by charles the moderator
I received the following this morning,
Dear Mr Rotter
I am part of the enquiry team who are investigating the theft of data from the UEA in Norwich last year.
As part of the investigation we would like to speak to everyone who has made any requests for information relating to the CRU at the UEA.
Records indicate that you made such a request last year and as a result I would like to discuss this and any other knowledge you may have with you at a convenient time.
Please can you contact me (I would suggest initially by e mail) leaving a contact number so that we can have a chat.
Kind regards
Sean Baker
Sean Baker
Detective Constable
Joint Major Investigation Team
Norfolk Constabulary
Lowestoft Police Station
Old Nelson Street
Lowestoft
Suffolk
NR32 1PE
Tel: xxx
Mobile: xxxx
This e-mail carries a disclaimer [this was a dead link. Put here for reference. ~ ctm]
Go here to view Norfolk Constabulary Disclaimer
I responded within a few hours with this:
I can be reached at xxx. I work nights so please don’t call before noon PST. I’m in San Francisco. Between noon and 1 PM is the best time to contact me.
I have previously posted my entire involvement with the CRU leaked emails and files online here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/13/climategate%E2%80%94the-ctm-story/
I’m not sure what else you would like to know. I’ll see if I can cover it in advance.
1. I have never received any money for my volunteer services at wattsupwiththat.com
2. I met Steve McIntyre once for dinner two years ago when he was in town for AGU. I paid for the dinner.
3. I read Climate Audit.
4. [personal info]
5. [personal info]
6. [personal info]
7. I am 51, turning 52 next month.
I understand that you are diligently performing your investigation, and I’m not sure how well you understand the perspective from this side of the fence.
The multiple FOI’s were submitted in response to Phil Jones’s obstruction of the scientific process of verification and replication. Had he behaved as any scientist should, no FOI requests would have been required and it would have been ten minutes work to respond to the original request. The CRU began moving the goal posts, making up more and more unbelievable reasons why they should not give data to perceived critics, thus causing the subsequent FOI’s and escalation, in which I participated. It seems likely that soon after Steve McIntyre’s appeal was denied, someone at the University of East Anglia, disgusted by what he or she witnessed, subsequently leaked the files. I have no knowledge or direct evidence that this is the case, but it is the explanation that makes the most sense.
If you would like more information on the escalation of FOI requests and the obstruction by CRU, as confirmed by your own ICO, I can dig up the relevant threads.
Genghis;
The conversation centered around which websites organized the FOI requests and when;
My BS meter just went into the red zone. Have ANY of you who have been contacted by this guy called your LOCAL law enforcement agencies to verify that he is legit?
In an effort to distance myself from malicious, moderator, malfeasance:
I see nothing nothing!
Sgt. Hans Georg Schultz (Hogans Heroes)
Let’s see, CTM is contacted by the Norfolk Police. He responds. Soon after Bishop Hill reports that the UK government may be calling early elections which will, among other things, terminate the parliamentary inquiry into CRU.
Charles, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?
wws (06:23:59) :
“unauthorized access” generally means that the person had no right whatsoever to log into that computer at all. If someone has authorization to access a database and does not have to break any security protocols to get to it, he is out from under the scope of that law. As I said, when criminal activity results from this there will be plenty of other statutes that come into play. The problem for those wishing to criminalize this incident is that there is no follow-on criminal activity, so none of those are available. Therefore they must argue that the copying itself is criminal – but that is a much more problematic proposition than they realize.
Except you forget the hacking into RC to upload the data there, which many surmise resulted from a password found among the CRU posts, if so there’s your ‘follow-on’.
@ur momisugly Paul (06:39:09) : who states: “Your civic duty is to answer truthfully the questions put forward to you, no more.”
I disagree with you. He has absolutely no civic duty, as an American, to answer ANY question asked by the Norfolk Constabulary. As an American, if I knew who “hacked” the information, I doubt I’d answer questions. The guy did us a great service. He deserves to be protected for revealing evidence on this fraud. If I were on a jury where this guy was caught, I’d argue for nullification.
There is a point at which one should disobey the government. I think it arrives a lot sooner than most people think; sooner than waiting until you have to hide people in your basement because some genocidal government is looking for them.
