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.
England United party headquarters released a comment today about the criminal known only as “V” and the rumors swirling about the conduct of officials: “The killings will continue until people behave.”
If you refuse to love Big Climate, you will be declared an enemy of the state and an ally of the terrorist Emmanuel Goldstein….
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.
—
Wrong
“Your Stupid State
Sometimes I’m hard on an entire state. Like Texas. Or, recently, West Virginia.
It’s funny when the slack jawed yokels who live in these god-forsaken shitholes get annoyed at that.
But seriously folks. I’m hard on your state for a reason. I do it for your own good. A state is a democracy. If you have medical care that is second only to a despotic third world war torn failed state, that is because it is what you vote for, what you strive for. If you have a state with a system of education that produces high school graduates who couldn’t pass the entry exam to Romper Room and have no chance of going to a good college unless they happen to be one of the athletes you raise up and systematically traffic, then you got that way because that is what you vote for, what you strive for.
While you were busy clinging to your guns and your gods and that watery piss you call beer, other states were getting their acts together to have positive growth, clean and stable industry, a clean environment, excellent education, proper infrastructure, humane health care, etc. You know this new health care bill? Actually, a big part of the change that will happen is pulling your stupid-ass nuts out of the fire, because those of us who live in the progressive states fixed half those problems you are living with a long time ago. Yet you are the states that seem to be sending more than your share of testicle dangling tea-baggers to DC to complain about the very progress that is going to keep your 11 fingered offspring from the misery that your created environment imposes on them.
OK, maybe I’m overdoing it a bit.
But by now I think you get the point. If you are one of these backwards, anti-progressive third world states, I’m trying to do you a favor by humiliating you. I’m trying to bring attention to the fact that you could do better by changing your politicians, and in some cases, throwing off the yoke of one oppressive industry or another. We could just breed a lot more liberals and send them there, like we did to Virgina. Or we could ignore you and wait for some major natural disaster to mostly wipe you out, like happened in Louisiana. Yes, folks, certain things in Louisiana will probably be better after the hurricane than before, simply because people from out of state have gone there to do stuff. I don’t know what we can do with a vast and heavily populated state like Texas. Except to keep up the humiliation.
If you were not dragging the rest of us down with you, I (and others) would not feel the need to do this. But you are, so we do. Deal.
Oh, and do feel free to say humiliating things about my state. Please do. We are the state who elected Tim Pawlenty as governor. We are the state that sent Michel Bachmann to Washington. We are very worthy of humiliation. We don’t get enough of it. Please send some our way.
And stop whining about stuff I say about your stupid state. Stop whining and just fix it.
”
This guy is a bigot.
Dougmanxx says:
December 15, 2011 at 8:52 pm
gnomish says:
December 15, 2011 at 4:30 pm
Of course your home router records MAC addresses. Thats how it communicates with the ISP, and with any device that connects to it such as a laptop or cellular phone. In a practical sense this means most consumer type routers have only 2 or 3 MAC addresses in their FIB/MAC address tables, however these tables do have default age timers so if not used, the MAC addresses will age out and disappear (depending on the router anywhere from a few seconds to many hours or even several days, unless manually configured. As an example: I use MAC address filtering on my wireless router at home [linksys like yours!], so my devices never age out of the MAC tables, but no other devices may connect. The only MAC addresses you’ll ever see on my home router are the ones I’ve specifically allowed to connect). I have a feeling we are basically saying the same thing, to whit: taking a consumer DSL router is simply a waste of time, there isn;t a shred of useful info there. It’s even worse if this was a MODEM. Taking a DSL modem would fall under the “terminally stupid” category. Modems have NO info at all, the only reason to take it would be either: the police really are completely clueless, or they just want to harass.
They don’t get recorded on your basic home router – they just reside in RAM – a virtual log that deletes old entries to make room for new entries. The FLASH is reserved for firmware and config saves.
Once they pulled the cord – all record of what had connected directly to the WAN, LAN and WLAN interfaces within the last few hours or days was lost.
If anything, it indicates that the folks who appeared to grab Tallbloke’s computers and stuff weren’t exactly “experts” themselves – just following orders from above and winging it as they looked around…
=8-)
roh234 says:
Yeah well at least he has the guts to nail his opinion to the masthead. He also seems to have a certain love and admiration for the Congolese. That probably makes him a very interesting ‘bigot’ (whatever that really means)
Honestly, I don’t know how a person could function without stereotypical generalizations. First impressions are rapid discriminators …
For me, it’s not the impressions that are harmful. Rather it is the reluctance or inability to see beyond the singular or premature viewpoint.
One day later:
1 police raid
2 computers taken
3 police forces
6 cops
9 updates
505 comments and counting
…and an exploding blogger in a pear tree!
