From a Heartland media release:
FEBRUARY 19 — The Heartland Institute has sent legal notices http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/19/heartland-institute-sends-legal-notices-publishers-faked-and-stolen-docume to numerous Web sites, blogs, and publications asking them to take down the stolen and forged documents and what it views as malicious and false commentary based on them.
The following statement by Heartland Institute President Joseph L. Bast may be used for attribution. For more information, contact Director of Communications Jim Lakely at jlakely “at” heartland.org or 312-377-4000.
_____
“We realize this will be portrayed by some as a heavy-handed threat to free speech. But the First Amendment doesn’t protect Internet fraud, and there is no right to defamatory speech.
“For 28 years, The Heartland Institute has engaged in fierce debates over a wide range of public policies – school reform, health care, telecommunications policy, corporate subsidies, and government waste and fraud, as well as environmental policy. We frequently and happily engage in vigorous, robust debate with those who disagree with our views.
“We have resorted in the past to legal means only in a very few cases involving outright fraud and defamation. The current situation clearly fits that description, and our legal counsel has advised that the first step in defending ourselves should be to ask the blogs to take down the stolen and forged documents.”
President
The Heartland Institute
jbast”at” heartland.org
312-377-4000
_____
The Heartland Institute <http://www.heartland.org> is a 28-year-old national nonprofit organization with offices in Chicago, Illinois and Washington, DC. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site http://www.heartland.org or call 312/377-4000.
====================================================================
Here’s the letter being sent to some websites and bloggers, DeSmog Blog and Greg Laden of ScienceBlogs (already in legal trouble over the Tallbloke libel) both got copies.
February 18, 2012
By e-mail to: editor “at” desmogblog.com
By Federal Express to:
Mr. Brendan G DeMelle
Editor
DeSmog Blog
[street address redacted]
Seattle, WA 98117-2303
Re: Stolen and Faked Heartland Documents
http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-insider-exposes-institute-s-budget-and-strategy
Dear Mr. DeMelle:
On or about February 14, 2012, your web site posted a document entitled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy” (the “Fake Memo”), which is fabricated and false.
On or about the same date, your web site posted certain other documents purporting to be those of The Heartland Institute (“Heartland”). Heartland has not authenticated these documents (the “Alleged Heartland Documents”).
Your site thereafter has reported repeatedly on all of these documents.
Heartland almost immediately issued a statement disclosing the foregoing information, to which your web site has posted links.
It has come to our attention that all of these documents nevertheless remain on your site and you continue to report on their contents. Please be advised as follows:
1. The Fake Memo document is just that: fake. It was not written by anyone associated with Heartland. It does not express Heartland’s goals, plans, or tactics. It contains several obvious and gross misstatements of fact. Publication of this falsified document is improper and unlawful.
2. As to the Alleged Heartland Documents your web site posted, we are investigating how they came to be in your possession and whether they are authentic or have been altered or fabricated. Though third parties purport to have authenticated them, no one – other than Heartland – has the ability to do so. Several of the documents say on their face that they are confidential documents and all of them were taken from Heartland by improper and fraudulent means. Publication of any and all confidential or altered documents is improper and unlawful.
3. Furthermore, Heartland views the malicious and fraudulent manner in which the documents were obtained and/or thereafter disseminated, as well as the repeated blogs about them, as providing the basis for civil actions against those who obtained and/or disseminated them and blogged about them. Heartland fully intends to pursue all possible actionable civil remedies to the fullest extent of the law.
Therefore, we respectfully demand: (1) that you remove both the Fake Memo and the Alleged Heartland Documents from your web site; (2) that you remove from your web site all posts that refer or relate in any manner to the Fake Memo and the Alleged Heartland Documents; (3) that you remove from your web site any and all quotations from the Fake Memo and the Alleged Heartland Documents; (4) that you publish retractions on your web site of prior postings; and (5) that you remove all such documents from your server.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require any further information.
Very truly yours,
Maureen Martin
General Counsel
original Heartland PDF is here: Tier One – DeMelle
Sounds like a lot of work to comply. It lends new meaning to the old saying that “Your guaranteed freedom ends where my nose begins”.
Heartland still has a link to the illegally obtained “climategate” docs:
http://heartland.org/policy-documents/death-blow-climate-science
Although if you click the megaupload link, it’s been closed down by the feds for racketeering. Kind of says it all.
