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
==============================================================
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.]
=========================================================
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.
==========
h/t to WUWT reader “rk”
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Pamela Gray says:
November 29, 2010 at 6:50 am
“Damn it! If we don’t bring the left back to the center, the backlash WILL send all of us back into the dark ages when ALL science was forbidden/jailed/executed, and pew taxes reigned supreme.
Idiots! Such idiots!”
Pamela, takea muffin, as they say in Quebec. I don’t think ” back into the dark ages when ALL science was forbidden/jailed/executed, and pew taxes reigned supreme.” is true. Some individuals who happened to practice science may have punished, but not for practicing science. I think it was that their conclusions were wrong. Sort of like what Suzuki wants to do to us “deniers and skeptics” for coming to the wrong conclusions. Only the punishments differ.
And tithes were never as high as the current marginal tax rates of todays middle income taxpayer.
No need to take a shot at traditional religion when CAGWism is more apropos.
Take a deep breathe.
Ross Douthat had a column in the NYT today on hyper-partisanship among pundits and politicians. I posted the following comment, which is now in moderation:
“And then there is the New York Times. They released the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s. Over the weekend, they decided to release raw State Department cables and give them prominent front page coverage, thus adversely impacting American foreign policy and possibly national security. Before that there were the reports of widespread telephone intercepts on American citizens who may have been communicating with terrorist suspects. But when the emails of the scientists working for the IPCC were released to the world just before the Copenhagen conference last year, the Times decided that the privacy of the scientists had been invaded and the documents illegally obtained. Therefore, no publication.
“One might expect partisanship from politicians, but it shouldn’t infect news coverage.”
Was there ever a question about which the NYT stands for? The publishing of the wiki-leaks stuff and the refusal to publish the e-mails are 2 sides of the same coin. The publishing casts the U.S. in bad light and hurts our ability to conduct foreign affairs. The refusal to print the e-mails protects policies and views which are crippling the U.S. economy.
The NYT’s history is replete with American bashing. It hates America and all that it stands for. All the while using the Constitution to continue its anti-American ravings.
Earth to Anthony: glad you are finially starting to get it about the NYT. Better late than never.
Duh!
I’m opposed to euthanasia, but The Old Gray Lady needs to be put out of her misery.
Truly it is a sign of the Times…NYT is just plain idiotic as usual, who would expect anything less?
The principled stand was that the climate gate documents were:
1) Obtained illegally.
2) Contain all manner of private information.
As a side note, the courts have upheld thus far that no e-mail is private in nature and your employer can review and use your e-mail against you at any time. I say that one could make the argument that as a taxpayer paying for publicly funded research, I am their employer. This is actually in-line with internet principles as most traffic over the tubes is unencrypted and there is no way to prevent a highly motivated person from following you. Why encumber the law to perform a function that technology deems impossible?
However, lets examine these two issues. Were the e-mails obtained illegally? The method used was likely illegal. However, at least some of these e-mails were subject to FOI requests that had been ignored or stonewalled for years at that point. You could make the argument that these e-mails should have been public domain already. The state department wikileaks case, however, involved (as far as I understand it) documents that were classified and exempt from FOIA. Also for clarification it’s treason to release them. That would seem to make the method by which they were obtained illegal.
So they were both illegally obtained, can we agree on that?
Now, did the climate gate e-mails contain private information? I recall seeing some chat between buddies about lunch dates and vacation times and health issues, etc, but by and large the e-mails contained coordination between colleagues on work issues (I almost cut my hand off by saying “science-related” issues but then corrected myself when I realized it was journal gatekeeping). So you could make the argument here that there WAS private information. However, do you honestly think any court of law would deem the private information contained in those e-mails as some kind of shield to prevent their release to the public?
While you’re thinking about that, let me just say that for the sake of argument I’ll accept that there was private information contained in those e-mails.
My final question is, How close to “private information” are classified documents in your or the NYT eyes? If you say “not private at all” then that’s taking a rather anarchist stance (perhaps unwittingly).
