NYT reporter engages in zany conspiracy theory – suggests bloggers "knew" FOIA emails were coming

I disagree…investigators and journalists are worse than clueless…they have been getting hints by “they”, the conspiracy theorists.

I don’t understand why they keep insisting this was a “hacker”. In my work with computers and enterprise IT, most cases of unauthorized access are from people within the organization and not people who gain access from outside across the Internet.

Jeff – it’s always a good idea during a media interview to record it yourself – audio if it’s over the phone, video if it’s for TV. You can then post either the transcript or the actual recording on the web. This will either keep them honest or expose their ignorance and mendacity if they’re not.

“I brought up the RC hack to Leslie, pointing out that no adult with sensitive information would release it that way.”
If login details for the RC wordpress website were available in the emails it wouldn’t exactly need whizz-kid skills to dump it there. 5 minutes with google would do it for most people and there’d be no better advertisement to the brainwashed nor proof of authenticity.
Anywho: Nothing you do on the internet is anonymous or untraceable.
All of your internet activity is being recorded for perpetuity. Finding you from that information is not always easy but it’s the profession of many. Using proxy systems such as TOR (designed by US Naval intelligence) certainly will not help you.
Happy Christmas FOIA – considering the shackles that were to be placed on so many people by the CAGW scam you are the greatest hero in history by far.

I would guess his computers were seized as his IP address showed up in the WordPress logs as having accessed the site during the time in question. The investigation wouldn’t be thorough if his machines weren’t checked. That is all.

In clarification: the police investigator would want to address the possibility that Tallbloke accessed a proxy service and posted the message as FOIA, hiding behind the proxy’s IP. Certainly FOIA was smart enough to use a proxy.

crosspatch says:
December 22, 2011 at 3:54 pm
Of course it was an “inside” job. Why insist it was a “hacker?” Because they can’t believe it was one of their own who did the deed. Can you imagine what it would do to their belief system if they discover that one of their own spilled the beans?
The wife dies under suspicious circumstances. Who’s the prime “person of interest?” The husband, of course.
The kids are missing … kidnapped?? Who’re the prime “persons of interest?” The parents, of course.
So, just who is FOIA? A student, perhaps. Even better, a trusted colleague who feels he has been slighted in some way. He may be thinking that there are more serious concerns that need addressing than how many tenths of a degree the climate has warmed. Or perhaps some IT person who’s had his fill of working with the pompous scientists.
Meanwhile, UEA’s got investigators looking like Keystone Kops.

2x what Navy Bob says. I have seen first hand how the media contorts interviews.

I take her comment to mean simply that she spoke to ‘the other side’ before she spoke to you. They primed the pump. It makes me wonder whether this reporter is a ‘general assignment’ with scant knowledge/expertise of the the entire issue, catching an education with each progressing phone call. If she had asked me that question, I would have in turn asked her who she’d been speaking to previously. Then, you’d at least have a name or names for who or whom would be sharing quotes with you in the article.

Hey Jeff, did you consider messing with her head by saying you knew who the emails came from and it was indeed a whistleblower who works there. Then when she asks how you know you say you’re a journalist and can’t reveal your sources. Life’s too short not to have some fun with this. Know what I mean, Vern?

You missed out on trick here, what you should have done is drop some hints that FOIA was a ‘member or the Team’ after all “who else could have got access to these e-mails and know which ones to leak and who else would bother to strip out the personal stuff”. But of course you can’t tell them who told you this becasue their worried about ” losing their academic position” . And if you want to have more effect , firstly swear Kaufman to secrecy and e-mail them latter asking them to forget what you said . If their a typical journalists , untrustworthy and lazy , this will get to the ‘Team’ pretty quick as well as seeing public release .
Sow those short of seeds and watch the ‘Team’ eat itself up in a conspiracy frenzy , the idea of those guys fighting like rats in a sack is, I have to say, an entertaining one.

crosspatch:

I don’t understand why they keep insisting this was a “hacker”

Because Inspector Clouseau has insisted it wasn’t an inside job. Seriously that’s the logic. A bunch of cops with no IT training say it couldn’t have been an inside job, so OK it wasn’t an inside job. >.<

Sanctimonious dolt. A bad combination as a survival characteristic. Apparently necessary for a journalist. .

Dave Springer says:
December 22, 2011 at 5:10 pm
“Hey Jeff, did you consider messing with her head by saying you knew who the emails came from and it was indeed a whistleblower who works there. Then when she asks how you know you say you’re a journalist and can’t reveal your sources. ”
Good way to get sued, and without actually being a journalist, a judge will not grant you the right to not reveal your sources or anything. Some fine advice that is. Do you hate Jeff like you hate Willis?

“One thing I did make clear and have made clear before, I don’t want to know who the FOIA gourp/person is because I’m not going to be willing (or technically able) to protect them – so if FOIA.org reads this, don’t tell me.”
I don’t think you’d actually believe it if the person who did it told you so himself. After all, statistically speaking, most people rarely suspect the quiet, nice, family, bloke who springs the leak, that’s why no one every catch him. :p

Leon Brozyna says:
December 22, 2011 at 4:31 pm
“Or perhaps some IT person who’s had his fill of working with the pompous scientists.”
Almost certainly an IT person. Probably started one of two ways. The usual eavesdropping that bored IT guys do to see if any of the scientists have been passing around dirty pictures of their girlfriends, interesting office gossip, and things of that nature. Then he stumbles onto something like “Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline” and goes to himself “Holy f**king sh*t these guys are lying and the whole world is buying it” and decides to expose them. The other way would probably have started from an inquiry from an in-house attorney to someone in IT asking what records are kept that might be relevant to answering FOIA requests. And then the attorney gets handed a huge file of emails and when he starts looking through it he notices something like Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline and goes to himself “Holy f**king sh*t these guys are lying and the whole world is buying it” and decides to expose them.
A second party like the attorney is less likely in my opinion because the first party would surely name him as someone who could have done it. My bet is one guy, in IT, who isn’t there anymore, stumbled across it and did the right thing. My bet is also that a number of people at UEA and the investigators know damn well who did it but have no proof to go public with what they know.

