This updated review contains multiple false statements that we must address directly.
False Claim: “SPI Uses ‘Confidentiality’ to Mislead the Public” SPI has never used confidentiality to mislead anyone. Our operational security concerns are legitimate and not uncommon to organizations doing legal and policy work.
False Claim: “SPI Used ‘Confidentiality’ to Mislead Vetted Causes” SPI had genuine concerns about how confidentiality was discussed in VettedCauses’ draft. However, we had no knowledge their review would be posted to the EA Forum. Only after seeing the forum post and the resulting confusion from our supporters did we feel obligated to explain why our work wasn’t more publicly visible, where we then made the decision to discuss it. We were responding to the community’s legitimate questions, not executing some deceptive strategy.
Mischaracterization of “Pending Cases”: VettedCauses claims we “legally never had a ‘pending case.’” Our use of “pending cases” refers to potential litigation in development and preparation—which is a common colloquial usage of the phrase. Legal work includes extensive preparation, research, and strategy development before any court filings occur, and this preparation can take months or even years.
False Claim: “It is impossible to reform pesticide use with $0” This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of advocacy work in general. Public advocacy, policy research, coalition building, and strategy development can all be done on a volunteer basis at zero cost. We have engaged in advocacy and continue to do so as volunteers.
False Claim: “SPI secures donations with inaccurate claims” We have been completely transparent with our donors about our stage of development, our accomplished tasks, our volunteer status, and our work. We have never made inaccurate claims to secure donations.
This strikes us as, assuming good faith, a misunderstanding. We would have appreciated the opportunity to clarify our statements before VettedCauses published these serious accusations. Addressing these false claims requires us to divert limited volunteer resources away from our advocacy work. We hope that in future reviews, VettedCauses will engage in follow-up dialogue when they have concerns about an organization’s statements.
As always, please feel free to reach out with any questions and we will be happy to provide information as transparently as we can. Thank you.
False Claim: “SPI Uses ‘Confidentiality’ to Mislead the Public” SPI has never used confidentiality to mislead anyone.
SPI has done no litigation, yet SPI publicly stated: “Much of our current efforts involve policy advocacy and litigation, which we keep confidential.”
This is using confidentiality to mislead the public.
It is also notable that you now say you merely have “potential litigation in development,” which is materially different from litigation.
False Claim: “SPI Used ‘Confidentiality’ to Mislead Vetted Causes” SPI had genuine concerns about how confidentiality was discussed in VettedCauses’ draft.
You asked us not to mention that SPI’s work is confidential, claiming it “could raise suspicion from industry.” We accommodated your request. You then responded to our critique by raising confidentiality as a defense, without giving us the chance to update our review to note that you’d asked us to not mention confidentiality.
More importantly: Why would industry care about SPI’s work? You’ve filed zero lawsuits, litigated zero cases, and operated with $0 in expenditures in your most recent fiscal year.
Mischaracterization of “Pending Cases”: VettedCauses claims we “legally never had a ‘pending case.’” Our use of “pending cases” refers to potential litigation in development and preparation—which is a common colloquial usage of the phrase.
This is not a common colloquial usage of the phrase, and it is patently false legally. SPI has no pending cases, and never has.
False Claim: “It is impossible to reform pesticide use with $0” This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of advocacy work in general. Public advocacy, policy research, coalition building, and strategy development can all be done on a volunteer basis at zero cost. We have engaged in advocacy and continue to do so as volunteers.
When you claim to “Reform pesticide use,” are you referring to things like posting on your Instagram?
How has pesticide use changed because of SPI?
False Claim: “SPI secures donations with inaccurate claims” We have been completely transparent with our donors about our stage of development, our accomplished tasks, our volunteer status, and our work. We have never made inaccurate claims to secure donations.
If this were true, it would’ve been known that SPI has filed zero lawsuits and litigated zero cases. Instead, SPI decided to claim that much of their work involves “litigation” and that they have “pending cases.”
We hope that in future reviews, VettedCauses will engage in follow-up dialogue when they have concerns about an organization’s statements.
We would have followed up, but based on your prior actions, we expected that even basic facts—like the fact that you’ve filed zero lawsuits and litigated zero cases—would be labeled “confidential,” and that we’d be accused of violating confidentiality if we included them.
