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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Using the word “journalist” and “New York Times” in the same sentence seems very odd.
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)
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???
It seems insane the amount of money they’re expending on these witch hunts when there is nothing of importance in them. Why would Jones contemplate suicide if that was the case? Maybe cause he knows the real smoking gun is still out there?
The amazing lack of interest over what is in the Climategate emails from the mainstream media sickens me. Here is a true story of corruption and collusion and they accept the explanations of the participants without actually investigating?. They accept the results of whitewash investigations and don’t investigate them? There is enough information that was published on ClimateAudit about the lack of rigor in the investigations that any decent journalist should have scented blood and gone looking for the truth.
Leftists applaud leaked material such as the Pentagon Papers or the WikiLeaks documents, but somehow we must bring the Climategate leakers to justice? Talk about hypocrisy!
Remember Wikileaks?
WikiLeaks, an online whistleblower site founded by Australian computer hacker Julian Assange, has been successful this year coordinating in advance with major news organizations rather than simply posting hundreds of thousands of documents online and out of context. It’s a media strategy aimed at achieving maximum impact for their secret material, with the New York Times, Guardian (U.K.), and Der Spiegel (Germany) all having taken advance looks at the previous Iraq and Afghanistan war logs. For this leak, Le Monde (France) and El Pais (Spain) also pored through the documents in advance.
The Times, in an editor’s note published with the first several articles, said that the 250,000 cables “were made available to The Times by a source who insisted on anonymity” while also noting that the documents were “originally obtained by WikiLeaks.” So it’s unknown who the Times source is, and unclear exactly how that source would have the material but not be a part of WikiLeaks. For the last leak, regarding Iraq, the Times clearly sourced the documents as being made available by WikiLeaks.
Dean Baquet, the Times Washington bureau chief, told The Cutline in an email that “it is true we did not get the documents directly from WikiLeaks.” [See Update]
UPDATE: Leigh told The Cutline later that The Guardian received the cables from WikiLeaks and provided a copy to the New York Times.
…….I’d have a few questions for the NYT and Guardian. Then again didn’t Rupert Murdoch’s organization have something to do with hacking as well?
As for the cries of “cyber-terrorism”, the epithet “terrorist” is no different from the old charge of “witch”. Just like witch burning, the modern prosecution of “terrorists” will only stop when the powers that be — the politicians, the police, the judges, and all their families — find that THEY are being accused of terrorism.
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.
p gosselin says:
December 23, 2011 at 2:06 am
Why “hacker”? Seems to me the person was a “leaker”. Inside job.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Very simple. A hacker is a criminal and subject to police investigation and criminal penalties.
A Whistleblower is PROTECTED by law. You can not bring charges against him. He is a “HERO”
Therefore FOIA.org MUST be a hacker and not a Whistleblower.
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.
Gail Combs
Whistleblowers are considered evil by the EU
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3742148.stm
This person was thoroughly persecuted for blowing the whilsle on major EU fraud. The rules have theoretically changed since then.
tonyb
Was RC really hacked?
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.
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…
Ron says:
December 23, 2011 at 4:29 am
davidmhoffer says:
December 22, 2011 at 10:39 pm …
davidmhoffer, I want to acknowledge that post of yours. Clever. Funny. Well written. Thanks for the morning smile!
………………………………..
I wait with anticipation for the next witticism from David. They rate getting read aloud to the significant other.
Too bad we do not see many journalists with his sense of the absurd. Delingpole is one of the few who comes to mind.
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.
There are two basic kinds of logic you can’t argue with. The first type is unassailable logic. The second type is just plain nutso bat [crap] logic. You can try arguing with it, but it would be like trying to dig a tunnel to China by bashing your head against rocks.
It’s always a waste of time to try to debate the village idiot. At the end of the day, they will still be an idiot and you’ll just have a headache.
****
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 @ur momisugly 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…
Don Shelby? Not at all surprising. He was always a bit of a dim bulb when I watched his news broadcasting.
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
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.
No magic skills needed.
North of 43 and south of 44 says:
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.
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.
=============
Quote of the week ??
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.
Fred from Canuckistan says:
December 23, 2011 at 5:44 am
“Using the word “journalist” and “New York Times” in the same sentence seems very odd.”
Duly noted.
Furthermore, if they had an investigtive journalist on staff, the first assignment would be to investigate why their circulation has been steadily tanking. Since it seems the NYT hasn’t cottoned on to the fact that fewer and fewer are buying their kool-aid, it’s proof that they don’t have an investigative reporter on staff, eh?
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.
Yep. And I think Jeff ID said he had several days to prepare, as did Tallbolke (for the BBC interview).
This shouldn’t need to be said, but I’ll say it anyway: there is no reason that the high profile climate realists like Anthony, Willis, Bishop, Tallbloke, McIntyre, Dellingpole, Morano, Lucy, Jeff ID, (and apologies to the many more!) should ever get caught with their pants down. Odds are that they all have racks of high-tech equipment from cameras to phones to computers, but few if any have a simple little $50 portable audio recorder (even voice-activated) for protection when a stalker confronts them, a reporter calls on the phone, or yes, if the cops show up. If you have days to prepare there is no excuse not to bring along a witness with a recorder.
Agreed. This is so very true. It is a consequence of honesty and integrity. But that is not how you win a war. ‘Not lowering yourself to their level‘ and ‘Godwin’s law‘ are examples of logical fallacies perpetrated on us by concern trolls and the irredeemably ignorant. In a battle of Good vs. Evil, guess what, Evil will always win when Good checks their weapons at the door. This was recognized by Lenin and Stalin and Alinsky, they spoke openly about it, yet here we are still acting like we have an Etch-A-Sketch memory.
There is no excuse to be naive any longer, not after two full years of examining the damning emails of the climate megalomaniacs, watching the official government sanctioned whitewashes, reading the sycophantic media propaganda and the ceaseless attacks by the left-wing climate blogs and trolls. We’re in a war, quite possibly the most important one since 1861. No, that’s not crazy talk. The Civil War began the re-alignment of the relationship of the citizens and states versus the almighty FedGov. This war, green socialism, is about nailing the lid shut on the coffin, forever. What happens to us is irrelevant, we’ll all be gone soon but the damage will survive. Remember that our kids and grandkids will first need to recover the ground we willingly lost *before* they can even start to gain any new ground.
🙂 hehe. That’s thinking outside the box. I would have probably said: ‘No, I do not know who FOIA is, but if I did I wouldn’t tell you anyway in order to protect the identity of a whistleblower. Waterboarding couldn’t get me to reveal a journalistic source’. The truth is, WUWT, Willis, Jeff ID and all of the blogs are the only place *any* journalism is going on these days. Calling the NY Slimes and Washington Compost the ‘free press’ is ridiculous. As if the founders and pamphleteers of the 18th century majored in Journalism instead of math, literature and farming. There is no such thing as a credentialed journalist, that is garbage that flows out of the sewer system in the District of Criminals. Journalism has no more to do with Pulitzers and Globes than Science has to do with Nobels. Day by day it is becoming clearer that old media is over with, the real action is out here in the WWW (wild, wild, web).