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.
@Jeremy says:
December 15, 2011 at 12:32 pm
Really, if they are so clever, why do they need to confiscate hardware instead of doing it like any decent “hacker”?. Then it is obvious that the real purpose is to menace, to intimidate, all skeptics.
“We are pleased to hear that the police are continuing to actively pursue the case following the release last month of a second tranche of hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit. We hope this will result in the arrest of those responsible for the theft of the emails and for distorting the debate on the globally important issue of climate change.” (read: We’re desperate to find to root out the traitor before he releases the final batch of emails that prove that we, the US government, and the UN distorted the important issue of climate change for money)
Tallbloke being harassed by shortbrains.
The UK police are ‘saving the planet’ the Orwellian way.
That’s libel. And Mann retweeted it. That makes Mann guilty, too.
But it gets better. If Mann has any twitter followers in the UK (and you know he does), he committed libel in the UK. UK is libel central. Tallbloke needs to be talking to a lawyer for another reason: he’s got a cause of action that’s worth lotsa quid.
@blackswhitewash: I tweeted Revkin hours ago asking what he thought of Tallbloke’s laptops being seized in the UK by the DoJ. I don’t expect him to tweet back. After all, hypocrisy is the hallmark of the left elite.
Think Tallbloke have some support :
https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=1883825&Site=COE
“Strasbourg, 08.12.2011 – The Council of Europe Committee of Ministers today alerted its member states about the risks to the rights to freedom of expression and association that may be created by politically motivated pressure on Internet platforms and online service providers. It also expressed concern about the threat to these rights caused by cyber attacks against websites of independent media, whistleblowers, human right defenders and dissidents.”
The Weaselzippers website has a bit up about the U.S. Dept. of Justice working with the UK to find out who “released”, “leaked,” whatever, the CRU-Tape I and II emails. So the story is getting legs in other parts of the blogosphere.
I’ll repeat this…Given the nature of the data bomb that is out there floating around, nothing the ‘authorities’ do is going to stop the last emails from being made public and in fact everything they do will speed up the release.
At best this is just pointless intimidation, at worst it means a trial for FOIA that may go either way.
ChE,
That shows the kind of person Greg Laden is. Tallbloke has something he can work with now, being labeled a criminal. There’s a reason people use the word “alleged”. Too late now for Laden and Mann, their libelous tweets are busy destroying Tallbloke’s reputation. He should get a screenshot of the tweets and contact a solicitor.
I think the police was searching for which mail was so hot that it got Manns stick to rise and
the polar ices to melt. ( Better than blue pills. )
Because accessing a private computer over the internet without permission is a crime. Police are supposed to be working above-board in the public eye. That means they have to come to your home, declare what they are doing, and follow the law. However, with today’s technology, confiscating a hard drive is unnecessary and simply deprives people of property when the enforcement agency only needs information. Taking TB’s laptop says they either can’t afford these kinds of devices or their laws forbid their use in law enforcement (seemingly unlikely), or they are practicing intimidation.
_Jim says:
December 15, 2011 at 12:40 pm
“‘Impractical’ implementations (for you or I and Bruce) would include and racks and racks of cards containing 64 (and wider) bit DSP’s and FPGA’s and ‘Gate Arrays’ running optimized routines/code working to ‘break’ a particular code block …”
No, rooms full of FPGAs or even custom chips are not considered “impractical” in this regard. The German Chaos Computer Club experiments with such hardware, for instance. That might add you 3 or 4 orders of magnitude, with a decent investment, but still falls short of the needed acceleration.
“Richard above also made a very good point earlier: those worried already *know* the contents of any possible additional e-mails (and possibly fostering this ‘raid’ through bureaucratic pressure), they wrote them! ”
Valid point. Still, at the moment, they can’t find out whether a certain item is or is not in the archive.
From the beeb on a different FOI email story but very interesting….
He adds: “Given the difficulty for civil servants and private offices to search private email accounts, and taking into account concerns regarding the security of these accounts and the need to ensure the completeness of the public record, the use of private email should continue to be actively discouraged.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16197167
This may have been said – its a long thread so I may have missed it – but I very much doubt the computers will be returned quickly. Could be plain inefficiency, but also rather intimidating. Will be interesting to see how long they are kept. 2 months minimum my guess.