I think it was sufficiently clear in context what SPI meant by “pending cases.” Their response disclosed that they were running on volunteer labor with a shoestring budget. So I’d start with an assumption that any of their cases were in the very early stages, and I would assume as a litigator that their cases would need significant investigation and development prior to filing.
Moreover, the reference to a desire for confidentiality strongly implies that the referenced cases were at the pre-filing stage of the litigation process. Civil actions are almost always a matter of public record, and the case-initiating documents (a summons and complaint) are generally served on the defendant(s) soon after being filed with the court. And presumably the goal of confidentiality would be that the intended target and/or the broader industry not find out until the case is filed and served. (It’s really unlikely that either the plaintiff or defendant in a case involving (e.g.) widespread pesticide use would be allowed to proceed under a pseudonym, at least in US courts.)
Thanks Jason. We thought it was clear from context as well, but have edited the post to ensure that no one could construe it any other way. We are indeed working on volunteer labor and on a tight budget. Your assessment of our current stage and reason for our desire for confidentiality is accurate.
“Pending case” does seem to have a specific legal meaning. I am not a lawyer and wouldn’t know whether there is an additional colloquial meaning (though when asked in those terms, Claude Sonnet 4 agrees that there is). Therefore I disagree that it was “sufficiently clear”—I would say it was below a sufficient standard of clarity.[1] I don’t think the reader can be expected to infer that a legal term was being used differently from the fact it was a disclosed to be a newly-formed volunteer team. I do think readers would have expected an organisation’s formal statement to be using the legal, more formal, meaning, and indeed I think many non-lawyer readers of this forum would not be aware that there is any other meaning.
Thanks Hugh. For the purpose of clarity, we are editing the words “pending cases” on the prior post and noting that it has been edited. The original ambiguity was not deliberate, for what it is worth. We meant it the way that your Claude session explains it, but we understand that there is a specific legal meaning.
SPI stated: “Much of our current efforts involve […] litigation, which we keep confidential for operational reasons—sharing details publicly would compromise pending cases.”[1]
We do not think SPI’s statement makes it clear that SPI has not litigated any cases, and only has “potential litigation in development and preparation.”[2]
Their response disclosed that they were running on volunteer labor with a shoestring budget.
Filing cases is often free for volunteer-run charities due to fee waivers.
Moreover, the reference to a desire for confidentiality strongly implies that the referenced cases were at the pre-filing stage of the litigation process. Civil actions are almost always a matter of public record, and the case-initiating documents
There is often a lot of information that you’d still want to keep confidential even if the lawsuit you’ve filed can be found with a docket number. Some of this confidentiality is even legally required.
In practice, it is also much less likely that people would find your cases if you don’t mention them to anyone (i.e. confidentiality).
Your implication seems to be that the filing fee is the only resource bottleneck, but there are other resource-consuming tasks involved (extensive fact finding, legal research, finding and consulting with witnesses, plaintiffs, hiring local counsel, etc.). These things take time and money, even when volunteers are working for free in their spare time.
Filing cases is often free for volunteer-run charities due to fee waivers
The filing fee isn’t the issue—getting to a proper complaint in an impact-litigation case generally requires a lot of resources. Consider, for instance, LIC’s 58-page complaint in the Costco case.
But if the resource was time, which in SPI’s case is free as they are volunteers, then having filed a case is consistent with operating on no budget or a shoestring budget, because of free waivers.
Re: Litigation: It sounds like your read of “much of our current efforts involve policy advocacy andlitigation, which we keep confidential” was something akin to “we are actively engaged in one or more already-filed lawsuits,” which is not how it was intended. What we meant was that litigation as a general strategy is one of our current efforts (as opposed to some other strategy, for example), and that confidentiality is important to us in that strategy. At this stage, this practically means things like researching issues and causes of action, searching for plaintiffs, consulting with potential witnesses, and other tasks performed in preparation for litigation. With that said, in the interest of disambiguation, we will edit the original post for clarity and note how it has been edited.
Re: Confidentiality: As for why confidentiality is important, this is because opposition could take more effective countermeasures to lower the effectiveness of our interventions if they knew exactly what we were doing or preparing to do.
Re: Pending cases: As others have noted in this thread, there are multiple reasonable interpretations of the phrase “pending cases.” We thought it understandable from the context of the post, but again, to be as clear as possible, we will edit the original post and note how it has been edited.