So, your argument that they reached a different conclusion on the same principles with two different situation says something. Either you feel the NYT doesn’t consider classified information as private or worth keeping secret; or you feel the NYT feels the wikileaks docs were obtained legally; or you feel the NYT feels that either or both the privacy concerns of the IPCC scientists are higher than state department classification and the breaking into of a University of East Anglia mail server is more illegal than breaking an oath to protect classified information.
I’m not kidding here, that’s the stance you’re taking, and it’s ridiculous.
These scientists were funded by public taxpayer money. I have a right to know what they are doing in my name.
Mike at 6:00 am:
You’re not getting it. They decided not to publish the emails verbatim even though they were obviously germane to one of the great and controversial issues of our time and were written by people directly in the middle of the debate and the formulation of policy. Citing privacy and deciding without evidence that the documents had been illegally obtained is the issue here. Nearly every leak the NYT reports on is illegally obtained, and yet they had no evidence that the person who leaked the documents obtained them illegally. Indeed, he may have been a whistleblower and there are statutes that protect such people.
No surprise here, is there? File this under “No [fooling], Sherlock.”
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism — when a Republican is in the White House. But when a Democrat occupies the Oval Office, dissent can only be motivated by fear, greed and racism.
Likewise, when discussing climate change, fear, greed and hate must be involved when anybody disagrees with the “consensus.”
sharperoo,
Not one of the e-mails was private, nor was any of the e-mails about private, non-work related business.
The files were compiled due to FOIA action.
While they were leaked, they were not private.
But you knew that.
You are breaking the first rule of holes.
@Jimbo
“Are you accusing the CRU chaps of performing priate correspondence on paid work time? Or did they only use the emails fro private use during their lunch breaks. I doubt is and the emails had time stamps.”
I think you’re likely confusing “private” with “personal”.
OK, let’s talk hypocrisy:
– Al Gore is a liar/nutter but Monckton is a credible spokesperson (see http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton-response.pdf or http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/lord-moncktons-rap-sheet/)
– Data and models must be published unless this is Wegman’s data and models (4 years ago Wegman said “I will create a website that fully discloses all supporting material related to our report to the extent possible” – still not done)
– Ad hom attacks are not allowed on this blog unless they’re against those lying, corrupt, mad, stupid, etc climategate so-called scientists (see numerous posts and comments on this blog)
– Our buddy got one of the best arctic ice predictions (but it was made just two weeks before the actual measurement) (see arctic ice thread on this blog)
—————————————————
COMMENT MERGER BY MODERATOR: Louise writes on the Cancun Spencer/Monckton thread:
Louise
Submitted on 2010/11/29 at 8:00 am
Well I just had a ‘no show’ on the hypocrisy thread. Possibly because it pointed out that this blog is not immune from charges of hypocrisy.
[NOTE: Or possibly because it had some trigger words and fell into the SPAM filter. Now recovered. Unfortunately, all your diversions don’t address the real issue of publishing things selectively at NYT, they are simply things you don’t like. ~mod]
If these were emails between engineers about Hubble mirrors or shuttle O-rings, I think the mainstream media would have paid attention.
It is interesting that applying consistent standards can be so difficult for some. This just proves that the issue is not one of science or engineering, but one of politics and philosophy.
ABF says:
November 29, 2010 at 6:35 am
That’s just the ISP (I would have expected some foreign ISP though), the owner of the domain name is a third party:
I’m not sure you can rely on reverse DNS for much beyond confusion. For example:
$ host wattsupwiththat.com
wattsupwiththat.com has address 72.233.2.59
wattsupwiththat.com has address 72.233.2.58
$ host 72.233.2.59
59.2.233.72.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer 59.2.233.72.static.reverse.ltdomains.com.
I expected wordpress.com….
@Jeremy
“As a side note, the courts have upheld thus far that no e-mail is private in nature and your employer can review and use your e-mail against you at any time. I say that one could make the argument that as a taxpayer paying for publicly funded research, I am their employer. “
No you couldn’t unless you want to argue you posses the ability to hire and fire for the University of East Anglia.