@crosspatch Dec 22, 2011 at 3:54 pm:

I don’t understand why they keep insisting this was a “hacker”. In my work with computers and enterprise IT, most cases of unauthorized access are from people within the organization and not people who gain access from outside across the Internet.

Amen. It is like murders – it is (at least according to general wisdom) most often a member of the family.

The typical journalists is NOT like box of chocolates…. You pretty much know what you’re going to get!!!!! 🙂

One would think that any reporter would understand that bloggers on technical subjects are also people who know enough about “the internets,” email and such that they would not DO something so stupid as to leave a trail on their PCs, browser history or emails. What, do they think, “He knows something about computers, so he must have been involved”? Are they THAT lame?

Scott Ramsdell says:
December 22, 2011 at 4:20 pm
“In clarification: the police investigator would want to address the possibility that Tallbloke accessed a proxy service and posted the message as FOIA, hiding behind the proxy’s IP. Certainly FOIA was smart enough to use a proxy.”
I’m not sure “certainly” is the right word but he’d have to be stupid to not use a proxy. Even someone who doesn’t know about anonymous proxies would find out easy enough by googling anonymous internet posting. A HOW-TO guide for anonymous proxies is on the first page of results. I used to use them to get around IP bans on blogs I’d been banned from. My favorite trick, much more convenient, for getting around IP bans is to use an old dial-up analog modem. Windows will seamlessly switch between an analog modem on a phone line and your usual broadband connection with a single click. Every time you dial up you get a unique new IP address. Every broadband provider I know of provides a free “courtesy” phone bank access numbers for broadband customers to use when they’re travelling. The person who has the IP ban on you then has to ban an entire block of IP addresses assigned to the phone bank. It takes them a while to figure it out. I had to do that once when I was running a blog. This certain cantankerous emeritus biology professor who shall remain unnamed who lives in tiny Burlington, Vermont, who was my student when it came to computer things and whom I’d taught about proxies and phone banks, turned on me and used the knowledge I’d given him against me. There’s an entire phone bank in Burlington that’s probably still banned at Uncommon Descent.
People usually get sick of anonymous proxies for heavy duty trolling because they’re inconvenient and unreliable but if you want anonymity that’s how you get it. There are ways of dealing with those too but it’s not as easy as banning a block of addresses assigned to a phone bank. The one thing you can’t do is determine who’s on the other side of the proxy server. Mabye the ZIA can but I don’t know of a way.

One more comment:
I was over at Judith’s site today, commenting on DocMartyn’s post there. I had an experience a bit like yours with the reporter, Anthony.
After several exchanges with warmists, I am so unbelievably stupefied by the level of discourse and even more dumbfounded by the level of understanding of fundamental scientific statements. The ones I dialogued with do not seem to have the intelligence God gave a kumquat. One could not get out ONE sentence that did not name-call or insult anyone who was not himself/herself a warmist. They refused to even READ the post, based on the fact that Doc Martyn is a user ID and not his real name. And they didn’t just not read it; they had to go on and on and on about why no one who posts should ever use an a.k.a. Even when Judith told people DocMartyn has 50 peer-reviewed articles, the people still would not read it. In the end, some skeptics came to the conclusion that the warmists were trying to “out” DocMartyn; some skeptics considered it possible that DocMartyn might be risking his career standing by being a skeptic. I don’t know, but it seems possible.
Mojo – All this seems like it is coming from mojo. The warmists seem to believe that they have weathered both Climategate releases, and are feeling that they have their mojo back, so they are returning to their really objectionable attitude. Perhaps it is just because I dealt with them too much today. I have rarely dealt with such dim bulbs relating to anything scientific. For me, WUWT and CA from moment one seemed like, “Oh, here are some intelligent people! Let me listen in a while!” I had never been able to have an intelligent conversation with someone who believed that AGW was real.
Leslie, the reporter, sounded like a vacuous grad from journalism school – one who may not even have a science background. It sounded like she had a set of questions that were at least in part dictated to her by someone on “the other side.” And it sounded like she had no clue what the underlying disagreement is – to her it was like reporting on a burglary, but with a scientific bent to the story she was assigned.
I am surprised you, Anthony, even went through with the interview. Like you, I don’t think it will turn out well. It will be interesting to see how distorted your answers will come out. Talking to uninformed people – effing yukkkkk.

Scott Ramsdell says:
December 22, 2011 at 4:18 pm

I would guess his computers were seized as his IP address showed up in the WordPress logs as having accessed the site during the time in question. The investigation wouldn’t be thorough if his machines weren’t checked. That is all.

And his is the only IP address that showed up in the WordPress logs during the time in question? That is NOT all.

bubbagyro says:
December 22, 2011 at 4:29 pm
Isn’t this just how the Spanish Inquisition went about its work? If anyone would point crookedly at the Inquisitor, that person would end up on the rack or on the fire, labeled a sorcerer or witch. There is nothing new under the solar panel sun.
__________________________________________________
No, I don’t agree. Please read the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition
Perhaps you’re thinking of Salem Witch Trials conducted by Civil Authority and Puritan Clerics?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials
Excerpt:
“The best-known trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem Town. Over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned, with even more accused but not formally pursued by the authorities. All twenty-six who went to trial before this court were convicted. The four sessions of the Superior Court of Judicature in 1693, held in Salem Village, but also in Ipswich, Boston and Charlestown, produced only three convictions in the thirty-one witchcraft trials it conducted. The two courts convicted twenty-nine people of the capital felony of witchcraft. Nineteen of the accused, fourteen women and five men, were executed by hanging. One man, Giles Corey, refused to enter a plea and was crushed to death under heavy stones in an attempt to force him to do so. At least five more of the accused died in prison.”
The similarity is that not believing in CAGW is now akin to being perceived as a witch. Fortunately the Courts are too busy these days.