Re: Policy advocacy: The types of policy advocacy actions we engage in range from organizational outreach, public outreach, and legislator/regulator outreach. These are ongoing initiatives and not yet fully realized outcomes. We do not think that having the words “Reform Pesticide Use” on our website next to our other initiatives implies that we have already finished the initiative. Again, we are a very new organization run on volunteer labor trying to effectuate positive change.
Please feel free to let us know if there is anything else that you feel would help ensure clarity. Thank you.
Re: Litigation: It sounds like your read of “much of our current efforts involve policy advocacy andlitigation, which we keep confidential” was something akin to “we are actively engaged in one or more already-filed lawsuits,” which is not how it was intended. What we meant was that litigation as a general strategy is one of our current efforts (as opposed to some other strategy, for example), and that confidentiality is important to us in that strategy. At this stage, this practically means things like researching issues and causes of action, searching for plaintiffs, consulting with potential witnesses, and other tasks performed in preparation for litigation. With that said, in the interest of disambiguation, we will edit the original post for clarity and note how it has been edited.
Thank you for fixing it.
Re: Confidentiality: As for why confidentiality is important, this is because opposition could take more effective countermeasures to lower the effectiveness of our interventions if they knew exactly what we were doing or preparing to do.
We’ve openly stated that in many circumstances, confidentiality is appropriate or even necessary. If you’re preparing for a lawsuit, we don’t object to keeping specific legal strategies or related information confidential. Our concern has never been about the existence of confidentiality—it’s about how confidentiality was used rhetorically to deflect criticism, and to suggest more progress and impact than the facts supported.
You asked us not to mention that SPI’s work is confidential, claiming it “could raise suspicion from industry.” This reason doesn’t make sense. Simply knowing SPI has some form of confidential work does not provide any meaningful information; everyone does work that could be self-labeled as confidential. Industry does not care about a charity that filed zero lawsuits, litigated zero cases, and operated with $0 in expenditures in their most recent fiscal year.
Further, there is no way for any opposition to develop “more effective countermeasures” in reaction to simply knowing SPI has some form of work that’s been self-labeled as confidential.
Re: Pending cases: As others have noted in this thread, there are multiple reasonable interpretations of the phrase “pending cases.” We thought it understandable from the context of the post, but again, to be as clear as possible, we will edit the original post and note how it has been edited.
When you say: “Much of our current efforts involve […] litigation, which we keep confidential for operational reasons—sharing details publicly would compromise pending cases.”
there’s a good chance many people will reasonably interpret that to mean:
You’ve actually done litigation, and
You have legal cases that are currently pending.
Since neither of those things is true, the statement was materially misleading.
Invoking confidentiality here discouraged additional inquiry, and furthered the false impression that SPI was engaged in sensitive, ongoing litigation, despite no cases having been filed.
Re: Policy advocacy: The types of policy advocacy actions we engage in range from organizational outreach, public outreach, and legislator/regulator outreach. These are ongoing initiatives and not yet fully realized outcomes. We do not think that having the words “Reform Pesticide Use” on our website next to our other initiatives implies that we have already finished the initiative.
Above is an image from SPI’s website.
“We try to reform pesticide use” and “We do reform pesticide use” are two completely different claims—just like saying “We try to discover aliens” versus “We do discover aliens.”
You can’t honestly claim to reform pesticide use until pesticide use is actually changing as a result of your work.
This updated review contains multiple false statements that we must address directly.
False Claim: “SPI Uses ‘Confidentiality’ to Mislead the Public” SPI has never used confidentiality to mislead anyone. Our operational security concerns are legitimate and not uncommon to organizations doing legal and policy work.
False Claim: “SPI Used ‘Confidentiality’ to Mislead Vetted Causes” SPI had genuine concerns about how confidentiality was discussed in VettedCauses’ draft. However, we had no knowledge their review would be posted to the EA Forum. Only after seeing the forum post and the resulting confusion from our supporters did we feel obligated to explain why our work wasn’t more publicly visible, where we then made the decision to discuss it. We were responding to the community’s legitimate questions, not executing some deceptive strategy.
Mischaracterization of “Pending Cases”: VettedCauses claims we “legally never had a ‘pending case.’” Our use of “pending cases” refers to potential litigation in development and preparation—which is a common colloquial usage of the phrase. Legal work includes extensive preparation, research, and strategy development before any court filings occur, and this preparation can take months or even years.