Of course, in this case, Americans in the U.S. have no duty to obey the instructions of Iranians, Russians, Venezuelans, Cubans, North Koreans, …or the British. They may even have a duty to disobey them.
izzat really you Chasmod, peeking out from under the bed like that ?
And here I imagined some geeky guy in horn rimmed glasses with a goatee and soup strainer.
You look positively scholarly; and what is all that thick fuzz sitting on top of your head ? I don’t have anything like that; is that some sort of genetic defect (either way) ?
The bobbies don’t have any jursidiction here. If this was Interpol it would be different.
I would have told them:
1. Go suck and egg
2. Collusion to evade FOI requests IS a well documented crime that happened repeatedly in your jurisdiction with nary a phone call to discourage it. Now you want to investigate the victims instead? If your failure to investigate this years-long crime spree results in my having to pay carbon taxes, the provided contact information will be useful to me in serving you a court summons when US citizens file a class action against the UEA. You don’t take money from your own taxpayers then conspire to assure that the laws that protect them are not enforced.
Cheery-O!
Genghis (08:12:46) :
The conversation centered around which websites organized the FOI requests and when. It was a nice conversational phone call all in all. Sean normally works homicide and I got the impression he was simply doing due diligence.
BWAHAHAHA! Charles, just asnwer the questions directly you’re comfortable with and then STFU. LOL!
You have done nothing unlawful – OK. By all means answer plod’s questions but first ask who made this complaint of ‘theft’ and how does this meet the definition of theft (see sections 1 to 7 of the Theft Act). There may be a subsequent complaint of wasting police time by making a false complaint. It may be that no complaint has been made and plod has been pushed into this by the UK Govt. Plod do not operate by investigating matters that float in cyberspace (apart from child pornography etc.). They must have recieved a complaint or direction from someone. It would be interesting to know from whom.
Sorry, I forgot to mention it earlier.
When dealing with Norflok Constabulary, do not mention webbed feet.
The “Climate-Stasi” nocking at your door…Wow! The good will prevail.
Evidently Climate-Gate pressed “very sensitive corns”, or rather it touched sensitive wallets. It began as limited to climate science only, now, that black CRU hole menaces to swallow all kinds of settled science branches and well settled and established scientists and endangering a whole species of politicians all over the world, which btw are not in any peril of extinction.
The leaking of the emails is not a crime. Something ‘Inspector Knacker’ ought to be aware. They belong to the UK taxpayer from whom they were being illegally withheld.
“the north sea herring fleet has been all but eradicated (by EU fishing quotas)”
Wrong. It was eradicated by overfishing, driving the herring to extinction. Before the EU had any quotas. The EU quotas will not help, either. They are set too high.
In defense of Officer Baker, he may not be aware of the proper procedures he should be following if his agency is as “Mayberry” as some of the posters imply.
In my view DC Baker is conducting a ‘fishing expedition’. And, indeed, why is he working out of an office in Suffolk? I would have treated this email with considerable circumspection, and if not a UK citizen, would have ignored it.
Charles;
This is from the disclaimer you said you were unable to access
Norfolk Constabulary email disclaimer
The information contained in this e-mail is intended only for the named person or organisation to which it is addressed. Unauthorised disclosure or use of such information will be treated as a breach of legislation or confidentiality.
It would appear that merely by posting about this you may have at least potentially placed yourself in legal jeopardy. This is obviously a logical stretch, but it does highlight the point that there really is no upside to talking to legal authorities unless you possess information that might lead to the prosecution of someone you really want to see prosecuted. Even then the merits are not clear cut.
I would very strongly recommend that you at least review the video linked by several commenters above before making your decision on how to proceed. Consulting a lawyer would probably be a better option, but since you don’t appear to be the kind of lowlife who would actually have lawyers for friends, this would probably entail some expense.
When I first read the post, before the comments revealed that DC Baker was spreading a wide loop, I envisioned some inveterate punster in the UK legal system salivating over the prospect of dragging you into the dock just for the opportunity to utter the line “M’Lord, this man is obviously a Rotter!”
” Allan M (09:50:58) :
Sorry, I forgot to mention it earlier.
When dealing with Norflok Constabulary, do not mention webbed feet.
”
LOL!
(explanation for those over the pond- Norfolk is seen as the English version of Deliverance, banjo country, marry your cousin etc… 😉 )
Has anyone caught the irony that we are debating an email issued for the purpose of investigating previous released emails?