@Dave Springer December 22, 2011 at 6:18 pm
Dave –
Since the incoming email came from Russia, would it not suffice to email it to a cohort in Russia who was internet savvy and then have that person email it to the bloggers, less headers, etc.?

Steve Garcia says:
December 22, 2011 at 6:55 pm
“Since the incoming email came from Russia, would it not suffice to email it to a cohort in Russia who was internet savvy and then have that person email it to the bloggers, less headers, etc.?”
There are more anonymous proxy servers in Russia than Carter has Little Liver Pills. The last thing to suspect is that FOIA is Russian. The first thing to suspect is FOIA was using an anonymous proxy. Those IP addresses are published, there are a thousand or more of them at any one instant in time, and the list changes constantly and quickly such that about half of them are not working at any given moment. They mostly seem to be located in eastern Europe for some reason I never wondered enough about to investigate. Back when I was running a big controversial blog I could always tell when I was getting tagged by a proxy user as the domain would resolve so somewhere in eastern Europe and we had effectively zero actual members who lived there or would be interested in intelligent design which is pretty much a controversial subject only in the United States.

@alex Avery says: December 22, 2011 at 5:14 pm
You have it absolutely spot on.
It is as essential that it was a “hacker” as it is that the “hacker” was in the pay of BigOil. In other words, it is an article of faith.
I mean no disrespect to Catholics to point out that it would be as much a waste of time to engage a Cardinal in a debate about virgin birth or papal infalibility.
But at least a reasonably sensible Cardinal would point out, if sufficiently goaded, that it was indeed an article of faith and he wasn’t about to reconsider the point. Alarmist journos don’t even have that amount of honesty.

I think this tops the NYT’s reporter’s zany theory.
Could it be an honest journalist, if they even still exist?
After reading hro001 and a thousand other comments, finally got off physics and around to think on this matter.
This seems to make more sense, it seems to fit better:
Long ago trusted national ‘journalist x’
Has long time ties to the environmental “Cause”
Brought in by the “Team” as their instant mouthpiece
But he/she needed complete inclusion to the many facts
The science is deep, needs complete notes
Handed the keys to the e-mail system for simplicity
The many years click by
But, ‘reporter x’ secretly does have some core ethics
After all, he/she is a reporter, a teller of truth
Knows the it must be written at some time
But shocked by their moral-less tactics of the “Team”
Rumors of “One World Government” cues dishonesty
Can’t publish through the employer/editor
They would never let it see the light of day
Too risky
Had to find some other method to broadcast the story
No, not a story, the key emails would do
Releases what seems enough…
Climategate I
But the train keeps choo-chooing along
All culprits whitewashed swiftly and squeaky clean
‘Reporter x’ also knows the whitewashers far too well
Hears of $37 TRILLION of global taxes with a capital T
Waits for next COP but too late for 16
Ten times more this time for COP17….
Climategate II
Topped with “Team” list of heart-tugging justifications
But the last one, the $37 trillion, is the one that tells it all
Corruption at the highest peaks
For it is that very last point that doesn’t seem to fit those above
Well, maybe something close, maybe not.

Can you imagine what it would do to their belief system if they discover that one of their own spilled the beans?

It doesn’t have to be “one of their own”, it might have been anyone at the University depending on how their network is configured. It isn’t unusual for college students to “browse” a network to see what resources are shared out. What generally happens in my experience is lets say for a unix variant, a machine has a filesystem that it shares out for NFS mounting but the access rules aren’t very strict. Maybe it gets shared out to the entire campus network. Someone has a Linux box in their dorm or office or laptop that is accessing the network via wireless. They “mount” the shared filesystem and have access to the files which they copy locally and are done.
Works pretty much the same way with Windows. In fact using something like Samba providing a Windows interface to Unix filesystems can even cause more security issues.
The point is that in most cases I have seen of unauthorized access to things, it has been due to the server involved having shared the resources to a broader audience than was intended or required and basically someone was unwittingly given access. Heck, it could have been anyone depending on how their network is built. Could possibly have been some curious Computer Science student taking a night class browsing the campus network for all we know.
Blaming such incidents on “hackers” is generally the first refuge of the incompetent.

I’m with TRM above. That is fairly typical even in business situations with high IT turnover.

Given that this is now the time of year (ho – ho!) that traditionally, many of us exchange carefully-considered, hand-picked, gift-wrapped parcels of all sizes as tokens of goodwill between us (Damn! I wonder what’s in THAT box??? Mmmm… that’s funny – there’s no to/from on it but it sure feels a TON!!), might I offer likewise something in kindred spirit to our intrepid reporter. It’s just a little something which might prove edifying at work, hopefully help in understandig this assignment a little quicker… 😉
Best wishes.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2pupvDXO6w&w=560&h=315%5D