False Claim: “It is impossible to reform pesticide use with $0” This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of advocacy work in general. Public advocacy, policy research, coalition building, and strategy development can all be done on a volunteer basis at zero cost. We have engaged in advocacy and continue to do so as volunteers.
False Claim: “SPI secures donations with inaccurate claims” We have been completely transparent with our donors about our stage of development, our accomplished tasks, our volunteer status, and our work. We have never made inaccurate claims to secure donations.
This strikes us as, assuming good faith, a misunderstanding. We would have appreciated the opportunity to clarify our statements before VettedCauses published these serious accusations. Addressing these false claims requires us to divert limited volunteer resources away from our advocacy work. We hope that in future reviews, VettedCauses will engage in follow-up dialogue when they have concerns about an organization’s statements.
As always, please feel free to reach out with any questions and we will be happy to provide information as transparently as we can. Thank you.
SPI has done no litigation, yet SPI publicly stated: “Much of our current efforts involve policy advocacy and litigation, which we keep confidential.”
This is using confidentiality to mislead the public.
It is also notable that you now say you merely have “potential litigation in development,” which is materially different from litigation.
You asked us not to mention that SPI’s work is confidential, claiming it “could raise suspicion from industry.” We accommodated your request. You then responded to our critique by raising confidentiality as a defense, without giving us the chance to update our review to note that you’d asked us to not mention confidentiality.
More importantly: Why would industry care about SPI’s work? You’ve filed zero lawsuits, litigated zero cases, and operated with $0 in expenditures in your most recent fiscal year.
This is not a common colloquial usage of the phrase, and it is patently false legally. SPI has no pending cases, and never has.
When you claim to “Reform pesticide use,” are you referring to things like posting on your Instagram?
How has pesticide use changed because of SPI?
If this were true, it would’ve been known that SPI has filed zero lawsuits and litigated zero cases. Instead, SPI decided to claim that much of their work involves “litigation” and that they have “pending cases.”
We would have followed up, but based on your prior actions, we expected that even basic facts—like the fact that you’ve filed zero lawsuits and litigated zero cases—would be labeled “confidential,” and that we’d be accused of violating confidentiality if we included them.
I think it was sufficiently clear in context what SPI meant by “pending cases.” Their response disclosed that they were running on volunteer labor with a shoestring budget. So I’d start with an assumption that any of their cases were in the very early stages, and I would assume as a litigator that their cases would need significant investigation and development prior to filing.
Moreover, the reference to a desire for confidentiality strongly implies that the referenced cases were at the pre-filing stage of the litigation process. Civil actions are almost always a matter of public record, and the case-initiating documents (a summons and complaint) are generally served on the defendant(s) soon after being filed with the court. And presumably the goal of confidentiality would be that the intended target and/or the broader industry not find out until the case is filed and served. (It’s really unlikely that either the plaintiff or defendant in a case involving (e.g.) widespread pesticide use would be allowed to proceed under a pseudonym, at least in US courts.)
Thanks Jason. We thought it was clear from context as well, but have edited the post to ensure that no one could construe it any other way. We are indeed working on volunteer labor and on a tight budget. Your assessment of our current stage and reason for our desire for confidentiality is accurate.
“Pending case” does seem to have a specific legal meaning. I am not a lawyer and wouldn’t know whether there is an additional colloquial meaning (though when asked in those terms, Claude Sonnet 4 agrees that there is). Therefore I disagree that it was “sufficiently clear”—I would say it was below a sufficient standard of clarity.[1] I don’t think the reader can be expected to infer that a legal term was being used differently from the fact it was a disclosed to be a newly-formed volunteer team. I do think readers would have expected an organisation’s formal statement to be using the legal, more formal, meaning, and indeed I think many non-lawyer readers of this forum would not be aware that there is any other meaning.
(Though I don’t get the impression this was deliberate, whereas I get the sense Vetted Causes does.)
Thanks Hugh. For the purpose of clarity, we are editing the words “pending cases” on the prior post and noting that it has been edited. The original ambiguity was not deliberate, for what it is worth. We meant it the way that your Claude session explains it, but we understand that there is a specific legal meaning.
SPI stated: “Much of our current efforts involve […] litigation, which we keep confidential for operational reasons—sharing details publicly would compromise pending cases.”[1]
We do not think SPI’s statement makes it clear that SPI has not litigated any cases, and only has “potential litigation in development and preparation.”[2]
Filing cases is often free for volunteer-run charities due to fee waivers.
