It appears that poorly crafted law is going to mean no prosecutions for any of the CRU collaborators in the now famous leaked emails and documents. This from The Bishop Hill blog:
I’ve just come off the phone to the investigations office at the Information Commissioner’s office. I had made a request for information to UEA that, while only peripherally related to Climategate, has now turned up some interesting new information.
My original request was from a couple of years ago, asking for any correspondence between the CRU’s Mike Hulme and the BBC in relation to a body called the Cambridge Media and Environment Programme (see here for some background on this story). The original response from UEA was that all Prof Hulme’s emails prior to 2005 had been lost, an admission that appears rather embarrassing in the light of CRU’s suggestion that they had lost some of their original temperature data.
However, when the Climategate emails were released I noticed several email from Mike Hulme predating 2005, which appeared to contradict the earlier assertion that all such emails had been lost. Intrigued, I wrote to the Information Commissioner asking that this be investigated and today I had my response.
First off, I was told that while there appeared to be a problem, I needed to be clear that there would be no prosecutions under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, regardless of the final outcome of the investigation. Although withholding or destroying information is a criminal offence under the terms of the Act, apparently no prosecutions can be brought for offences committed more than six months prior. As anyone who has made a UK FoI request knows, it can take six months to exhaust the internal review process before the ICO even becomes involved. The ICO can then take another six months before starting his investigation.
But there’s and interesting theory being proposed.
It seems quite clear that civil servants are able to withhold and destroy information without any consequences and it’s interesting to ponder how such a dramatic flaw can have found its way into the terms of the Act. Of course we in the UK are used to poorly drafted laws finding their way onto the statute books, but we might also consider the thought that Sir Humphrey might have knowingly inserted this crucial error, in order to ensure that when push came to shove he could keep things quiet without any concerns that he might find himself in hot water.
Conspiracy theory? Perhaps, but you have to admit, it’s a possibility.
I’m sure the collective of CRU is breathing a sigh of relief knowing this, however there may be other unforeseen repercussions coming from the investigation, and UEA may have other rules for professional conduct that may apply.
Stay tuned.
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I would lay the entire national debt that the FOIA was crafted with just such an intention.
There must therefore be a prima faciae case for suing all MPs, Lords and legal support staff who wasted taxpayers’ money designing such a stupid bill.
Any idiot can see that stalling for 6 months is a normal tactic by any dodgy operator.
That’s all they got to do to be immune?
[snip]!!!!!!
The other information that Bishop Hill reveals is:
“I mentioned two snippets of information in the last post and no doubt some of you are wondering what the other one is.
The ICO officer volunteered that my complaint might not eventually be upheld because it was possible that UEA was in fact unaware of the existence of the archive of data and emails that eventually formed the Climategate hack/leak. He said that the current understanding in the ICO’s office was that the archive was not an official data repository, but was set up by an individual within CRU for their own use.
This is important because, if true, it strengthens the suggestion that the data was not hacked but leaked. If the archive was on a hard drive on someone’s PC then it is highly unlikely that a hacker could have found it, and it seems to me still unlikely that it would have been found on a shared drive either.
It’s not definitive, but it does fit in well with earlier evidence of an inside job, such as the cleansing of file creation dates.”
Such a loophole would have already been used in other circumstances, outside of AGW. Has it ever been?
ALL TO JAIL NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, it appears that if you want answers the best response is to forward the request and place in that request a statement you will file charges at 5 months, 29 days after the request.
Did anyone believe anyone would be prosecuted in this matter? If not this loophole then surely any number of other loopholes would have been found. Bureaucrats do not punish bureaucrats. Even if they are forced to resign, they will be taken care of. Period.
Whitewash-gate….
How about a civil suit for damages ?
NuLabour who came up with this act are renowned for coming up with record new laws most of which are badly written, the ban on Fox hunting has seen a rise in the number of Foxhunts for instance, they are only suppossed to drag hunt a false scent but if this crosses a real foxes scent the Fox hounds run after the Fox. Once on the scent you can’t stop them so the Fox gets hunted.