remember kaufman’s 15 Dec NYT article on Tallbloke:
15 Dec: NYT Green Blog: Fresh Climategate Patter by Leslie Kaufman
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/more-climategate-buzz/?ref=lesliekaufman
which linked to the following HuffPo artlicle by DeSmogBlog’s Brendan DeMelle, which Kaufman described as the Norfolk Police “taking some ribbing” online. here’s some of the ribbing!
“There is a vital public interest in confirming that the UEA emails were criminally hacked and in turn, identifying those responsible and their connections.
Among many reasons for continued police diligence, climate scientist Phil Jones said he contemplated suicide after the initial email theft in 2009. So it is important for investigators to get to the bottom of this crime in order to mete out at least some justice for this baseless attempt at character assassination of climate scientists.
The ongoing harassment of climate scientists – including death threats in several cases – cannot be ignored by law enforcement agencies. If police were able to confirm the identity of the UEA hackers and bring them to justice swiftly, it would hopefully have a chilling effect on the vicious smear campaign against climate scientists.”…
“British officials should also seriously consider the suggestion from Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Edward Markey that the U.S. intelligence community should assist in the investigation.
Markey explained the significance of this investigation in a statement:
‘This is clearly an attempt to sabotage the international climate talks for a second time, and there has not been enough attention paid to who is responsible for these illegal acts. If this happened surrounding nuclear arms talks, we would have the full force of the western world’s intelligence community pursuing the perpetrators. And yet, with the stability of our climate hanging in the balance with these international climate treaty negotiations, these hackers and their supporters are still on the loose. It is time to bring them to justice.’
Whatever the reason for the low UK police expenditures, it is clearly time for a more coordinated international investigation into this crime.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brendan-demelle/uk-climategate-investigation_b_1113849.html
the MSM pretty much ignored Cimategate 2.0, with Revkin, Black and others more interested in demanding action from the Norfolk Police. you could call it the MSM’s meme for Climategate II.
indeed, Kaufman with Justin Gillis were on Page A8 in the Print edition of NYT on 23 Nov, with:
New Trove of Stolen E-Mails From Climate Scientists Is Released
For instance, a cryptic e-mail apparently sent by Dr. Jones, a researcher at East Anglia, said, “Basic problem is that all models are wrong — not got enough middle and low level clouds.”
Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA, said he found such exchanges unremarkable. He noted that difficulties in modeling were widely acknowledged and disclosed in the literature. Indeed, such problems are often discussed at scientific meetings in front of hundreds of people.
Of the new release of e-mails, Dr. (Gavin) Schmidt said, “It smacks of desperation.”
Dr. Mann said he hoped the fresh release, apparently first posted to a computer server in Russia, would provide new clues for the British police as they seek to catch the hacker or hackers.
“Who are the criminals?” he asked. “Who is funding this effort, not just to steal these materials but to promote them?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/science/earth/new-trove-of-stolen-e-mails-from-climate-scientists-is-released.html?ref=lesliekaufman
once you realise the MSM are nothing more than advocates for “the cause”, it makes little sense to agree to be interviewed.

Why is so much UK police time and effort being spent trying to track down the source of the disclosure of what has been described as normal banter or gossip between scientists?
If I was a UK taxpayer, that is the question that I’d be asking.

2 years forward and they still have no idea? We have seen how bad the CRU/UEA have been with their I.T. I would hazard a guess that if you now type “Let Me In” you would have access to all they have using the original engineers backdoor password!
Me? I am like Anthony and have no idea but FOIA, you are a bloody hero in my book and you, Anthony, Tallbloke etc including all contributors, all have a great Xmas for the excellent work you have done this year.

I remain of the opinion that there are so many ways that the emails could have been obtained that speculation based on what little evidence we have is fruitless. That said, I’ve come up with a little pet theory of my own based on a remark in one of Phil Jones’ emails about needing help to draw a graph in Excel:
Phil; Hey you! Yes you… get over here for a second. What’s your name again?
Harry; Harry.
Phil, You’re one of them computer whiz kids right?
Harry; Uhm…I’m a grad student, but-
Phil; Good! That’s exactly what I need, a computer whiz kid.
Harry; But I’m not a-
Phil; Stop talking while I’m interrupting. Do you know how to do a graph in Excel?
Harry; Of course-
Phil; Good. I need you to graph this data for me.
Harry; Well itz pretty simple actually-
Phil; Oh for a computer whiz kid itz simple, that would be like me explaining how simple the climate is to someone like you.
Harry; Well the thing is, I’m a grad student in atmospheric physics.
Phil; See? If I tried to explain how simple the climate is to you, you’d be over your head in seconds. Now, do this graph for me.
Harry; Uh huh. Well then…. Excel is pretty uhm… simple. You have to extract the…uhm…the compressed differential data source from the regression analysis in the…. uhm… cryptographic security ensemble.
Phil; Wow! I’ve no idea what you just said. I guess that’s why you’re in… what was it again? Atmospheric computers? Is that like cloud computing or something? Anyway, get this graph done for me.
Harry; OK. But you may as well go for lunch, this will take a couple of hours. Oh, and I need all your passwords.
Phil; My passwords?
Harry; Well yes. How else would I access the cryptographic security ensemble?
Phil; Oh well that makes sense. OK, the password for my desktop is “naturetrick” and the datafiles are “hidethedecline”
Harry; I need your email password too…
Phil; Oh I’ve got a realy good one for email. Itz “readme”.

If I were inspector Closeau, and and my boss was the man with the pointed hair, I would NOT ask myself the following question;
Did they hire an exceptionally well educated chinese student lately at the UEA?
The greatest danger to democracy is:
We are filling up powerful positions with clueless people who do not even manage to think a logical thaught. All they can do is drink champagne and eat canapees.
And the reason for that is that the progressives has destroyed the school-system.
So much so, that we are now dependant on the chinese to think for us.

henryIII;
Yes, and after they did or didn’t look, what would be their first impulse and action? Full disclosure to the public, or quick hookup with the federales et al. to facilitate apprehension and prosecution of the nefarious Foia?

could this be the Minnesota Post, who managed to get an interview with Mann and Abrahams?? it certainly is where Don Shelby is:
Minnesota Post: About us
MinnPost is a nonprofit, nonpartisan enterprise whose mission is to provide high-quality journalism for news-intense people who care about Minnesota…
Board of Directors…
Advisory Council…ETC
http://www.minnpost.com/about/
Wikipedia: Don Shelby
Donald Gilbert “Don” Shelby (born May 27, 1947 in Muncie, Indiana)[1] is a former American news anchor on WCCO-TV in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is regarded as an experienced investigative journalist, as his work has earned two Peabody awards and an Emmy Award…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Shelby

If it is alleged by ‘their side’ that there was an e-mail dialogue between tallbloke and FOIA before/after the release should questions not be asked of the recipient of the first batch of climategate e-mails ?
The first reliable report of the offering up of the Climategate zip file was to BBC journalist Paul Hudson of the on 12th October 2009 who then chose to sit on the file for 5 weeks.
This led to skeptic sites being involved as the BBC, having been tested for ‘honesty’, had been found wanting.

Christopher Hanley says:
December 22, 2011 at 9:39 pm
Why is so much UK police time and effort being spent trying to track down the source of the disclosure of what has been described as normal banter or gossip between scientists?
If I was a UK taxpayer, that is the question that I’d be asking.