“So they were both illegally obtained, can we agree on that?”
I don’t think anyone particularly disagrees on this point.
“So, your argument that they reached a different conclusion on the same principles with two different situation says something. Either you feel the NYT doesn’t consider classified information as private or worth keeping secret; or you feel the NYT feels the wikileaks docs were obtained legally; or you feel the NYT feels that either or both the privacy concerns of the IPCC scientists are higher than state department classification and the breaking into of a University of East Anglia mail server is more illegal than breaking an oath to protect classified information.”
No I think the point of difference is fairly clearly and isn’t as above.
Some people feel there’s no useful or relevant content in the climategate emails which justifies posting them given their illegally obtained and private nature.
Other people feel there’s IS useful and relevant content in the climategate emails which justifies posting them given their illegally obtained and private nature.
Some people feel that the wikileaks release comprises national security more than the public’s right to know the information in it.
Other people feel the public’s right to know that information outweighs the damage to national security.
People can easily make one judgement for one situation and a different judgement for the other situation and still be both FOR the public’s right to know important/relevant information and be FOR national security/private property etc.
What’s actually happened here is that someone who disagrees with the NYT’s judgement on the merit of climategate wants to use their judgement on the wikileaks release to paint them as hypocritical so they can dismiss their judgement on climategate.
@hunter
“The files were compiled due to FOIA action.
While they were leaked, they were not private.”
They were compiled for FOI purposes but not released.
“But you knew that.
You are breaking the first rule of holes.”
I feel perfectly fine breathing the fresh air. I don’t think your declaration that I’m in a hole makes it so but I guess if you fail your position is so unassailable you can go with the Chewbacca defence then that’s your right.
Ric Werme says:
I’m not sure you can rely on reverse DNS for much beyond confusion. For example:
$ host wattsupwiththat.com
wattsupwiththat.com has address 72.233.2.59
wattsupwiththat.com has address 72.233.2.58″
That’s only if it has a reverse, which is generally only used for mail. In this case the actual host name is:
ec2-184-72-37-90.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com
Which is probably provided by a third party, but part of the AWS cloud system.
Sharparoo:
You have made several posts since mine which you have not answered. I remind that it was as follows and its point stands.
Richard
Richard S Courtney says:
November 29, 2010 at 4:38 am
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
[…Unfortunately, all your diversions don’t address the real issue of publishing things selectively at NYT, they are simply things you don’t like. ~mod]
No – they are examples of why I think this blog should not be pointing the hypocrisy finger at other publications. I think that I have shown that this blog is also rather selective to the point of hypocrisy when the issue of what is published is considered.
As it happens, I agree that the NYT is being hypocritical – I’m just pointing out that this blog would have difficulty defending itself from the same charge.
REPLY: Thanks for being a shining beacon for hypocrisy exposure. I assume then you’ll leave similar comments at the following blogs:
Real Climate, Open Mind, Skeptical Science, and several others too numerous to mention, or does your zeal only focus here? If you are truly concerned about selective publishing as opposed to pandering your own opinion, I look forward to you calling out the other blogs that won’t publish certain items or comments. Otherwise, well, its simply hypocrisy for you to post such complaints here only. – Anthony
sharper00 says:
November 29, 2010 at 5:57 am
@Theo Goodwin
‘“There are no private emails on my work computer.”
Subject to the rules and regulations of you employer perhaps but they vary wildly.’
sharper00, you are simply unable to recognize a moral claim. The claim that you quoted is from Lindzen who was setting forth a moral claim about personal integrity and not, as you would have us interpret it, a claim about his employer’s policies. Lindzen ‘s point was that those who would defend the climategaters by claiming “It’s just private emails” trivialize the scientist’s everyday work and treat it as a matter of whim. By contrast, Lindzen is a serious scientist and would have nothing on his work computer that is not serious science. If your defense of climategaters succeeds in any way whatsoever it does so by presenting those you defend as children who cannot separate work and tantrum. In a court of law, that could succeed in acquittal for your client but only at the price of making him a laughingstock.
