'Wyoming just criminalized citizen science'

[kalibex]

Imagine visiting Yellowstone this summer. You wake up before dawn to take a picture of the sunrise over the mists emanating from Yellowstone hot springs. A thunderhead towers above the rising sun, and the picture turns out beautifully. You submit the photo to a contest sponsored by the National Weather Service. Under a statute signed into law by the Wyoming governor this spring, you have just committed a crime and could face up to one year in prison.

Wyoming doesn’t, of course, care about pictures of geysers or photo competitions. But photos are a type of data, and the new law makes it a crime to gather data about the condition of the environment across most of the state if you plan to share that data with the state or federal government. The reason? The state wants to conceal the fact that many of its streams are contaminated by E. coli bacteria, strains of which can cause serious health problems, even death.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/05/wyoming_law_against_data_collection_protecting_ranchers_by_ignoring_the.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top#

 

[curious_richard]

No. The law applies to people who go onto PRIVATE land without permission. The way "resource data" is defined, it seems to me that this is more about ranchers (or rustlers) spying on other ranchers.
http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2015/Engross/SF0012.pdf

EDIT:
There is another similar law that is not so exact about private property:
http://legisweb.state.wy.us/2015/Enroll/SF0080.pdf
It only seems to authorize civil action by a private party, and it also uses the word "trespass", the unlawful entry into private property.

It would have been helpful if the writer had bothered to state the bill numbers.