AND
pat says:
December 22, 2011 at 9:25 pm
Quote HuffPo
“Among many reasons for continued police diligence, climate scientist Phil Jones said he contemplated suicide after the initial email theft in 2009. So it is important for investigators to get to the bottom of this crime in order to mete out at least some justice for this baseless attempt at character assassination of climate scientists.”………
“Markey explained the significance of this investigation in a statement:
‘This is clearly an attempt to sabotage the international climate talks for a second time, and there has not been enough attention paid to who is responsible for these illegal acts. If this happened surrounding nuclear arms talks, we would have the full force of the western world’s intelligence community pursuing the perpetrators. And yet, with the stability of our climate hanging in the balance with these international climate treaty negotiations, these hackers and their supporters are still on the loose. It is time to bring them to justice.’”…..
“Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA, said he found such exchanges unremarkable. He noted that difficulties in modeling were widely acknowledged and disclosed in the literature. Indeed, such problems are often discussed at scientific meetings in front of hundreds of people.
Of the new release of e-mails, Dr. (Gavin) Schmidt said, “It smacks of desperation.””….

Does anyone else note the logical disconnect?
On one hand there is the fulmination on ‘criminals’ hacking into research computers and releasing information that will sabotage international climate talks yet ‘the team’ are also saying that the information is unremarkable and ‘often discussed at scientific meetings in front of hundreds of people.’.
It would appear that two lines of defence are being employed simultaneously. Will unremarkable publicly discussed information _really_ sabotage international climate talks and even lead to Phil Jones’ demise? These would appear to be mutually contradictory memes used for differing audiences. Are they both really swallowed concurrently without comment by the ‘credulous’ MSM, police and security services?
We appear to be watching a stylized game based on prepared positions. The concern on the encrypted files may be that events are now under FOIA11’s control and (s)he/they might not follow the script.

How can the mere release of emails amount to an attempt at character assassination ?
Surely any consequent character assassination would be due to the email content and not the release?
If character assassination is an issue (which AGW proponents do seem to accept) then the writers of the emails voluntarily assassinated their own characters did they not?
Why would the email contents have any effect on international climate talks unless the content is indeed fundamental to the value and purpose of those talks?
Surely the release of the emails was a service to the representatives attending those talks because the new information revealed helps them in making better and more proportionate decisions ?
Clearly they had no idea of the various doubts and qualifications set out in the emails which cast doubt on the probability estimates from the IPCC.
And I see lots of resort to allegations of criminality on the part of climate realists when there was none just as in the recent Tallbloke matter.

Well said Stephen.

Propaganda is used, not only to attack your enemies, but also to hold your own side together.
The lie that the emails were uninteresting / well covered in the press, is not told for us skeptics,
but to reassure the believers that they need not think for themselves.

Had I been subject to that interview I would have kept repeatingth e same question back to this “investigative” journalist.
“Why do you keep referring to this unknown person or persons (!) as a hacker? When and by whom has it been established that the data acquired by an unauthorised external person(s)?”

The spin and speculation on this is endless. Two things though are pretty certain from the POV of those affected.
Using the “hacker” term allows them to also assign the following associations:
Criminality
Outsider
able to call the act a “Fishing expedition”
able to say “Nothing to see here”
The term “insider” on the other hand can be associated with:
internal knowledge of malfeasance
internal knowledge of where proof of the malfeasance resides
If you were the “victim”, and you knew that what you wrote on the emails was potentially damaging, which term would be the better one for you to publicize?
From my POV, inside access, especially with FTP Admin rights using a “casually” obtained ID and password that was divorced from your own ID, and access to an inside the LAN computer with a flash drive in hand would be the easiest way to get the information – if you knew where to look….
Best,
J.

GeneDoc says:
December 22, 2011 at 6:51 pm
It’s interesting that with all the discussion in the climategate emails about hijacking peer review of manuscripts that there doesn’t seem to be anything about attempts to rig review of grant applications. It’s hard to imagine that The Team wasn’t engaged in making sure the money went to their friends. This might be the straw that FOIA is holding back.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I do not think they even worried about the research grants. Some VIPs were behind the scam from the get go and would make sure the “Team” were on the top of the lists when grants were handed out. (Think of how much Al Gore has made on this scam)

80% of DOE Green Energy Loans Went to Obama Backers

…In the 1705 government-backed-loan program [alone], for example, $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted as of Sept. 15 went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party. The grant and guaranteed-loan recipients were early backers of Obama before he ran for president, people who continued to give to his campaigns and exclusively to the Democratic Party in the years leading up to 2008. Their political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy. It brought them returns many times over.

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/11/14/report-80-of-doe-green-energy-loans-went-to-obama-backers/

Here is the propaganda that is being feed to the jobless in inner cities: “Green Collar Jobs for America” http://sarasotagov.com/SGC/YGC/pdfs/green-collar-jobs-americas-cities.pdf
University-Industry Relations: http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/mm1197.db.html
Commitee for Economic Development
A bit of history of how important the CED is in directing US domestic policy: http://www.opednews.com/articles/History-HACCP-and-the-Foo-by-Nicole-Johnson-090906-229.html
The CEDs stand on “Sustainability (UN Agenda 21) http://www.ced.org/news-events/general/347-corporate-sustainability-the-environment-and-economic-recovery-investing-for-the-future
It is interesting that their focus now is on education starting with Pre-school…
Reminds me of th the Jesuit motto:
“Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man”
Given “Progressive Education” it seems to be part of:
“We cannot expect the Americans to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but, we can assist their leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly wake up to find they have Communism.” ~ Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev
The press is our chief ideological weapon. ~ Nikita Khrushchev
The Question of course is WHO are the leaders Khrushchev was referring to? The CED???

Well OF COURSE ‘they’ knew that more e-mails would be released!! ‘They’ know how many shenanigans they have engaged in so ‘they’ know how much more dirt there is to be released.
‘They’ are already breathlessly (gasping?) anticipating ‘Volume III” of this tome and preparing their rebuttal. Well, maybe not, it should not take very long to concoct the BS they offer as rebuttal.