Don’t worry….just SNIP IT!
Phil., you get it wrong again when you say “Except you forget the hacking into RC to upload the data there, which many surmise resulted from a password found among the CRU posts, if so there’s your ‘follow-on’.”
But what was the “crime” there? Unless I’m mistaken, the RC servers are in the US, not the UK, and this means you are dealing with a completely different body of law. Playing with a password to make a post on a public site is not a crime in the US if it does not cause economic damage to the site. Placing a post *on* a server is not the same as taking something away from it. It’s very difficult to come up with any “crime” involved in putting the data on Real Climate, since no damage was done to the site and nothing was taken or copied.
Furthermore, you just have an allegation that this password was used. Unless you can prove that’s how it was done (what do RC records say?) then nothing but an allegation exists. You’re forgetting that in Court, unlike the internet, you actually do have to prove what you claim before you can do anything about it. I haven’t seen anything which indicates to me that proof exists, and circumstantial claims won’t get you very far in a real life court.
And this may be a bit arcane, but generally a prosecutor cannot use extra-jurisdictional activities and complaints as an element of his local case. In the US, this is why the FBI and the Federal Courts handle all multi-state and interstate cases; the various state courts don’t have the jurisdiction to do it.
The UK cannot use actions outside of its jurisdiction as part of a complaint inside it’s jurisdiction, because they do not have the authority to adjudicate the outside claim.
Don’t forget that I’ve agreed that if it’s an outside hacker, there’s good evidence for at least unauthorized access. But if it’s just a leaker, then it doesn’t seem that there was any crime committed that is actionable under any body of law.
And that’s actually a catch-22, because while a leaker may someday be outed, any hacker assuredly removed all of his electronic fingerprints at the time the file was transferred.
Conclusion – there will never be any prosecution of anyone for anything concerning the dissemination of this data, no matter how it was obtained. This investigation is just becaue this is a very public case and the police will look bad if they don’t go through the motions and make it look like they are making an effort.
Claiming that no laws were broken in getting the information out suggests the possibility that the person speaking knows more than he is saying and was either involved or knew who did it.
Emphasizing a belief that CRU did something wrong (broke the law) suggests the possibility that the person speaking believed that committing an otherwise illegal act was justified, and was either involved or knew who did it. (“Earth First” activist type behavior.)
Take a look at how Groklaw handles the ludicrous claims made by SCO regarding Linux. (A surprising number of highly intelligent people posting there do not see how alike HadCRU and SCO are, and are AGW true believers. Brains do not equal sense. Please do not bring up AGW there.)
Don’t say a damn thing. Don’t confirm or deny anything. Keep your mouth shut no matter what, especially if you are innocent!
As for the hacking or theft or leaking debate… if the perpetrator is an insider, he/she should claim that he/she was whistleblowing. The UEA has a whistleblowing policy, one can Google it, maybe all other avenues were exhausted and the time came for the Public To Be Told What Was Going On.
However, if CTM was not the hacker then he has nothing to fear.
I expect the Plods are interested in the timing and sequence of events, to try to track how the info got into the public domain. If it ever got to be more than a nice chat, they would ask Chas to make a formal statement. He’s a witness, possibly, but no more than that.
He can always ask the Plods whether he is being considered as a witness or a suspect or what!
There was a post refernced here a few weeks ago by Steve M, who did lay out a plausible account of the sequence of events, maybe nice DC Sean should look for that (I know you are reading this, DC Baker, good luck with the Truth, you might only be looking at a leak right now but maybe in future we will be looking at fraud, deception, “obtaining money with menaces” (my favourite English law) and misuse of public funds.
The leaker, if an insider, could claim that they were whistleblowing and one day be commended for it. The UEA has a whistleblowing policy which one might Google, I found it easily enough.
What is the crime? Hmmm, possibly none, although one normally has a duty of confidentiality to one’s employer, which can only be superseded by justified whistleblowing. The penalty then is not a criminal one but it might lose you your job.
On the other hand, if the leaked e-mails and the HARRY_READ_ME file are anything to go on, CRU may well have committed offences; I wonder whether they will be labelled Fraud, Deception, Misuse of Public Funds, or my favourite “Obtaining Money with Menaces”.