This is almost as clueless as the raid on Tallbloke by the police looking for scraps. But it does underscore one thing – investigators are clueless and so is the major press.
For the record, I don’t know who “FOIA” is either and given the stunning lack of success (and poor judgement demonstrated recently) in investigation two years on, I doubt they’ll ever discover who it was. – Anthony
Guest post by Jeff Id
Their Side – Bloggers “knew” FOIA emails were coming
I just had a phone conversation with Leslie Kaufman of the NYT on the ‘hacker’. She was careful to call the FOIA people by that PC name. Rule 1 – Don’t offend the witness unless you want them upset. I didn’t really want to do the interview because these things don’t usually go well for me and it took me several days to make time. Unfortunately my Achilles heel is that I tend to say what I think. — I know you are all surprised.
She asked several questions about the hacker and said that her job was to investigate that aspect and not the climategate emails – which she believed had been covered. Of course I took a little time to explain the science of the issue and even brought up the conversations between the Dept of Energy and Phil Jones. In general, she seemed to repeat the opinions of the climategate committees despite the blindingly obvious problems in meshing any of their conclusions with reality. She said it was well covered that the researchers hadn’t been ‘open enough’. If that is the limit of the curiosity of your audience, it didn’t seem worth getting into.
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. My life is fine the way it is and the last thing I need is a leftist Justice department with an overstock of rubber gloves visiting my home. Leslie was very interested in whether I knew who the ‘hacker’ is. I had to tell her several ways and times that I really don’t know. I even told her that I used to think it was a student, to which she later questioned why I don’t think it is a student any longer. (Implying that I knew something). Hopefully, you can understand the direction of the interview from this. She said it was her mandate to follow this portion of the story.
For the readers here, it isn’t that I don’t believe it was a student, it is that I don’t know either way. Some friends with more knowledge than I on computers have pointed out some fairly technically sophisticated behavior in the releases which make me reconsider. I brought up the RC hack to Leslie, pointing out that no adult with sensitive information would release it that way. It’s a prank-like behavior. Of course, there is a certain narcissism which comes with a hacker mentality that sometimes delays the adult thought process. When I was in college, a stunt like that would sound like fun. Now — NO effing way.
I once met a 25 year old guy who had been caught hacking, and later hired by a security company. Despite having been “caught”, he was so cock-sure that he was flat nauseating. Either too dumb to know he wasn’t as smart as he thought or too young to have the social skill to refrain from flaunting his smarts. It is a culture of some computer programmers (sorry guys), which the ‘adult’ of my story believed he had risen to the top of. — Look what I can do! I often wonder if the hacker culture recognizes the vastly superior work built into the technology of the things which they program on.
This is not to say that FOIA.org released the emails out of narcissism or proof of superiority. Readers here understand that. Instead, it was done of understanding with a slight hint of that hacker mentality. They/he/she hold a recognition that the math and science are being perverted, data was absolutely covered up where necessary and the known results were without a doubt exaggerated to promote the cause. In my conversation with Leslie, I took the time to explain that I was not a denier and that any scientifically minded person knows full well that the basic effect of CO2 warming is incontrovertibly true. She suggested to describe me as a Lukewarmer, to which my reply was that I don’t even like that name because I don’t know how much warming there will be but due to current political mechanisms, there is a systematic exaggeration of the science.
Anyway, the most interesting point of the conversation came out when she said in very rough paraphrase ‘Their side is that the email releases were known to you ahead of time.’
The ‘their side’ was fairly interesting as we know the “Climate Scientists™” are in good contact with the NYT as are the government agencies. It could have been nothing but often when you hear inflection of how something is said, you can get the meaning. I took it as though she had been talked too by someone of the opinion that the three blogs mentioned in the DOJ letter were intimately involved.
The fact that I have done nothing wrong does not relieve me one tiny bit regarding the police. This is especially true when a billion dollar industry is involved. Those who haven’t dealt with law won’t get that. What gives me comfort is that this blog and its global friends have a wide readership means that ANY direct police action will have a wide public audience – not that it will stop the crazy stuff anyway. That is the limit of my protection.
As I have written before, I think Leslie has it right. Some powerful idiot(perhaps a congressman), who doesn’t understand blogs, internets (love the plural) or techie things in general with more than one button, thinks that the bloggers were in direct communication with FOIA. This is the single reason that I can make sense of for the confiscation of Tallbloke’s computers. Any other potential communications can be taken in pristine form right from the blog logs at WordPress.
Anyway, the conversation came across as some verification of my theory on why Tallboke had his computers confiscated. As always, I reserve the right to revise and extend my remarks.
UPDATE: Hilary Ostrov has an interesting piece on Climategate events in timeline format. She muses that a story in the Guardian may have had something to do with all this. – Anthony
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Careful, Jeff, he’s after you.