SandyInDerby says:
December 23, 2011 at 1:05 am
Chris B says:
December 22, 2011 at 6:52 pm
bubbagyro says:
December 22, 2011 at 4:29 pm
How about Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins, in his modern form of “The Team”? UEA is even in the same county.
___________________________________________
The cops are doing THE TEAM’s work, by proxy.
From Wikipedia:
“Matthew Hopkins (c. 1620 – 12 August 1647) was an English witchhunter whose career flourished during the time of the English Civil War. He claimed to hold the office of Witchfinder General, although that title was never bestowed by Parliament. His witchhunts mainly took place in the eastern counties of Suffolk, Essex, Norfolk, and occasionally in Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, and Huntingdonshire.[1]”
Thank God we’re so much more sophisticated in the 21st century than to believe in imaginary forces and evil spirits. Not.

Was RC really hacked?

I think the constabularies are looking for the password that unlocks the Zip file. If they find any odd word in any file inside someone’s computer and it unlocks the Zip file, ergo, they must be party to the original distribution, and subject to some official charges.
In the long run, we’ll all find out what the password to the famous FOIA.zip file is, and it will most likely be a bunch of random letters. BUT it would be cool if it was an easily memorized string of words like SallySellsSeaShellsDownByTheSeashorE. Or better, a more politically charged string of words…

björn eriksson, sweden says:
December 23, 2011 at 7:04 am
Hello?
Go to a town, in a car.
Scan a neighbourhod for an uncrypted wifi internet connection, or go to mcdonalds etc.
Post your revelations and nobody can trace you.
Thets how easy freedom is.
That is why we really shouldnt encrypt our wifi, share instead.

Yes, because I want to get caught in a federal investigation after somebody uses my WiFi to commit piracy or distribute child pornography.
Great idea, Bjorn.

****
JeffID says:
“I brought up the RC hack to Leslie, pointing out that no adult with sensitive information would release it that way.”
****
I dunno, Jeff. If I were an IT employee @ CRU & was aware of the FOIA obstruction (& collusion w/RC), I might, even at my age, take a deliberate stab at RC, knowing it would only be a cheap thrill. But that’s just me…

I personally think she’s absolutely right, certain bloggers did know the second batch of FOIA emails were coming. I could feel it in my bones and toes and finger tips, couldn’t you? I felt a cold, icy chill down my spine. I felt that FOIA was going to let go with another blast sometime in the very near, frigid future, didn’t you? I can’t say this too loudly, or ‘you-know-who’ will think I had more than a feeling and raid me, but I did, I had a feeling that we hadn’t heard the last of FOIA. After the first release, I just knew there would be a second. I just knew it! The way Jones and Mann were screaming after the first release, I knew they were scared to death that the other shoe was going to drop and they were moving as fast as they could to smoke-screen and minimize the effect when it did happen. Here’s the actual, step-by-step account of the second release — first Mann told Jones he was scared to death, then Jones told Mann he was scared too, then the NSA and CIA agents that overheard their conversation told the President and the President told his Uncle from wherever, the Uncle told the Social Security, Welfare, Medicade, and State Welfare clerks, and they told their mothers-in-law, the mothers-in-law told the bagger at the grocery store, who told their best friends from High School, who told their Rabiis, Priests, Mulahs, Preachers, Gurus, and Sushi Chefs, these told their Poor Neighborhood Soup Kitchen patrons, they told the local Cop who was writing them up for vagrency in various alleyways, the Cops told the Mexican Bartender at Paco’s Taco’s Bar and All Night Eatery, as near as we can tell, the Bartender told a Border Patrol Agent who told a Mexican Drug Lord when he was selling American automatic weapons, the Drug Lord told his gang and they told the FBI, Jim at the FBI told me and I told my sister, after that you know what happend.
PS: SarcOff

North of 43 and south of 44 says:

But what the fool from NYT doesn’t understand that we know (blogger or not) that there are at least 220,000 more that can be released rather quickly.
Further anyone who has a clue would validly assume after the first release there would be more.

And my guess is that there is something really, really bad behind those encryption keys and if they do track the leaker down he’s going to release them or have them released. Mutually Assured Destruction.

At the risk of seeming simple, never forget the simplest way to get around “trails” in the ether, don’t put any trails in the ether.
Snail Mail
Beer Coasters
Bar Napkins
Then there is the disposal of such trail — the magical flame followed by a little processing of the ashes to make sure not even the Mission Impossible team can resurrect them.

Does anyone here actually believe our own FBI or NSA has not already cracked the encryption to the other 200,000 emails? Really? This is what these guys do for a living. Our own federal government knows damn well what the rest of the emails reveal. I suspect that’s why they’re so keen to find FOIA. They want to prevent the rest of us from knowing what these emails reveal. There is a multi-billion dollar industry at stake a statist politician’s wet dream to protect.
The whole thing is utterly bizarre. It’s like the FBI’s RICO unit going after a snitch rather than the organized crime figures who were ratted out. The media’s response, as others have pointed out, is also astoundingly hypocritical. They applauded the illegally leaked Pentagon papers and they praise Julian Assange/Wikileaks as heroes, yet whoever exposed the climate fraudsters MUST be brought to justice.
My gut tells me this was an inside job and “the Team” and probably many more, much more “important” figures are really puckered up over what contained in those other 200,000+ emails.

Someday, I hope Montford will write this whole episode up as a book. Real facts, details … the lot. It’ll be a hoot, probably a best-seller. And, just maybe, it’ll hurt enough guilty ‘scientists’, greedy institutions and ambitious politicians that, next time, they’ll opt for honesty. Life really is SO much easier if you tell the truth.

