While many websites are deriding me for my mentions in the Fakegate emails distributed by Dr. Peter Gleick, and many now (including Dr. Gavin Schmidt) are coming down on Dr. Gleick for his lack of ethics, I thought it might be useful to remind the climate community at large that I too was recently in receipt of private documents through a security lapse presented in the Climategate 2 emails.
I (and many other WUWT readers who notified me about it) had full and open access in Dr. Phil Jones Journal of Physical Research (JGR) author account, which showed all of his papers (including some not published yet) plus comments from reviewers.
What did I do with the access? Read below to find out.
To demonstrate what I did, I’m reposting an excerpt from this WUWT essay: Who gets the most access to network data (like emails at CRU)? published Dec 6th, 2011 on WUWT.
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The sharing of system access in emails was broadly demonstrated in Climategate 2.0. For example, Dr. Phil Jones and others at CRU sent some emails out years ago that linked to papers under review at the Journal of Geophysical Research. Some WUWT readers found these early on, and sure enough, such links from years ago in the CG2 emails still worked.
A few days ago I made the issue known to Dr. Phil Jones and to the JGR journal staff so they could close this security hole. As far as I know, all have been closed. I’ve tested again tonight and the live link fails now. Now that they have been closed, I can talk about it safely without putting JGR’s manuscript system at risk.
From: Anthony
Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2011 5:10 PM
To: p.jones@uea.xxxx.xxx
Cc: grlonline@xxxx.xxx ; jgr-atmospheres@xxxxx.xxx
Subject: password enabled JGR links in Climategate 2 files
Dear Dr. Jones,
I know that you know me, and probably do not like me for my views and publications. Regardless of what you may think of me and my work, it has been brought to my attention by a reader of my blog that there are open access links to your manuscripts at JGR included in the email that are now in the public view.
Therefore, it is my duty to inform you that in the recent release of Climategate 2 files there are links to JGR journal review pages for your publications and also for the publications for Dr. Keith Briffa.
For example, this link:
http://jgr-atmospheres-submit.agu.org/cgi-bin/main.plex?el=
I have verified that in fact that link opens your JGR account and provides full access to your JGR account.
In fact there are 35 different emails in this release that contain live links to JGR/AGU author pages. Similar other links exist, such as for Dr. Keith Briffa and others at CRU.
This of course is an unintended and unacceptable consequence of the email release.
I am cc:ing Joost de Gouw Editor, JGR Atmospheres in hopes that he can take action to close this open access to these accounts. It is a holiday here in the USA (Thanksgiving) and there may not be office hours on Friday but hopefully he is monitoring emails.
JGR should immediately change all passwords access for these CRU members and I would advise against allowing transmission of live links such as the one above in the future. JGR might also consider a more secure method of manuscript sharing for review.
The open nature of these links is not publicly “on the radar” even though they are in fact public as a part of the email cache, and I do not plan on divulging them for any reason. Any mention of these links will be deleted from any public comments on my blog should any appear.
Dr. de Gouw (or anyone at JGR) and Dr. Jones, please acknowledge receipt of this email.
Thank you for your consideration.
Best regards,
Anthony Watts
So clearly, CRU and others in the emails didn’t think twice about sending around open access live links. As David M. Hoffer points out in his article, the researchers don’t seem to have a clue about security. They also leave “sensitive” files they don’t want to share under FOIA requests lying about on open FTP servers. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think any of the research staff at CRU had either broad access nor the specific tech knowledge to pull this “hack” off.
Somebody who had the ability to peek at these emails as part of their job might just as easily have had access to the RealClimate Server too. Remember there’s almost a quarter million emails we haven’t seen. Chances are, one of those contained the key to the RC server, which allowed them to become an RC administrator and post the original FOIA story which Gavin Schmidt caught and squelched.
I and others I correspond with have our theories about who the leaker might be. From my perspective now, someone with broad system access looks to be a more likely candidate than a malicious outsider.
UPDATE: Many people in comments think I’m doing something wrong by writing to Phil Jones and AGU/JGR. In Phil Jones reply to me, he wrote: A couple of other people sent me emails about this issue.
So clearly I wasn’t the first to notify him of the open links to AGU. But more importantly, my email was also sent to AGU editors and the editor of JGR Atmospheres. Despite what troubles Jones and his group have caused over the year with skeptics, AGU/JGR has been a reasonable journal that has published skeptical papers, including my own. Protecting that relationship with skeptics who publish is valuable and the last thing we need is a scandal where papers submitted to AGU/JGR are showing up on other skeptic websites before they are reviewed because Jones sent active links around in emails. Having the knowledge of the security holes was a damned if I do damned if I don’t proposition, but I opted on the side of doing what I felt was the right course of action. If that upsets a few people, so be it. – Anthony
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I’ll note that Phil Jones recently had his CRUTEMP4 paper published…
Jones, P. D., D. H. Lister, T. J. Osborn, C. Harpham, M. Salmon, and C. P. Morice
Hemispheric and large-scale land surface air temperature variations: An extensive revision and an update to 2010
J. Geophys. Res., doi:10.1029/2011JD017139, in press.
…and no skeptic I know of, including me, has yet “outed” the early drafts and author notes contained in Phil Jones JGR account. It would have been easy to do so, to publish Dr. Jones first submitted draft for the broadest peer review possible on the Internet. But no skeptic (that I know of as of this writing) did.
