UPDATE: Andrew Revkin responds with an update on Dot Earth, which I repeat here. He now agrees that privacy expectations were not justified in the UEA Climategate emails. Perhaps now we’ll see some discussions of them, with publications of selected Climategate emails, on Dot Earth in the future.
– Anthony
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From the NYT Dot Earth Blog, Monday, Nov 29th, 2010:
[Nov. 29, 3:41 p.m. | Updated In the last couple of days, some conservative commentators have compared the treatment of the East Anglia climate files in this post with the dissemination of Wikileaks files by The Times and charged that a gross double standard exists.
I’ll note two things about my coverage of the unauthorized distribution of the climate files:
First, while I initially did not publish the contents of the climate files and e-mails (at the request of Times lawyers, considering the uncertain provenance and authenticity of the materials at the time), I did (from the start) provide links to the caches of material set up elsewhere on the Web.
Second, in the rush on the day the files were distributed across the Web, I called them “private” when, in fact, I should have said their senders had presumed they were private. As I’ve said off and on since then, given that much of the research discussed in the exchanges was done using taxpayers’ money, any expectation of privacy wasn’t justified.]
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The NYT published details in 2005 about US efforts to eavesdrop on Al Qaeda, and is publishing info from the stolen Wikileaks Iraq messages, but they they wouldn’t publish the ClimateGate emails.
Mr. Revkin, your selective bias, and the bias of your newspaper (and your Dot Earth Blog) is screaming loudly for all to hear.
From Powerline blog:
The New York Times is participating in the dissemination of the stolen State Department cables that have been made available to it in one way or another via WikiLeaks. My friend Steve Hayward recalls that only last year the New York Times ostentatiously declined to publish or post any of the Climategate e-mails because they had been illegally obtained.
Surely readers will recall Times reporter Andrew Revkin’s inspiring statement of principle:
“The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.”
Interested readers may want to compare and contrast Revkin’s statement of principle with the editorial note posted by the Times on the WikiLeaks documents this afternoon. Today the Times cites the availability of the documents elsewhere and the public interest in their revelations as supporting their publication by the Times. Both factors applied in roughly equal measure to the Climategate emails.
Without belaboring the point, let us note simply that the two statements are logically irreconcilable. Perhaps something other than principle and logic were at work then, or are at work now. Given the Times’s outrageous behavior during the Bush administration, the same observation applies to the Times’s protestations of good faith.
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h/t to WUWT reader “rk”
sharper00
Is it in the public interest to put soldiers and informers at risk?
Is it in the public interest to inflame tensions in the Middle East?
Is it in the public interest to put diplomats in danger?
Is it in the public interest to destroy your country’s foreign relations which form part of your security network?
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Is it in the pulbic interest to publish statements by scientists which suggested collusion, breaking FOI law, hindering scientific process and giving distorted weight to papers based on their authors / conclusions, when the science these scientists were proponents of was central to the spending of billions of dollars worldwide and a scare campaign like never before?
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I can see why the NYT did what they did.
Liberals and hypocrisy !!
Shocking !!!
sharper00 says:
November 29, 2010 at 2:26 am
“One situation is private emails between individuals”
Private? Which climategate emails contain discussions of a private nature?
I would tend to agree with Philip Thomas. If the government really wanted to stop Wikileaks publishing the documents, they could and would have. Or they wouldn’t have ‘lost’ them in the first place.
sharper00 says:
November 29, 2010 at 2:26 am
One situation is private emails between individuals the other is secret but official records of government policy.
Those ‘Private emails’ were written in works time on works email addresses funded by the UK taxpayer amongst others. I pay those taxes and its my right to see where my money goes. If there was a way open to me I would not pay taxes to be used to write this type of email.
It is indeed hypocrisy, but still a good thing. Let the sunshine in! Transparency is the universal medicine.
@ur momisugly Sharperoo; I realise that this should be obvious to you, but value judgements as to ‘good’ or ‘bad’ are not relevant when applied to whether a principle is to be applied or not applied. A principle is something that is well defined and immutable. Revkin enunciated the principle on which NYT would not publish the allegedly illegally gained climategate emails quite succinctly and convincingly. But, having stated the principle that drove the NYT’s behaviour then, the NYT has a duty to be consistent and not publish the illegallly acquired Wikileaks material if that journal wishes to retain it’s cloak of ethical purity.