A good first step. While the taxpayer funded operations so ubiquitous in the climate debate have an obligation to disclose what they’re doing with our money, privately funded Heartland does not. I think Heartland could also claim copyright to all its communications, and use that approach, too.
WOW!
Mr. Brendan G DeMelle lives at [snip . . putting personal details up on a public blog is frowned upon here . . kbmod]
Thanks
JK
There seem to be three issues here:
(1) Identity theft / fakery by the person who got the documents, fabricated one, and made them public.
(2) Whether a website is entitled to display a fake document when the source institution has stated it is a fake.
(3) Whether the website is entitled to show stolen documents without any redaction, thus publishing 3rd parties names and personal info on the web when these people had expressly been promised anonymity. What about their rights?
I know little of US law (beyond the inevitable TV series which hit the UK) and await clarification, but whether legal or not, the morality of these sites in doing all of these things, and especially (3), is in the gutter.
No doubt, the warmist apologistas will babble on about the Climategate e-mails, whistleblowing, free speech, etc., all the while conveniently ignoring the fact that the CRU is a public institution, operating on public funding, therefore rendering almost all of that which it produces (including e-mails) as public property and therefore subject to scrutiny. The Heartland Institute is a PRIVATE entity, and what it does and what it produces internally is of no business to anyone other than the Heartland Institute.
They will also of course ignore the fact that a crime was committed to secure the Heartland documents whereas, thus far, the Climategate e-mails’ disclosure can only be explained as an internal leak – no one has yet been able to prove there was a theft or hack.
Given the press coverage and the wall to wall nature of the smear campaign I can see why they have done this some may say they should let it pass but this is outright fraud and theft ! if the victims do sod all what will the unhinged nutters do next ?
illegally obtained?? what you have proof they were illegally obtained? great then give it to the police and we can get that all cleared up ! unless you don’t at which point you are making groundless assumptions and are therefore easy to dismiss !
Hunt says:
February 20, 2012 at 3:53 am
Heartland still has a link to the illegally obtained “climategate” docs:
http://heartland.org/policy-documents/death-blow-climate-science
Although if you click the megaupload link, it’s been closed down by the feds for racketeering. Kind of says it all.
And CRU were told that but for the time limitation on the FOI Act in the UK they would have been guilty of illegally withholding the information. Information which should have been in the public domain.
Furthemore, NONE of the ‘Climategate’ information has been shown to be faked whereas it appears that the Hearland institute documents had to be ‘sexed up’ with a poor fake document to make them even worthwhile reading.
It is interesting that you defend this fraud.
This is the only step they should take as the smears were spread with the help of some big MSM players and they will never admit they are wrong so should be forced to say so ! the victims have a right to stand up against fraud and theft or are some sanctioning the rifling of anyone’s privacy by any means ?
Keeping in mind my leanings here, this is going to reap a backlash as having the smell of righteous indignation. It will be argued, and correctly so, that Heartland didn’t mind when the Climategate emails were obtained and disseminated in a similar manner.
While the principle differences are that the Climategate emails were done on the public dollar timeclock, and their ownership is quite arguably by the public, and ultimately the content proper was authenticated by the authors, the underlying principle here is the same.
Heartland is going to get hammered with the “good for the goose, good for the gander” argument and their response to that will be important.
That a key document was faked will, or at least should, weigh heavily, I fear the public in general will find little sympathy. That Heartland hasn’t openly advocated the removal of the Climategate files as they are with their own will also be scrutinized.
Personally, I feel Heartland has the high ground, and I sincerely hope they can keep it.
You still don’t get it. Or you are purposefully using fallacious arguments to trick people. The climategate documents are legally our property because of Freedom of Information laws. However they were obtained is now irrelevant. What is relevant is that we have a legal right to have them. Linking to documents which we have a legal right to is legal. Climategate released information from taxpayer funded emails. Heartland is not taxpayer funded. Therefore, we have no legal right to their emails or documents.
The real question you should be asking is why the people in the climategate emails can be allowed to break federal laws by refusing to release the emails and work done on taxpayer’s time.
It will be interesting enough to see how the alarmists respond to this, and if they can differentiate between genuine, un-tampered data released in the public interest to add to understanding of how the “science” has been arrived at, most likely by an insider engaged in whistle-blowing Vs. stealing data then maliciously adding false and misleading information to it before leaking it, specifically to defame and cause harm.
In my opinion, HI should go for the lot of them, accept damages and then give the money back (unless donated from “defence funds”, in which case give it to a worthy charity – ideally One Water, which tries to provide clean water and sanitation for the billions who have no access to clean water).
