I share, distribute or publish images, maps or graphics depicting actual FIA plot locations?

• Hard copy or digital materials depicting confidential FIA data should be destroyed or deleted when no longer needed.

• Actual plot locations should not be used in PowerPoint presentations, maps or infographics that will be published, distributed, posted to the internet or shared with the public or other non-authorized users of confidential FIA data. The fuzzed or perturbed coordinates are appropriate for these use cases.

RELATED SAFETY CONCERNS

Additional situations might arise that could reveal the location of a confidential FIA plot depending on the response to a scenario where individual health and safety may be in jeopardy.

1. What if an individual(s) deceased, dying, injured, or in grave danger is encountered on or near the plot?

• Respond appropriately by contacting search and rescue, or emergency services, or law enforcement, and/or rendering appropriate aide to an injured or endangered individual(s) if it is deemed safe to do so. Contact the appropriate state coordinator.

2. What if a situation is encountered where the life or safety of an individual(s) is threatened by other individual(s) on or near the plot?

• Leave the area immediately when it appears safe to do so and contact the necessary authorities, then contact the appropriate state coordinator.

3. What if evidence of past, non-active illegal activity is encountered on or near the plot (theft, vandalism, poaching, drug activity, etc.)?

• Leave the area if it is unsafe to remain, then contact the appropriate state coordinator.

While confidentiality rules are defined by law, your safety is most important.

4. What if threatening apparently illegal activity in progress is encountered on or near the plot

(drug cultivation or production, hazardous waste dumping, theft, vandalism, poaching, etc.)?

• Leave the area immediately when it is safe to do so, then contact the appropriate state coordinator. While confidentiality rules are defined by law, your safety is paramount.

CONCLUSION

In most cases related to requests for confidential FIA plot locations a set of clearly defined criteria exists for determining whether disclosure is reasonable and appropriate or not. Occasionally a scenario may occur within a gray area where the answer is unclear, and an individual must rely on common sense and good judgment to make the decision. These situations usually involve an imminent threat to individual health and safety and often require timely action.

Simply discovering a potentially illegal or threatening situation does not imply a legal obligation to contact authorities. However, notifying authorities and in the process disclosing a confidential location creates a new legal situation, defined under federal law, and punishable by up to a $10,000 fine and/or one year in prison. Nonetheless, rare cases may occur where the need to protect human health and safety supersedes the individual’s ability to abide by non-disclosure requirements.

While FIA plot location non-disclosure is mandated by federal legislation, employee health and safety are priority number one for the PNW FIA program. Individuals faced with a decision scenario that weighs plot confidentiality against the well-being of an individual or individuals should always choose in favor of protecting the life and safety of those individuals. Our top priority as a program and an agency is to return home from the job safely each day to our colleagues, friends, and families.

For any questions or clarifications, contact your COR, Technical POC, or Maryfaith Snyder (Maryfaith.Snyder@usda.gov) mailto:Maryfaith.Snyder@usda.gov