UPDATE: 12/21/11 4PM -BBC covers Tallbloke, finally, Richard Black still silent- Norfolk constabulary to share hand-off Climategate investigation, and Greg Laden caves – see below
Dec 14th -The first blogger to break the Climategate2 story has had a visit from the police and has had his computers seized. Tallbloke’s Talkshop first reported on CG2 due to the timing of the release being overnight in the USA. Today he was raided by six UK police (Norfolk Constabulary and Metropolitan police) and several of his computers were seized as evidence. He writes:
After surveying my ancient stack of Sun Sparcstations and PII 400 pc’s, they ended up settling for two laptops and an adsl broadband router. I’m blogging this post via my mobile.
That means his cellphone. In his blog report are all the details. including actions in the US involving WordPress and the US Department of Justice. Jeff Id at The Air Vent also has a report here.
Strange and troubling that they’d seize his computers for comments dropped onto a US service (wordpress.com) from the cloud. There wouldn’t be any record on his PC’s of the event from FOIA’s placing comments, that would be in the wordpress.com server logs.
Either there’s more than meets the eye or they have no idea how the blog system works.
UPDATE: I’ve been in contact with Roger (Tallbloke) and he tells me that he is not a suspect, and that they’ll clone his hard drives and return the computers to him. – Anthony
UPDATE2: 12/15/9AM It seems that the story has gone viral on blogs. Four skeptic blogs are in the top ten of all WordPress blogs today. While I’ve seen 2 at a time on CG1 and CG2, four has never happened before. This is from my wordpress.com dashboard:
From top to bottom, WUWT, The Air Vent, Tallbloke’s Talkshop, Climate Audit.
UPDATE3: Delingpole in the Telegraph thinks its going to escalate
UPDATE4: Horner in The Washington Examiner weighs in
UPDATE5: The Guardian picks up on the story here
UPDATE6: Jo Nova suggests it is a form of intimidation
UPDATE7: Josh weighs in with two cartoons
UPDATE8: Greg Laden on Scienceblogs accuses Tallbloke of being a “criminal” – a claim really over the line and over the top. Clearly this is outside of the Code of Conduct for Scienceblogs.com (contact page here) Of course, after reading the rant of hate this man has for anyone not like him, especially Americans in some states, I suppose it’s just another day for him. Update: I sent off a complaint to the editors of Sb about this, and it appears that Laden has been asked to remove the libelous language, though the post remains as does his hateful attitude in comments.
UPDATE9: Lord Monckton to pursue fraud charges against Climategate scientists: Will present to police the case for ‘numerous specific instances of scientific or economic fraud’
Monckton: ‘I have begun drafting a memorandum for prosecuting authorities…to establish…the existence of numerous specific instances of scientific or economic fraud in relation to the official ‘global warming’ storyline…they will act, for that is what the law requires them to do’
Story at ClimateDepot here
UPDATE10: More than a couple of people have asked me about computer security in the last couple of days, especially after the Tallbloke raid incident.
I’m offering a simple security solution for those that want to protect their files: a USB flash drive with built in hardware security. See it here
UPDATE11: A copy of the search warrant can be seen at Climate Audit
UPDATE 12: The BBC’s Richard Black is silent, probably because he can’t “… find an angle that will allow the BBC to maintain the usual warmists good, sceptics bad holding pattern”.
UPDATE13: Tallbloke apparently is going to take legal action against ScienceBlogs and blogger Greg Laden over his libelous article (now modified to not be libelous) accusing Tallbloke of being involved in criminal activity, and is soliciting barristers. Laden says on his blog in comments:
“I think he’s a criminal for being a climate denialist. Sue me. “
Looks like Greg Laden will get his wish.
UPDATE14: Rep Markey has an “off with their heads” moment, Jeff Id explains how the connections being made are preposterous.
UPDATE15: Tallbloke has decided to take the libel issue with Laden to tort. A letter from his attorney is posted.
UPDATE16: Planetsave makes another libel with the headline: “Criminal Who Manufactured Climategate Caught?” The clueless writer, Zachary Shahan, is about as far away from understanding journalism as anyone I’ve seen. He’s in for a nasty surprise as Tallbloke has added him to the tort list.
UPDATE18: UK cartoonist “Fenbeagle” has done up a Star Wars parody in the vein of The Empire Strikes Back. Mike Mann, Phil Jones, Jawas, and a Wookie are featured.
UPDATE19: Tom Nelson points out that Laden seems to have caved to impending legal action: Warmist Greg Laden: Did I say that tallbloke is a criminal? I meant he’s not a criminal. Details here
UPDATE20: Tallbloke reflects on the solstice and says that questions are starting to be asked in the UK.
UPDATE21: Tallbloke reports that:
In a sudden new development, your correspondent has learned that Norfolk Constabulary have decided that climategate is too big for them to handle. According to an un-named source, they intend to hand over the inquiry to another force.