I know hindsight has 20/20 acuity, but was the real motivation that prevented NYT from publishing the Climategate emails an attempt to curry favour with the US administration, an administration which the NYT now sees as damaged, innefectual or irrelevant?
Sharperoo justifies the NYT stance that the Climategate documents were private exchanges while the wikileak documents were secret but official Government records. Yet the end result that both sets of documents were the basis for Government actions and that even more so in the Climategate exchanges, the foundation on which the UN, IPCC and many Governments acted to introduce major and expensive programmes to attempt to offset the alarmist conclusions reached.
Sharperoo:
Hypothetically there are many cases where revelation of State Secrets could be in the public interest. But this is discussion of a specific case and not of any other case or any hypothetical case.
So, please explain how you think the release of State Secrets that places lives at risk is or could be in the public interest in this case.
If you fail to provide this explanation then your comment at November 29, 2010 at 2:26 am is demonstrated to be the hypocritical nonsense which it appears to be at face value.
And, as Anthony says, the matter requires such explanation because the same criterion the NYT used to not report the ‘Climategate’ emails applies in this case.
Richard
I noticed the difference between government and non-government documents, too. Soooo, I guess the NYT would never ever have published incriminating E-Mails from Haliburton dictating war policy in Iraq or from the Republican National Committee celebrating Katrina in New Orleans if any had existed and had been obtained?
It’s partially about the bias and partially about their concept (a form of bias they are permitted but works in favor of other bias) of what is news. They would have published the E-Mails if they had fit their agenda.
As far as the Wikileaks stuff, it only partially fits the NYT agenda because the documents are not entirely consistent with some of their memes. Yet it is still anti-USGov to publish US secrets.
A related question, is East Anglia more like Haliburton, a political organization attempting to influence or control policy, or a government actor for an unelected, unrepresentative arm of the UN with de facto – but not de jure – governmental power to enforce climate policy?
A commenter takes the position that the climategate emails were “private” communications between individuals and therefore protected. Wrong. The climate scientists received funding from government sources and worked for us. The emails were private only in the sense that they contained embarrassing revelations about inappropriate behavior.
The WikiLeaks documents were of material that is protected by laws regulating official secrecy and to release them involves committing the crime of treason.
November 29, 2010 at 3:55 am
According to http://definitions.uslegal.com/f/fraud/, fraud is generally defined in the law as an intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact made by one person to another with knowledge of its falsity and for the purpose of inducing the other person to act, and upon which the other person relies with resulting injury or damage. Fraud may also be made by an omission or purposeful failure to state material facts, which nondisclosure makes other statements misleading.
you’ve missed, at the very least:
d) intentional misrepresentation of the facts (Climategate or Wikileaks data)
e) knowledge of the falsity (Revkin could have believe what he was saying)
You might have a chance with “nondisclosure makes other statements misleading,” but I suggest you check the definition of “criminal” before talking to an attorney.
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Come on guys, go ahead and get hot under the collar, but when you blow off steam, try to hang on to your common sense. Anthony used the right word. (I.e. hypocrisy, not that other word!)
I thought about replying to the “soiled” Sharper00, but plenty of others manned the battle stations. Ganging up on such an easy target!! The NYT’s double standard doesn’t surprise us – but we surely would have missed it if not for Mr. Watts fast work. ….because we don’t read that paper. They keep it up and no one else will either. Another body blow to the crumpled reputation of the “gray bag lady”
“Sharperoo justifies the NYT stance “
No I’m not justifying any stance. I’m pointing out that there differences between the two situations such that it’s perfectly possible and reasonable to uphold given principles but reach different answers concerning them.
Of note is the usual suggestion that any disagreeable comment is “diversionary” or a troll of some sort i.e. everyone believes as the poster does and only people pretending not to post in order to create trouble.