I suppose that means everything should be backed up somewhere safe. Techies would know how I hope.
I doubt the Authorities like the internet, Utube or bloggers much, just as a general matter.
Meanwhilee, Drudge snoozes …
DirkH:
You seem to think GCHQ would need to de-encrypt the encrypted files to determine the contents of those files. But ‘there is more than one way to skin a cat’. There are several ways people with the sophistication of workers in the Donut could apply to make the determination. For example, Another Gareth states one in his post above at December 15, 2011 at 5:06 am where he writes;
“All they would need to do is look at the UEA backups which are (I assume) unencrypted and which the Police (iirc) have a copy of.”
So, I stand by my original comment whether or not GCHQ has the ability to solve the encryption; i.e. I said;
“Thirdly, it is very, very probable that UK security agents know both the contents of the encrypted Climategat 2.0 files and the identity of the Climategate leaker. GCHQ is extremely competent and its staff working in the Donut probably sorted those things out within hours of being asked.
So, it is not likely that UK authorities need further investigations to determine these matters because the authorities already know them.”
And you seem to have some strange reasons for thinking GCHQ, the NSA and etc.cannot solve the encryption. For example at December 15, 2011 at 11:15 am you say;
“Jim, we are talking many orders of magnitude here, like 10 ^ 73 or so…and it is totally impossible that some government agency has access to such technology. That would be like technology from the year 2100 – and you would not hide that technology until you can crack an AES-256 encoded file with it, no, you would use it ALL THE TIME and TOTALLY RULE. So, they can’t have that technology, we would know. It would be like having a suitcase sized nuclear fusion reactor and not using it.”
They would NOT “use it all the time”. History shows this. As in the past, any government with such code-solving ability would use it sparingly to avoid disclosure of what it was doing. Sparing use of data from descrambling coded messages ensures that important use is constantly maintained. The code would be changed immediately it were known to be solved. Too much use of solved messages would reveal that the code was solved and, therefore, a new code would be adopted. Constant use ensures that much time is expended solving (a series of) new codes and the messages of new codes cannot be read until their code is solved.
So, how would or could you or anbody else know GCHQ and the NSA are “not using it”?
Richard
Nice to know the UK police are out in force – 6 Met officers plus the locals. No wonder they can’t find the thieves who are stealing millions of pounds worth of copper cables, lead etc and causing £1bn of losses to the Uk economy.
Can’t be long before the end of all this nonsense- eventually the electorate will wake up and respond.
Forgot to mention that the same Met police allowed hundreds of rioters to go freely about there business of looting and arson a couple of months m o – safer to raid some bloggers house.
enneagram says:
December 15, 2011 at 12:33 pm
A spokesman for the University of East Anglia said today: “We are pleased to hear that the police are continuing to actively pursue the case following the release last month of a second tranche of hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit. We hope this will result in the arrest of those responsible for the theft of the emails and for distorting the debate on the globally important issue of climate change.”
———————————————————————–
That put me over the edge. Shoot the messenger. What a bunch of political morons.
Just donated 50 pounds to Tallbloke and $100 to WUWT. Merry Christmas.
And if it ends badly for Tallbloke I’ll send him a file of my own. No, not a digital one – one in a cake;)
Good luck!
Blade says:December 15, 2011 at 11:48 am
“If Tallbloke were a citizen in the USA…”
If he was just arriving, then his laptop would be subject to disk cloning on entering the US.
Blade says:
December 15, 2011 at 11:48 am
“The fact that the Holder DoJ is taking advantage of the fact that the UK has no such Amendment is also very troubling.”
Interesting – cyber rendition, anyone?
I was just about to leave a link to Greg Laden’s quite remarkable post. Glad you found it, Anthony, and posted it as update 8.
Will these actions possibly force the leaker to dump everything he may still have?
Steve C says:
December 15, 2011 at 12:45 am
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It is very worrying how the UK has changed these past 20 or so years. Once the bastion of the free, but now there has been a fundamental shift. Instead of the government being accountable to the people, the position is that the people are now being held accountable to the government. Liberty has long since been lost.