The release of the climategate emails is actually a very typical response that happens in a dysfunctional unit of people who are manipulated by a narcissist. It could be a family, a company, a department of government, or any small group of people. At some point the people being manipulated and rebel and a very common manifestation of that rebellion is the letting out of the skeletons in the closet.
For example:

Take, for example, the narcissist’s family. Narcissists often instruct, order, or threaten their children into hiding the truth of abuse, malfunction, maladaptation, fear, pervasive sadness, violence, mutual hatred and mutual repulsion which are the hallmarks of the narcissistic family.
“Not to wash the family’s dirty linen in public” is a common exhortation. The whole family conforms to the fantastic, grandiose, perfect and superior narrative invented by the narcissist. The family becomes an extension of the False Self. This is an important function of these Sources of Secondary Narcissistic Supply.
[so if someone internally discovers a problem with the conclusions they have reached or the way they have presented something, it must be kept within the group and not revealed]
Criticising, disagreeing, or exposing these fiction and lies, penetrating the family’s facade, are considered to be mortal sins. The sinner is immediately subjected to severe and constant emotional harassment, guilt and blame, and to abuse, including physical abuse. This state of things is especially typical of families with sexual abuse.
[anyone openly criticizing the narcissist is ostracized or harassed until they come back into line]
Behaviour modification techniques are liberally used by the narcissist to ensure that the skeletons do stay in the family cupboards. An unexpected by-product of this atmosphere of concealment and falsity is mutiny. The narcissist’s spouse or his adolescent children are likely to exploit the narcissist’s vulnerabilities – his proneness to secrecy, self-delusion, and aversion to the truth – to rebel against him. The first thing to crumble in the narcissist’s family is this shared psychosis – the mass denial and the secretiveness so diligently cultivated by him.
[e.g. the release of the climategate emails]
Note – Narcissistic Rage
Narcissists can be imperturbable, resilient to stress, and sangfroid.
Narcissistic rage is not a reaction to stress – it is a reaction to a perceived slight, insult, criticism, or disagreement.
Narcissistic rage is a reaction to narcissistic injury.
Rage has two forms, though:
I. Explosive – The narcissist erupts, attacks everyone in his immediate vicinity, causes damage to objects or people, and is verbally and psychologically abusive.
II. Pernicious or Passive-Aggressive (P/A) – the narcissist sulks, gives the silent treatment, and is plotting how to punish the transgressor and put her in her proper place. These narcissists are vindictive and often become stalkers. They harass and haunt the objects of their frustration. They sabotage and damage the work and possessions of people whom they regard to be the sources of their mounting frustration.
[we see the second type of behavior a lot from Jones and Mann. How did they react to the publication of a “threatening” article in a New Zealand journal or toward the careers of anyone who does something they perceive as a threat?]

Note: comments in square brackets are mine. The text is from Dr. Sam Vaknin, The author of Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited (who is himself a diagnosed narcissist).
This is a comment I also posted in this thread:
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/12/climate-alarmists-might-just-be-captive-to-basic-emotions/
Everything we see in this whole AGW “debate” is seems to exhibit characteristics of a group of narcissists responding to criticism which they regard as “attacks”. Certain occupations (including journalism) tend to be over-represented by narcissists relative to the general population. Narcissists also engage in a behavior of “narcissistic mirroring” and they stick up for each other.
One example might be a journalist who sees himself as “brilliant”. Say this journalist writes fawning articles about a very important politician. Supporters of that politician love that journalist and heap praise upon him. He becomes the darling of their movement. In return, the journalist is also feed narcissistic supply by being given special access to the politician. So they feed on each others’ narcissistic energy. Andy Revkin might be an example, same with the BBC journalist who is given direct access to Jones and helps shape BBC’s policy on AGW. When a critic of that politician’s policies arises, the journalist writes scathing articles that devalue the critic.
See, narcissists think everyone else thinks like they do. Narcissists have a grandiose sense of their own abilities and intelligence. They assume everyone else does, too. The worst criticism a narcissist can undergo is devaluation so that is the avenue they choose to hurt others. For example, a narcissist can not stand not to have their views heard. So a narcissist’s first reaction may be to treat the critic as if they are insignificant and not worthy of a reply. We saw evidence of that sort of response at Durban when Lord Monckton approached someone there with some inconvenient questions. They could not be bothered to answer because they were so important. The implication being is a thinly veiled message that Monckton is NOT important. It was a devaluation. It was “I am important (and you are not) and I don’t have time to waste with someone as insignificant as you”.
Occupations such as journalism, politicians, movement leaders, scientists, and powerful business people are over-represented by narcissists. This issue provides a unique crucible where all of these narcissists can come together and become the darlings of a fawning public. They will stamp out any criticism. Their response will be over the top. The current response of elevating the climategate email investigation in the UK is an example of their response to climategate2. There are a lot of narcissists in a lot of high positions who rely on “narcissistic mirroring” with a bunch of other narcissists and these criticisms of AGW represent a real threat to their sources of narcissistic supply and could possibly lead to their public disgrace so it must be stamped out rather ruthlessly.

crosspatch says:
December 23, 2011 at 2:15 pm
The bottom line is, if you look at how skeptics are treated, it is very consistent with the response to criticism by the narcissist.
======
Seems true, and doesn’t even include the steady paycheck.

It would have been very difficult for me not to play that journalist like a fiddle.