Thanks Anthony! But the link in your update links back to this post rather than to Of Climategate, constabularies, Hickman and l’affaire Tallbloke: a timeline to consider
And just so there’s no confusion … when I wrote the piece, I didn’t know about Kaufman’s adventures in whatever-land-she-might-be-in. (Although when I wrote my earlier comment above, the thought did occur to me that perhaps she had derived her “knowledge” from the Guardian’s coverage!)
Hilary
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?
Why the insistence on a hacker? Because they HAVE to have the meme of a nefarious villian (funded by BIG OIL, wink wink) or the whole ideological house of cards they’ve built collapses. We CAN’T be honest and objective because we are, first and foremost, wrong. You can witness this in various areas of religious-pseudoscientific thought: always “They” (the powers that be) are out to destroy truth and reason. Power of vitamins/natural foods/organic/etc hidden by Big Pharma/Big Food/Big Govt.
The lamestream media: many of them are actually “down with the struggle” and know the far larger ideological games/BS being played with the whole stupid GW charade.
Thank God for the internet and these blogs. Truth is so much harder to hide these days. 🙂
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.
Looks like that “timeline” URL is probably a relative URL instead of an absolute URL, so it points to a nonexistent place here on WUWT instead of whatever site it is supposed to point at.
crosspatch:
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. >.<
The truly sad, miserable and pathetic aspects of all this:
1. The media is supposed to be critical of all things government or government funded, lest they become nothing better than propagandists.
2. There should be complete transparency on the science, the methodology and even the “conversations” held via email on this publicly funded endeavor (does CO2 cause catastrophic warming). The fact that there isn’t takes me right back to my 1st point.
I don’t live this particular nightmare nearly everyday Anthony and kudos to you and others like you that do – and don’t go stark raving mad at the contradictions of the “consensus” view and those who advocate so blatantly for them.
Sanctimonious dolt. A bad combination as a survival characteristic. Apparently necessary for a journalist. .
Recently the NYT had to fire a freelance reporter who not only reported on OWS but participated in it and in planning meetings. After it was public knowledge, so no proactivity from their side.
Why would anyone talk to the NYT, you could just as well talk to the BBC.
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?
Reminds me of a Monckton interview on radio in Oz. He ripped the interviewer a new one, to the point where the interview hung up on him. Monckton called back to ask what had happened and the interview continued.
The interviewer then asked if the interview could continue off air, as they didn’t have any more time, and Monckton declined.
Why? Well because Monckton knows the rules. Live there is no way they can edit the interview. Off air, they can edit the interview to put words in your mouth. Same goes for newspapers.
Get the questions in writing in advance, and reply the same way. Require in advance that the paper agree in writing to print your reply in full as a condition of use.
“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
So far there has been no public legal mention of WUWT from WordPress. This may be due to the additional protections offered by Anthony’s legal journalist status but any way you cut it, WUWT is the single most utilized climate resource on the Internet. Not just the skeptic version but the single, number one place for science-based climate information.
Very odd to leave this place off the list —- don’t you think??
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.
UPDATE: Hilary Ostrov has an interesting piece on Climategate events in timeline format. She muses that a story in the Guardian may have had something to do with all this. – Anthony
====================================================
Broken link???
@crosspatch Dec 22, 2011 at 3:54 pm:
Amen. It is like murders – it is (at least according to general wisdom) most often a member of the family.
I have it on good authority that there are no good authorities on this matter. …and you can take that to the bank. Well OK — maybe one… and you can take that to the bank too!
Now I’m gonna get arrested or searched for admitting that I have known that all along.
The typical journalists is NOT like box of chocolates…. You pretty much know what you’re going to get!!!!! 🙂
Or, the investigators have an idea who did it, but know that person will claim whistleblower status, and that the investigation to see if that person really is a whistleblower will expose the shams that have been passed off as investigations. So they take the computers of bloggers, implicitly smearing them, as the best course to keep the good ship Warmista afloat and pointed in the direction they wish.
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?
The simple fact that they haven’t been able to track down “FOIA” indicates to me it was an inside job. And whoever it was isn’t talking and isn’t feeling much pressure is my take.
But let’s be clear about all this–we “realists” DID have prior notification or at least an inkling. I mean, why wouldn’t FOIA release more juicy tidbits and reprehensible dirt on “climate scientists” since these fraudsters are sticking to their old ways without any contrition or remorse (and certainly no apology) whatsoever. So listen up, NYT, UEA, UN, etc, etc. and I’ll make a prediction: We’re expecing:
Climategate 3,
Climategate 4,
…
…
…
…
Climategate 39
Climategate 40 (or more).
The above is based on 220,000 emails in the master file with 5,000 emails available per Climategate. With one delivered every year this will stretch out until 2050 and if released sometime at the end of each year, will be the best annual Christmas present on the climate ever! (Who says Santa isn’t a climate realist?)
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.
The link in the update is borked.
{Reply: Refresh and try it now. -REP]
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.