This is outragous. If this is accurate the UK has NO FOIA.
It seems hard to believe that a law is put in place with a “statute of limitations” of just 6 months.
So six months prior to what? The date of complaint to the commissioner?
If that’s the case anyone filing a FIOA request should automatically file a complaint 3 months later and withdraw it as necessary if the data is provided.
Someone should check the act.
Bad news. 🙁
“The email have been deleted”
“But there are emails after that date in the public domain”
“Ohhhh, you mean thooooose emails. You can’t have those, because they’ll be retrospectively, proactively deleted in three months time, now. So they don’t exist”
Nothing to stop a private action, I would have thought, if the findings go against UEA-CRU. This would be a good way to get the limitations of the FOIA exposed to a wider audience, as well as publicising the mistakes the CRU made.
Perhaps worth letting Messrs Monckton and Booker have this info, as I’m sure between them they would know the best way forward?
The FOI Act does not cover only the University of East Anglia and institutions dealing with climate related sciences. Any suggestion that the so-called “loop hole” was inserted deliberately to “cover” only the above mentioned insinuation is a bit of a conspiracy theory, to say the very least. Selectively using the term “loop hole” is a bit of a red herring given that it is simply a “rule” that would have been public knowledge throughout, as anyone who uses the services of an accountant should surely know.
Have there actually been any prosecutions under the UK FOI act? From your report it seems as if it has a pretty fundamental flaw (since almost anybody is going to take longer than 6 months to go through their various internal review processes)
If there HAS been a successful prosecution it would be instructive to see how it was achieved. If there has NEVER been one, then I suspect the UK is in practical breach of a European Directive – I seem to recall that FOI is a European requirement. European Directive 2003/4/EC on public access to environmental information might be one of the things to look at….
If the emails were sent to the BBC then they are more likely to have a copy, as long as the orginal source agrees they they should release. As long as the FOI commissioner would have released the emails if they still existed then that is the source agreeing, Journalists protect their sources but can hardly object if the source agrees.
Another piece of legislation passed unread, undiscussed and underhanded.
And the BBC is covered by FOIA
http://www.bbc.co.uk/foi/
How does the “conspiring to delete data” fit within the FOIA? Or does it fall under criminal conspiracy?
Hard to imagine lawmakers being clever enough to throw this catch-22 into the books on purpose. Not hard to imagine them Not correcting it.
Re the illustration – loopholes have nothing to do with strings or ropes forming a loop. They are the slots in castle walls from which the archers shoot the bad guys besieging the castle.
Regards,
Mike
in my humble grammar n*zi guise
Sigh, now I’m wondering if the U.S. has a parallel reading of the law. Here, there are of course, other legal means to get at these weasels, but I’m too ignorant of British law to know if they can be prosecuted for their malfeasance. Many of the “scientists” here have testified before our legislatures. Indeed, even big Al did on several occasions. The only problem here would be to PROVE they knew they were lying. Does the U.K. have such a recourse for criminal prosecution or is it(the intentionally lying to the world) going to relegated to civil courts?
I bet the FOI legislation does not include fraud.
After some thought about those at the CRU not being prosecuted:
…if the political backlash is strong enough they will be the first to go. We’ve spent billions on this, and the political class has much to answer for. Too much money has been spent on this boondoggle to have it just be swept under the rug; too many predictions have been made.
And the political class as a majority will soon have to provide excuses and they can’t just say, ‘we believed them’, and let it go at that.
Although withholding or destroying information is a criminal offence under the terms of the Act, apparently no prosecutions can be brought for offences committed more than six months prior.
First rule, don’t believe it.
Re: Tarby (07:06:40) :
I dont see any such suggestion in either the article or the title of the post.
In fact the article states quite clearly that civil servants are able to withhold and destroy information without consequence.