This follows on the heels of a ‘request for a contact’ at Norfolk Constabulary by Lord Christopher Monckton in connection with his intention to have the police investigate revelations in the ‘climategate’ emails placed in the public domain.
UPDATE22: Donna LeFramboise writes in the Financial Post:
This is all rather chilling. It appears that being the proprietor of a blog in which strangers leave links pointing to material on third-party websites now exposes one to being raided by the police.
UPDATE23: The BBC finally gets around to covering the seizure episode almost a week later, unsurprisingly, the very biased Richard Black isn’t the reporter.
excellent – just feeds more publicity about the Climatgate 2 emails,
it makes it look like they want to hide information.
The police are getting suspicious that global warming isn’t happening and are looking for the truth.
They wouldn’t find the truth on a warmists computer!
In any state the police can only act effectively with the sanction of the people … particularly in a democracy. The solution to this abuse of power by the police is in our own hands. In the US and UK most of us will sit on a jury in our life time. Most cases will involve the word of the police against that of the suspect. All we need to is to utter these words in the jury room:
… “You can’t always trust the police”.
The police have to deserve our trust. They have to act within the law, not just the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law. There has clearly been fraudulent behaviour by at least some climate scientists. There may not be enough evidence to convict any individual, but there clearly is enough smoke in the air to look to at least start checking their servers to see if there is a gun.
Far from trying to track down the criminals who have been responsible for probably the biggest fraud in human history, they show that their only interest is in stopping those who are trying to uphold the law of FOI.
In other words, the police are trying to clamp down on those who are doing the job the police should be doing!
OK, like most police work, it is probably cock-up over conspiracy, but the real conspiracy is that they haven’t even attempt to investigate the biggest fraud in history. They are clearly not even handed in their enforcement of the law, and when the police hold the law in contempt, then I’m afraid members of the public will just follow their example.
Some interesting parallels in this case:
http://www.news.com.au/national/police-raid-the-age-over-alp-database-hacking-allegations/story-e6frfkvr-1226222702380
The Melbourne Age newspaper and the hacking of the Australian Labor Party Data Base (unusual that the pro AGW newspaper is conflicting with the party it normally promotes). The newspaper is presently seeking an injunction to stop any police search of their computer records.
“The Age discovered, via a whistleblower, that the ALP was collecting and storing personal information about members of the public, unbeknown to those individuals, and reported, carefully and precisely, what those files contained without breaching any person’s privacy.”
The Age is defending any action it took as “in the public interest.”
They also deny any wrong doing and have expressed grave concerns over the risk that the sources for the report may be identified adding that “we protect our sources at all costs.”
In that case the national newspaper should support the disclosure of Climategate material? Mmmnn, I wonder.
Guess it all depends on the definitions of a “whistle blower” and “in the public interest.”
A further expression of support to Roger.
As others have speculated, those who have downloaded the full set of files have a time bomb waiting to explode when the code is given. Perhaps the police have advance notice that the original Hacker is ready to release the code?
Tonyb .
AT 1:45 AM on 15 December, climatereason writes:
If they have such “advance notice” from the whistleblower (I’m disinclined to accept the “Hacker” meme), it can be expected that the whistleblower has seeded the password to the all.7z archive in multiple locations. Something as simple as uploads on a few of the sites already used by interested parties to spread FOIA2011.zip around, or on one of the Usenet newsgroups.
They could “disappear” him and expect thereby to trigger a “pop goes the weasel” opening of all.7z a categorical 24 hours after the whistleblower drops off the grid.
This “FOIA” person (or persons) have demonstrated a high level of sophistication and a lot of hatred for “Mike’s Hockey Team” and all the others who have battened upon the AGW fraud. That all.7z Easter egg isn’t there for no reason.
I know people love to speculate but banging on about local laws is utterly pointless. This was done in the UK. The relevant authority is this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Powers_Act_2000
This insidious act allows the Police, hell even your local council to demand access to your digital information. You must also provide encryption keys. People have been jailed for withholding encryption passwords.
This is BIG BROTHER, 1984, and thanks to the panic over 9/11 we allowed it into law.
So Tallbloke has NO rights in this, they could even use this law to add monitoring equipment to his PC on return and not tell him, or otherwise track or tap his communications.
This is what “democracy” and “freedom” mean, it means they can do whatever the hell they like to obtain and sift through Tallblokes, yours or my computers, track us, force ISP’s to give them information, basically anything – and we have NO rights within it.
Also, if anyone really, honestly, in this day and age does not know that a “mobile” is what we Brits call cellphones, then you maybe need to work on expanding your world view.
What, no hugh pepper or /a physicist commenting on this one?
Here’s hoping the climate crooks just shot themselves in the foot.
EDIT: I meant terrorism generally, not 9/11 specifically, as it did not happen until year after the law was legalised!
Maybe they think Tallbloke is hiding the missing heat? Those old Sparcs used to get very hot, so perhaps they are onto something…. warming shall resume now they are liberated.