That’s a distinction of difference compared to the actions of people who created Fakegate via potentially criminal actions.
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Well, evidently some people have ethics.
Mark your calendars folks!! It’s a rare day when readers at WUWT and Dr. Gavin Schmidt agree. May I be the first to welcome Schmidt to WUWT, and urge him to participate here more often.
“Having the knowledge of the security holes was a damned if I do damned if I don’t proposition, but I opted on the side of doing what I felt was the right course of action. If that upsets a few people, so be it. – Anthony”
Your decision was both proper and ethical.
Anthony, I’ve had the pleasure of reading your blog for years now, and have always witnessed you err on the side of caution and take the high road in all of your dealings along this line. This ought to be blatantly obvious to any long-term reader or WUWT.
You are a lot nicer than I think I would have been! 🙂
The ethical difference is very clear.
Yes, a man of honor and honesty (Anthony Watts), in drastic contrast to Peter Gleick and all who are defending Gleick.
The contrast between how the Phil Jones/JGR security breach was handled and how Peter Gleick approached “Fakegate” is clear.
You’re a gentleman and a scholar, Sir!
I’m glad that you at least got a reply from Jones.
Different situation entirely, Anthony. You’re a gentleman! Further, deponent sayeth not.
Does Dr Gavin think it is ethical to be on government payroll and blog all day?
La Ética, no es bastante saber lo que es; tiene que “ser parte” de nosotros…
Gracias Anthony
Buen trabajo!
Did he reply and thank you. Suggest you answer that in an Update at the top.
“May I be the first to welcome Schmidt to WUWT, and urge him to participate here more often.”
You must be joking.
I shared the private emails between myself and Texas A&M climatologist (and sometimes climate alarmist) Gerald North because he was my paid consultant at Enron, there was no stipulation in our agreement that I could not do so, and he is a taxpayer-paid professor in my state where I pay a lot of taxes.
I was motivated to do so because he was saying things privately that he would not say publically which reflected negatively on climate alarmism–and thus helps explain the very peculiar science polarization we have because of politics and peer pressure.
http://www.masterresource.org/category/climate-change/north-gerald-texas-am/
I like what Milton Friedman once said: “I have a single rule. What I say to one person, I say to everyone. I never say anything off the record.”
That was well done, Anthony, and please accept my appreciation of it and thanks for it.
By your actions and ethics, I hope you inspire others to similarly respect the process of rational science-driven debate, which in the end is all of our responsibility and duty, to the generations that will inherit our planet.
Unfortunately the UK “computer misuse act” does not even allow you to look at, or think about looking at files you have not been given access to! It’s not necessary to distribute what you looked at for it to be illegal.
For computer misuse a high court judge recently said that there is no get out clause for whistleblowers.
The UEA leak was illegal (criminal) The US case is whatever the US law says but looks like a $1k fine or 1 year
Well done, sir!
“integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is looking.”
C.S. Lewis
Good job, Anthony..
When in doubt, take the high ground. Applies to many situations, not just war.
From JC’s blog
curryja | February 23, 2012 at 1:29 pm | Reply ***BREAKING NEWS ****
Gleick, Mandia, Curry to be interviewed on NPR 2 pm EST
…. and now for another contrast of “different ethos” we are seeing the progression from Fakegate to “Linkgate”…. I hope this is not quite “OT” since it applies to the different ethos of CAGW proponents:
http://junkscience.com/2012/02/23/breaking-epa-scrubs-web-site-of-gleick-grants/
Watch out, more websites will be scrubbed of “inconvenient” content as Fakegate develops. All who have time and capabilities for collecting relevant info (screenshots, links, copying article and page content, etc.) should please do so widely around the web.
A lot of attempts to scrub and re-write history are being made already…..
Anthony, sir – Of course, I agree with your stance, though at the same time I feel it should not be necessary to ‘pat you on the back’ as such behaviour should really be the norm!? (if you see what I mean)
regards
Kev
Well said, Anthony.
I will admit that I discovered the link(s) in early December, and forwarded the paper to a few notable bloggers. I never considered making it public and trusted the others not to do so. Getting a “head start” on the analysis was the main goal.
People and entities pay big money to first draft and then disseminate a “compare and contrast” between themselves and their opponent or competition, etc. Yet, this powerful example happened spontaneously. I think it arose naturally as inherent qualities manifested themselves in the various parties. As the saying goes, “The same sun that melts butter hardens clay.”
It would still have been a clear contrast, but less so, if Anthony had discovered the security leak AFTER Fakegate. It is made stronger still that Gleick didn’t merely stumble upon the Heartland docs and out them; he went out of his way to fraudulently obtain them and, quite possibly, added a fake to the real set to ‘sex them up’.
Well done, Anthony! Thanks for this timely reminder that honesty is the best policy.