And look at what they have at stake. Politicians who have potentially wasted billions of the taxpayer’s dollars have their political career at stake. Journalists who have taken the AGW story as their “crusade” to “educate” us on have their future credibility and therefore their careers at stake. The scientists have their credibility at stake, particularly when it comes to fabricating how the data are presented. These people, as narcissists, will have absolutely no compassion for the people they have wronged by diverting money from productive use. They feel no empathy. That comes through in the README as something very troubling to FOIA. All these people are going to care about is their own notoriety, their own credibility, and the extent to which they will be viewed as geniuses.
They are going to launch a scathing attack on anything they see as potentially undermining their position. They will experience it as a personal attack on them and respond accordingly even when it is not meant as a personal attack on them. They can’t distinguish criticism on their position and a personal attack directly on them because any failing of their position will mean a diminution of their status which will absolutely destroy them emotionally.
The journalists, politicians, scientists and high level bureaucrats will see any criticism of AGW as a direct attack on their status and will lash out and be supportive of others who lash out.
This was very typical of how sciences used to be done not so long ago and is one of the reasons why we have the “scientific method”. I have regrets calling it either way once there is enough evidence. At this point in time, there is no evidence that I have seen to show either that A: the climate is responding or has responded in accordance with the model projections in AR4 or B: even of those projections come to pass, there will be any “environmental catastrophe” or other consequence that virtually all species alive today haven’t weathered in the past.
You might find this interesting:

Whoops, no “allegation” intended…Mosh wrote about a little birdie informing him of an impending “event”… I cant find the comment – its on one of The Blackboard, Climate Etc., Climate Audit, or WUWT…but, to prove I am not smoking anything, here are two recent comments that steve made – first at The Blackboard:
steven mosher (Comment #85952)
November 22nd, 2011 at 11:00 am
Kinda figured this was coming.
frank at swifthack knew
Foia contacted him
as best as I can tell.
then here is an exchange at CLimate Audit:
Mosher: Recall what I said the other day
o ChE
Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Reply
Yes, I remember. A little birdie showed up at your window?
 steven mosher
Posted Nov 22, 2011 at 5:47 PM | Permalink | Reply
premonition
So, I am pretty sure that he said it.

@crosspatch
Very interesting and accurate comments. I’m also not a psychologist but (I mention the following merely to indicate I’m not guessing on my own about this) I have a dear friend who is a long-time clinical psychologist specializing in personality disorders and narcissism. It happens that we have talked about these kinds of issues a great deal in relation to other public figures (i.e., politicians but not specific to climate science). One thing she emphasizes is that everyone who is not at one of the personality extremes has some “normal” degree of narcissism, i.e., healthy self-esteem. As she puts it, hardly anyone would want to get out of bed in the morning if they did not have some kind of (healthy) narcissism, believing they had something of value to do in the world.
But then there are those we tend to label overtly as “narcissists” implying the extreme cases, a kind of excess (and of course there are other people who have pathological deficiencies of self-esteem). Many of these more extreme narcissists can oscillate wildly between too much and too little self-esteem, since as you note any criticism is perceived as threat and attack and, yes, catastrophic.
I do think a lot of the fervent CAGW advocates display classic narcissistic grandiosity and personal fragility combined with rage at being challenged or contradicted. Al Gore, anyone?
But I’m not any expert, and unlike Al Gore I don’t pretend to be one in the movies.

Geckko says:
December 23, 2011 at 3:11 am
Had I been subject to that interview I would have kept repeating the same question back to this “investigative” journalist.
“Why do you keep referring to this unknown person or persons (!) as a hacker? When and by whom has it been established that the data acquired by an unauthorized external person(s)?”
——————————————————————————-
THIS! A thousand times over. Ask them if they are stating that as a fact, and if so, then what is their supporting evidence. When they back off because they have no supporting evidence to site ask them why they stated as a fact.
Of course their intent by claiming it was a hacker is to paint the person in a negative light. Hacking is illegal!!! As if they have an aversion with information that was illegally obtained. Only when it doesn’t suit their agenda, they do. If it turns out the person was an insider, of course, they will then change gears and paint the leaker in a negative light instead of as a ‘whistle blower’ whose motives were pure. Standard leftist playbook is to immediately start to smear by raising questions of purity of motivation. Of course purity of motivation is never a concern when the leak suits their agenda.

crosspatch says:
December 24, 2011 at 12:18 am
It’s amazing how much insight can be gained from a 39 second video.
I imagine our legislation is being written in Brussels to bring us in line with the E.U.
Ex: The new patent laws (Change from: First to invent To: First to publish / steal).

Well, after working for a guy several years ago who was a rather extreme narcissist, I can understand the “mutiny” bit. For example, he would often flat out lie to customers to the point where if we had some minor outage, he would craft some elaborate reason why it was not our fault. For example we were moving our operations from one data center to another. He demanded that we do it during the day with no downtime. We took a bit of an outage during the process. He concocted some story about our ISP having issues but that was only once case of many. It sometimes got so we spent more time on meetings about how to carefully craft lies to the customer than we spent on actually getting any work done. Sometimes they weren’t outright lies but were carefully crafted omissions of truth; sort of like clipping the Briffa series.
More than once I remarked that it would be much easier to simply tell the customer what happened because in many cases they were the sort of problems that all networks have from time to time but he insisted that we keep up this artificial facade of perfection. I was tempted a few times to simply call the customer and tell them what was really going on because if you can explain what is really happening, in my experience you can often get a customer to work with you and if a maintenance operation takes a little longer than planned, no big deal. If you are lying to them, anything that goes wrong in a planned maintenance operation is a HUGE deal and puts unnecessary pressure on everyone involved. The entire department was constantly walking on eggshells being told on one hand to perform risky operations but also being told on the other hand to lie to customers.
In this case the citizens of the world are “the customers” .
Narcissists spend an inordinate amount of time making things appear to be different than the reality and the maintenance of those appearances can be extremely stressful on everyone in the group and at some point can result in people simply having enough of it.

Pascvaks says:
December 23, 2011 at 8:13 am
================
I think you’re on to something there! ROFLMAO

Erinome;
If only said journalists were asking the people who know something, like the plod and their masters. But that would be too Inconveniently Nosy, I s’pose.

I’m surprised that I haven’t seen any comment on this website about the resulting 1 January 2012 NYT article which is indeed the hatchet job on the leaker we were expecting with negligible analysis of the actual merits of the email leaking in terms of the contribution to scientific enquiry and exposure of scientific malfeasance. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/science/earth/new-speculation-on-who-leaked-climate-change-e-mails.html?_r=1&ref=science
Well I’m skimming a bit here so sorry if I’ve overlooked any reviewing of the actual article, holding fire perhaps? Anyway I nominate FOIA2009/FOIA2011 for Time Magazine Person of the Year, although I suppose hell will freeze over before he/she wins the award.