All the best Tallbloke, thanks Mr Watts, and blessings from whatever gods may be.
I guess after intentionally arming the Mexican Drug Cartels and overtly waging war on Arizona, Eric “Hitman” Holder thinks he got to Solyndra’s computers just in time, too, to prevent discovery of Robbinghood’s cronyism and money laundering at taxpayer expense.
Holder’s still trying to get Sheriff Joe Arpaio declared incompetent for enforcing Federal and State laws so effectively, when the roundups done by the Fed raids on produce handlers have nothing to do with any kind of proof of citizenship at all, but only what skin color and apparent nationality the workers have – and probably whether or not the businesses have “payed to play”.
The bedrock of the Obama Commies denial mechanism is that they all think they’re invisible, when it’s really only people like John Corzine telling them so.
Laden is quick and keen to seize upon and ridicule the subjective bias and limitations of others. He has strong sensibilities in that regard.
I cannot speak for him but I cannot call him blind stupid or ignorant either. That’s because I respect people for who they are .. for their own individual subjective ability.
I cannot speak for him. He mocks other people for being subjective in their own right.
Raving says:
December 15, 2011 at 10:32 pm
“Yeah well at least he has the guts to nail his opinion to the masthead…”
===============================================================
In Laden’s case it has nothing at all to do with ‘guts’ or courage. I went and read some of his blog. The guy is a wild ranting unbalanced mental-masturbator, aka flaming narcissist. Courage has nothing to do with it at all. He gets off spewing his nonsense and that’s the story. To call what he does courageous is to abuse that virtue.
Norfolk’s finest? J-esus wept. In the frequent occasions I’ve linked to ‘Talkshop’, it’s been because it’s a politics-free site, consistently offering something new, and always positively discussive.
An earlier commenter akined this to a ‘Stalinist’ state. Well, just too bad. Truth will out when Mann, Jones, Schmidt et al are brought to book. Justice, then, might be served.
roh234 says:
December 15, 2011 at 10:17 pm
You know this new health care bill? Actually, a big part of the change that will happen is pulling your stupid-ass nuts out of the fire, because those of us who live in the progressive states fixed half those problems you are living with a long time ago. Yet you are the states that seem to be sending more than your share of testicle dangling tea-baggers to DC to complain about the very progress that is going to keep your 11 fingered offspring from the misery that your created environment imposes on them.
Yep, we’ve observed how you OWS parasites and California sure do get it all fingered out, and o’so “naturally” without the need of any TP at all! Now all you need is some more of Robbinghood’s and Little Moonbeam’s all purpose magic manna to more completely fill your quavering fingers to the brim with more of that same old Commie crappola that has “sustained” you so well thus far, forevah! No doubt it tastes as good as it does in North Korea? Where they apparently haven’t learned by echoing fragmented noises in the streets to count beyond “4”, either? And, please, don’t you be going and telling Maiden Michelle on me while she and the PBS Teletubbies are trying to achieve a new jumping jack record. Otherwise you just might could be outed as a raaaaacist!
VERY IMPORTANT CORRECTION!: many (or probably most) newer home routers do have the capability to record a list of MAC addresses. It is a critically important security feature found in the wireless settings when you admin your router.
Most people know all about setting a security algorithm with a passphrase that needs to be entered once on each wireless access device. However, this is just one half of the local security needed to fully lockdown your router from drive-by bandwidth thieves.
The other half is less known and involves turning off access to all computers not listed in your custom whitelist. This is usually found under a section called Wireless MAC Filter. By enabling it and selecting ‘Permit Only’ access to your list of MAC addresses, you ensure that even someone knowing your security passphrase cannot use your router without you first adding their MAC to your whitelist. Likewise, anyone in your MAC whitelist cannot access the router without knowing the passphrase. They work hand-in-hand.
The MAC whitelist (BTW there is even a way to invert it into a blacklist) is also kept in the Router non-volatile memory along with the Router logs someone mentioned above. And there is room for plenty more data to be stored, since we’re talking mere byte strings here.
This is exceedingly important nowadays. The typical whitelist will have MAC addresses for all their iPhones, iPads, Laptops, Notebooks, eBook readers, and more. To *not* utilize MAC filtering means you are relying completely on the passphrase for local security. It is very possible to obtain this passphrase if someone has a few seconds alone with your laptop who has a thumbdrive with certain utility software. (NB: it can be tricky to admin the whitelist because you need to determine the MAC of all your devices, which since it is not always printed on a sticker on the device or found in a menu, usually means turning off the MAC filtering temporarily and recording the device’s MAC seen by the router by selecting this MAC in a list, then re-enabling Filtering. This procedure can vary for different routers and firmware releases.)