Louise says:
November 29, 2010 at 7:49 am
“OK, let’s talk hypocrisy:
– Al Gore is a liar/nutter but Monckton is a credible………” .”- Ad hom attacks are not allowed on this blog unless they’re against those lying, corrupt, mad, stupid, etc climategate so-called scientists (see numerous posts and comments on this blog)”
======================================================
lol, I think ad-homs are allowed here regardless of the circumstance, but to be certain, you’ve shown where strawman arguments are certainly allowed here.
Wasn’t this thread about the inconsistencies and hypocrisy of the NYT? And you bring up big Al and Monckton? Well, when you can’t defend the indefensible……
@ur momisugly Richard Courtney
“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.”
I don’t respond to messages written in this fashion, by all means imagine whatever points you wish to be conceded as conceded. I certainly can’t stop you.
REPLY: Thanks for being a shining beacon for hypocrisy exposure. I assume then you’ll leave similar comments at the following blogs:
Real Climate, Open Mind, Skeptical Science, and several others too numerous to mention, or does your zeal only focus here? If you are truly concerned about selective publishing as opposed to pandering your own opinion, I look forward to you calling out the other blogs that won’t publish certain items or comments. Otherwise, well, its simply hypocrisy for you to post such complaints here only. – Anthony
If you looked at those sites, you’d see that I call them out on things that I spot there too, ie Al Gore is NOT a credible spokesperson, the guys at CRU WERE wrong to resist the FOI requests, data and models SHOULD be published, etc (however, most folk on those sites agree with these points too). What I find objectionable at both ‘sides’ of the debate is hypocrisy.
I see quite a lot of it here – especially when people are pulled up for ad homs on one ‘side’ but not the other.
REPLY: Well that’s your opinion, and you are entitled to it. But, without having moderator privileges, you don’t get to see the volume of comments that are ad hom that we snip from our side of the debate, so your view is incomplete. My suggestion is to show us where you successfully were able to put in such criticisms as you claim at these other sites. Cut and paste is your friend, otherwise it’s just unsubstantiated claims.
Meanwhile, the NYT hypocrisy continues, writ large. – Anthony
@Theo Goodwin
“Lindzen ‘s point was that those who would defend the climategaters by claiming “It’s just private emails””
I’m not “defending” the emails. People arguing multiple points and one person is responding to a refutation of one point as if it applied to another.
Some people are attempting to argue that the wikileaks content is secret whereas the climategate emails are actually public. They’re clearly private emails. Private doesn’t preclude their release under the relevant FOI statutes.
“By contrast, Lindzen is a serious scientist and would have nothing on his work computer that is not serious science.”
I haven’t noticed Lindzen releasing the contents of his computer or email archives for everyone to pour over, did I miss it?
“If your defense of climategaters succeeds in any way whatsoever it does so by presenting those you defend as children who cannot separate work and tantrum. “
It’s simply the case that just because someone wrote an email at a public university that doesn’t mean you have a legal right to see it. You may have a right to see very specific information if you can justify it on a case-by-case basis.
sharper00 says:
November 29, 2010 at 7:17 am
@H.R.
“whereas in the case of military/state communications we are paying our government to stay informed but keep the details secret until those details are no longer in play.”
sharper00 responds: “The problem is with the criteria for “secret”. Once there’s a “secret” category the criteria for what goes in there and increases over time, eventually encompassing “Everything we’d find inconvenient for the public to know”. […]”
That is a true danger and it does happen. No argument from me. And I think the press, broadcast media, or other media have to keep an eye out, but they should be held responsible if they don’t exercise due restraint. I’d think anyone with a modicum of intelligence could distinguish between what could compromise national security and endanger lives and what informs the public without giving away the whole store. Someone does have to guard the guardians.
The rest of your post seems to be a reply to another commenter. I’ll butt out of that as I see others have addressed your points about the Climategate side of the published e-mails, e.g. Theo Goodwin.
sharperoo,
I am not the one in a hole.
good luck,