People may feel that they have a right to emails written by scientists just as others may feel they have a right to know what their government is doing in their name.
It is time to completely and totally boycott the New York Times.
They are a force to be reckoned with–their intent is not the security of the Republic; they do everything they can to bring it down. If you’re a Marxist or a Communist, that’s fine, but for me and millions of others, they are the enemy.
It is time for freedom-loving people everywhere to boycott the New York Times, marginalize it, expose it, and destroy it.
(They’re already so deep in debt, the only thing that can save them is a government bailout, which we should absolutely oppose. They have already failed miserably in the free marketplace of ideas.)
On the one hand a lot of the diplomatic exchanges contain silly information reflecting badly on the judgement of the diplomats. Many of the things they say and report are just silly and the ongoings beyond belief. Also they show the arrogance of US Government officials. Everybody else is wrong. On the other hand the members of the “Wikileaks Band of Brothers” are reckless and they might have contemplated the fact that they are greatly increasing the risks of retalitation – and the victims will be: the Western World and that includes Julian Assange’s own countrymen (and women). Furthermore, I fail to understand how the US Government – spending billions on security – could allow these leaks to take place. The US Government is pursuing a dyslectic Scotsman here in UK for having hacked into their secure sites. Perhaps they should have hired him to secure their own sites. Maybe all these e-mails and correspondece have been kept because Congress passed a law prohibiting deletions. The NYT times will serve a purpose, namely to show how inefficient and leaking the US Government is. I am totally against the leaks as a firm supporter of US and a NATO soldier during the Cuban crisis.
Andy simply demonstrated the greatest principal of all:
That of selective self-interest.
Sharperoo writes:
“One situation is private emails between individuals the other is secret but official records of government policy.” Ah, the old “It’s just private emails” defense for climategaters. Prof. Lindzen laid this gambit to rest in a debate at MIT when he said “There are no private emails on my work computer.”
All the News that’s Left to Print.
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shaperoo,
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you should show us just one climategate e-mail that was private in nature. Please show us any that did not discuss cliamte science, was not produced in the course of work, and was not produced on a work related server.
Otherwise, a reasonably well informed person may look at what you claim and decide you are either completely ignorant of the subject or just putting out deliberate untruths.
And they wonder why nobody buys the paper anymore.
Obviously the newspaper’s owners and staff are supporters of the Fabian Society and it’s principles of bringing about a “socialist” society by taking control of the news media, the legal systems and the political agenda by small increments and from within.
Congratulations, don’t expect balance from the media, they are driven now by ideology and newspaper sales… In some cases, even that is not considered as important as the message – example, The Guardian in the UK.
Global warming depends on hypocrisy. Why are we surprised when we see it at all? The real news is that the NYT’s had an article that talked about the land sinking at all while trumpeting the global warming alarm.
I guess we know what brainwashing looks like.
John Kehr
The Inconvenient Skeptic
One thing apparent in FOIA v. the electronic age is the fact that immediacy has led many who should know better to include inappropriate material in venues that are public, even if they sit on one individual’s desk.
The inclusion of personal material in the public documents (publicly funded, thus open) of the CRU could lead one to conclude that they are “private”.
No, it is just the sloppy practice of including private material in a public medium.
FOIA law is still evolving as the gadget age continues to do the same, but the fact remains that the UK found that CRU had NOT complied with FOI law, and only the (short!) statute of limitations prevented prosecution for that.
In addition, please correct me if I’m wrong, but has there been any determination as to whether those docs were “hacked”, or leaked?
And someone please point out to me what “whistle” Assange is blowing with these diplomatic communications?
Supposedly there is a bit of internal war going on in WikiLeaks, with some European governing members concerned over the direction Assange has taken in the past year.
Regardless, the CRU emails are very much public documents, and have much more to offer a true whistle blower story than some of the current Assange effort.
RockyRoad says:
November 29, 2010 at 5:00 am
It is time to completely and totally boycott the New York Times.
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I disagree.
The NYT (fishwrap and birdcage fodder) is crashing and burning on its own.
“We” need examples like the NYT to stand out as they are like this.
The NYT is a wonderful useful idiot