What does this mean for Tallbloke or anyone else that has their router confiscated or stolen? It means that if the whitelist is in use, the cops have the MAC addresses (think fingerprint) of each device he allowed to talk on his router. Since such devices necessarily broadcast this information when speaking to a router (e.g., another router compares your MAC to their whitelist), well now picture the cops checking routers at an Internet Cafe, or airport lounge or school or hospital. Picture anyplace that your Cellphone or Laptop or iPad connected to Wi-Fi (as opposed to Celluar). There are many ways to skin a cat. And yes, this would seem to suggest that when the coppers ask for your router, that you accidentally press the little ‘reset’ before you unplug it and dump the non-volatile memory.
P.S. To Tallbloke, as I mentioned above, you should be writing a diary and recording everything. You were just handed a book deal (get Willis to co-write unless he soon joins you in the ranks of the confiscated :-). You also were handed the keys to a new car (even an expensive electric one) with several potential libel cases. But you must lawyer up. And don’t forget that you can easily crowd-source anything you missed like screencaps for example. Stay safe, stay happy, but stay busy. You’ve got more work to do.
Tuci 78 says:
“No expressions of hatred for Mr. Laden and his co-religionists, please. Let’s all try to remain Sicilian and remember that “Revenge is a dish best served cold”
Hot or cold I have tasted it from the chalice of righteousness, smelt its enticing aroma as it nears its quest, silky smooth as it passed my lips, a full luscious texture of pure sweetness that invigorates your body and warms your soul.
But I digress, you are right, a good Sicilian will bide his time.
“Sometimes I’m hard on an entire state. Like Texas. Or, recently, West Virginia.”
Chuckles all around. What a completely self-unaware solipsist. Like the people in TX or WV give a rodent’s derriere what some random creepy dude thinks of them.
Payback is a beotch. With such OTT self-important loony-tunes parenting, the generation gap/teenage rebellion thing will probably have his kid collecting and driving rebuilt 25-yr old 5mpg SUVs, and Hawgs.
>:)
Myrrh says:
Under which law did they do this?
It’s not the Theft Act because the perp didn’t deprive them of their data he merely copied it. They are not accusing him of anything so it must have been an evidence gathering exercise with a presumption that he would destroy that evidence if they simply asked for it. If a police constable simply wants to get you off the streets he arrests you for Breach of the Peace, maximum penalty being bound over to keep the peace. Their new fall back for everything else is the Anti Terrorism Act, a hastily drafted piece of legislation, much abused and loathed by the liberal press. Unlike the US our law enforcers are obliged to be “reasonable”, but sometimes they seem to overlook that.
It’s a worrying use of police resources. I can only imagine that had the same “breach” happened to a large private company the authorities would have looked on it as a security issue to be addressed by the private company, i.e. the fault lay with the company’s IT infrastrucure.
One wonders if Lord Moncton could not add mann’s laden tweet to his case against them?
It’ll take a while to read this lot. I’ve been pretty busy running my blog and answering email with nothing more than a mobile-phone and palmtop ‘pooter (Nokia N810).
Big thanks for all your support, suggestions, advice, comment, and humour.
Keep it coming.
Cheers
Rog
This has opened a can of worms as we say in the UK.
Lord Monckton has every right to ask for proceeding to be taken against Jones & Briffa for their fraudulent actions on Climate, in cahoots with others in the USA. What is right is right and full power to him. Others I am sure will be taking the same line and I will be cheering them on. My MP is goping to be sick of hearing from me on this subject, I promise.
@ur momisugly William Old
Hi,
“Speaking as a retired senior police officer of some 30 years service…”
And so these are your credentials.No involvement in the actual case, though, same as everyone else here.
“there are indeed many puzzling facets of this incident but none of those involve the actual legalities of the operation or the SOPs (standard operating procedures) that were followed. ”
How do you know this?
Even on a cursory glance at the warrant itself and the provisions of section 8(1)(d) PACE and the case of R. Bates (On the application of) -v- Chief Constable of Avon & Somerset Police [2009] QB (paras 23-28), there might indeed appear to be something wrong with the “legalities”.
Anyway, from one armchair general to another, all the best 🙂
Everyone should remember that FOIA / RC’s first leak attempt was at RealClimate. Gavin Schmidt was the first person to know about the leak.
I’m sure there will be a raid at RealClimate/GISS/Fenton Communications next.
Ministers could be forced to hand over their private emails following a warning that all correspondence is subject to freedom of information laws.
be aware Phil Jones- if for them, you as well.
What is it with people called Laden always wanting to crash into towers ?
Good luck TB
How will the Norfolk police get all that kit on their bicycles?
Dear Greg Holmes,
I am a useless writer, send what you send and i will sent it to my MP.