The same thing happened to me , for different reasons in a different country, and I put it down to the fact that I lived in a police state. Fortunately my laptop was returned after two and a half weeks of intrusive and threatening “interviews” and allegations of all sorts. I have never used that laptop again.
That such a thing could happen in the UK is scary but not surprising . The intrusive state that is Britain seems to be in the increasing habit of knocking down doors and confiscating computers, often in the name of hunting pedophiles or “extreme right wing racists” and the like.
I know how disconcerting it can be Roger and it takes a while to get back to normal. Good luck.
No need to get too paranoid.
The Police are under pressure to get results and show some effort. With Climategate 2 it is becoming a desperate issue as to whether the leak was from a whistleblower with the right to protection in the public interest or from a theft of data by someone without legal authority to handle it. Personally I’d guess at the former but obviously cannot yet be sure.
Tallbloke was the smallest and easiest target so this activity could just be a way of the Police being seen to do something without having to expend much money or effort in a case which they are probably not deeply interested in and which they regard as more likely a civil rather than a criminal matter.
From Tallbloke’s comments it appears that he is being treated politely, is apparently not a suspect and can expect to receive his data back shortly. In the meantime he is still able to maintain his blog.
This could turn out to the advantage of Tallbloke and the entire sceptic community with the Police possibly laughing up their sleeves at the idiocy of those who are pressing them to do something (anything).
Anyway, I hope that is an accurate diagnosis.
I’m Spartacus …. No I’M SPARTACUS…. No I’m REALLY Spartacus……
This is the first reaction of this government to the fact that their policies on climate change are wrong. Huhne still maintains that he is right and that his policies are the right course for the UK. How wrong he is. He is the sort of man who, allegedly, gets someone else to take a speeding ticket for him. So not the most likeable or trustworthy type of person.
Scare tactics in the extreme and must be stopped for the sake of free speech and truth in science.
“Either there’s more than meets the eye or they have no idea how the blog system works.”
You forgot how intimidation works.
Many of this occurrences are intimidation. They force the person to loose time, expenses knowing very well from start that in the end they have no case.
King of Cool,
The left-wing Age newspaper has been at the forefront of those claiming that Murdoch newspapers in the U.K. are low-life scum because they hacked into the phones of celebrities and politicians, yet they have no problem hacking into the computers of the Australian Labor Party whenever they want.
The hypocritical nature of the Age is matched by that of the UK Guardian who openly boasts about hacking into the phones of big corporations while at the same time condemning the Murdoch newspapers for their hacking.
The question becomes, when is it ethical to hack into other peoples privacy. It would appear that if you are hacking then enemies of the Left (e.g. Wikileaks, the Age or the Guardian) it is “noble” and OK. However, if you are accused of hacking [note: I know that the climate-gate emails are probably not the result of hacking but more likely a disgruntled academic] into the bastions of the politically correct (e.g. IPCC or East Anglia Climate Unit] the you are a criminal and it’s not OK. No double standard there….. move on….. nothing to see here.
Conspiratorial gathering
Well at least DMI have put ice extent back to normal (haha its now within “normal”range), check norsex ice.
Anyone outside the UK may be amused to learn that the place to make a complaint about the police force in the UK is the Independant Police Complaints Commission
thats right, its another IPCC
Now being followed on other blogs:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/12/force-for-evil.html
And to repeat the question. Why seize his property if he is NOT a suspect.
“WillR says:
December 14, 2011 at 8:10 pm
Just don’t say ANYTHING to them, reserve the right to remain silent!!!
British / UK law is different in this regard.”
not true, i have a friend who is a Police officer (a good, honest one, BTW – they do still exist) and when arresting someone they still have to give the schpeel which includes the “you have the right to remain silent , anything you say may be used against you, (blah blah blah etc)”,
so, yes, even in Police State EU/UK your best course is to exercise your right to remain silent.
Oh, and “Tallbloke”, the Police had no right to take your lap tops without a court order. They only took them because you let them. I would have mad them jump through hoops and in the mean time backed up, then wiped the hard drives and re-installed! hah
“I request that you not disclose the existence of this request to the subscriber or any other person,
other than as necessary to comply with this request.”
It appears that WordPress was in breach of the above instruction contained in the electronic notification since they did disclose the existence of the request to at least some of the subscribers ?
“If you are charged, the police must caution you that you do not need to say anything in answer to the charge but that you have the opportunity to reply. Any reply that you make will be noted and may be used in evidence.”
http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/scotland/your_rights/legal_system_index_scotland/police_powers_scotland.htm
This part of the law is the same in Scotland as in the rest of the UK, BTW.
It would appear that the esteemed officers of Norfolk Constabulary may be what is known in the UK as “normal for Norfolk”…
Frederick James (Norfolk, UK)
A Force for Evil
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/12/force-for-evil.html
Maybe they are looking for the missing Hotspot?
Anyway can’t one (all) of you get hold of a hot shot lawyer from Big Oil to sort it all out on his behalf? Wouldn’t that service be included in the recruitment package for shills?
No? Strange…