There is often a lot of information that you’d still want to keep confidential even if the lawsuit you’ve filed can be found with a docket number. Some of this confidentiality is even legally required.
In practice, it is also much less likely that people would find your cases if you don’t mention them to anyone (i.e. confidentiality).
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KuwEsBTGXSSxrkh6m/society-for-the-protection-of-insects-review?commentId=MicynucEovxbejNeL
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sk9btzq9MjivvYtXG/spi-the-litigators-that-have-never-litigated-a-case?commentId=TiyoBgmn4fGRaHH8S
Your implication seems to be that the filing fee is the only resource bottleneck, but there are other resource-consuming tasks involved (extensive fact finding, legal research, finding and consulting with witnesses, plaintiffs, hiring local counsel, etc.). These things take time and money, even when volunteers are working for free in their spare time.
The filing fee isn’t the issue—getting to a proper complaint in an impact-litigation case generally requires a lot of resources. Consider, for instance, LIC’s 58-page complaint in the Costco case.
But if the resource was time, which in SPI’s case is free as they are volunteers, then having filed a case is consistent with operating on no budget or a shoestring budget, because of free waivers.
Re: Litigation: It sounds like your read of “much of our current efforts involve policy advocacy and litigation, which we keep confidential” was something akin to “we are actively engaged in one or more already-filed lawsuits,” which is not how it was intended. What we meant was that litigation as a general strategy is one of our current efforts (as opposed to some other strategy, for example), and that confidentiality is important to us in that strategy. At this stage, this practically means things like researching issues and causes of action, searching for plaintiffs, consulting with potential witnesses, and other tasks performed in preparation for litigation. With that said, in the interest of disambiguation, we will edit the original post for clarity and note how it has been edited.
Re: Confidentiality: As for why confidentiality is important, this is because opposition could take more effective countermeasures to lower the effectiveness of our interventions if they knew exactly what we were doing or preparing to do.
Re: Pending cases: As others have noted in this thread, there are multiple reasonable interpretations of the phrase “pending cases.” We thought it understandable from the context of the post, but again, to be as clear as possible, we will edit the original post and note how it has been edited.
Re: Policy advocacy: The types of policy advocacy actions we engage in range from organizational outreach, public outreach, and legislator/regulator outreach. These are ongoing initiatives and not yet fully realized outcomes. We do not think that having the words “Reform Pesticide Use” on our website next to our other initiatives implies that we have already finished the initiative. Again, we are a very new organization run on volunteer labor trying to effectuate positive change.
Please feel free to let us know if there is anything else that you feel would help ensure clarity. Thank you.
Thank you for fixing it.
We’ve openly stated that in many circumstances, confidentiality is appropriate or even necessary. If you’re preparing for a lawsuit, we don’t object to keeping specific legal strategies or related information confidential. Our concern has never been about the existence of confidentiality—it’s about how confidentiality was used rhetorically to deflect criticism, and to suggest more progress and impact than the facts supported.
You asked us not to mention that SPI’s work is confidential, claiming it “could raise suspicion from industry.” This reason doesn’t make sense. Simply knowing SPI has some form of confidential work does not provide any meaningful information; everyone does work that could be self-labeled as confidential. Industry does not care about a charity that filed zero lawsuits, litigated zero cases, and operated with $0 in expenditures in their most recent fiscal year.
Further, there is no way for any opposition to develop “more effective countermeasures” in reaction to simply knowing SPI has some form of work that’s been self-labeled as confidential.
When you say: “Much of our current efforts involve […] litigation, which we keep confidential for operational reasons—sharing details publicly would compromise pending cases.”
there’s a good chance many people will reasonably interpret that to mean:
You’ve actually done litigation, and
You have legal cases that are currently pending.
Since neither of those things is true, the statement was materially misleading.
Invoking confidentiality here discouraged additional inquiry, and furthered the false impression that SPI was engaged in sensitive, ongoing litigation, despite no cases having been filed.
Above is an image from SPI’s website.
“We try to reform pesticide use” and “We do reform pesticide use” are two completely different claims—just like saying “We try to discover aliens” versus “We do discover aliens.”
You can’t honestly claim to reform pesticide use until pesticide use is actually changing as a result of your work.