This way HI will have a good victory over the alarmists without appearing to be greedy and / or out to bankrupt individuals. In the case of the Guardian or the BBC, the damages should be given to the BBC charity Children in Need
JMHO
@Matt
Documents obtained by posing as somebody else if illegal. Not sure what part of “illegally obtained” you don’t understand
Finding the culprit is another matter, but you can pretty sure HI have given all the details they can to the police and probably IT specialists to help track down the culprit and when they do, well I just hope the guy responsible printed off lots of copies of the fake document to stuff down the back of his trousers, because where he’s going, he’s gonna need it.
Hypocritical Heartland. They should just suck it up. If they can condone the fraudulent acquisition of CRU e-mails (regardless of whether you think those e-mails should have been public) then they can’t cry over the theft of their own documents and expect to be taken seriously. Both the CRU e-mail hacking and this Heartland saga are examples of fraud, plain and simple. You can’t justify one without justifying the other. Suck it up.
Hunt, can you provide any evidence to East Anglia police to back up your assertion that the CRU emails were obtained illegally? Because, the police, in over 2 years, have failed to find any evidence to ascertain for certain IF these documents were obtained illegally or not.
Additionally, these emails placed into the public domain, information which had already been lawfully ordered to be placed in the public domain through lawful FOIA requests. Keeping that publicly paid for data private and secret was unlawful!
That is a wholly different set of circumstances than those now inflicted upon the Heartland Institute.
If you cannot understand the difference, then that would ably demonstrate the difference in cognitive ability between the average climate realist and the average climate alarmist.
can deskearblog be closed down for publishing copyright material without permission?
isn’t that what recent legislation is for?
[snip . . putting personal details up on a public blog is frowned upon here . . kbmod]
Err, I got those “personal details” from your post on this thread, right after your line “By Federal Express to:”
Assuming your objection was to his address, lets try it without the identifying info:
Google earth shows that DeSmog’s editor lives in a low density neighborhood – shame on him, the climate fascists tell us that we should be living in high density condo farms to have a low carbon footprint.
It doesn’t look like there are sidewalks there either, so he choose to NOT live in a walkable neighborhood. Moe bad carma for his carbon footprint.
Even worse, he is wasting large amounts of land by living on what appears to be a 75 x 100 foot lot. And, double even worse, he has a driveway! Since that type of neighborhood is usually poorly served by transit, he probably drives a car!
But, wait, it gets triple even worse – I don’t see any solar panels. No windmill either.
He doesn’t look very sustainable to me.
Oh the hypocrisy!!!
Thanks
JK
*desmearsblog
If warmists were less gullible and more skeptical they wouldn’t fall so easily for fake documents.
DJ says:
February 20, 2012 at 4:27 am
“”That a key document was faked will, or at least should, weigh heavily, I fear the public in general will find little sympathy. That Heartland hasn’t openly advocated the removal of the Climategate files as they are with their own will also be scrutinized.”‘
In a Court of Law, Heartlands response to a separate matter is irrelevant. Public opinion, so far, is in Heartlands favor.
With Climategate, the police tracked down a suspect blogger and seized his computer equipment from his home.
I wonder if the State will be just as enthusiastic about tracking down this one.
Mat says:
February 20, 2012 at 4:22 am
illegally obtained?? what you have proof they were illegally obtained? great then give it to the police and we can get that all cleared up ! unless you don’t at which point you are making groundless assumptions and are therefore easy to dismiss !””
Give it to Police, what proof do you have that the constabulary isn’t involved?
Hunt says:
February 20, 2012 at 3:53 am
Heartland still has a link to the illegally obtained “climategate” docs:
http://heartland.org/policy-documents/death-blow-climate-science
Although if you click the megaupload link, it’s been closed down by the feds for racketeering. Kind of says it all.
——————————-
Ya know, it does.
But it says a lot more about the warmist sides lack of any ethics or moral compass when it comes to releasing publicly funded information to which the public is entitled to by law, subverting freedom of information requests, data fabrication, bullying, lying, smearing of counter scientific viewpoints, hiding of research to any outside scrutiny due to all that previously mentioned and the general piggery and mendacity presented in posts such as yours as a defence.
Your side of the fence couldnt get the goods either legally or factually, they had to steal them and fabricate something up ( spot the trend line anyone?) which has, as is inevitable in cases such as these, come back to bite ya all on the tushy.
To coin a phrase, “Kind of says it all really”.