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.
What I can’t understand is why the disks were handed over. I would have approached it differently. I would have got legal council and been cooperative in a different way. I would have said “tell me which files exactly you are looking for and I will give them to you”. When they go in to search someone’s home they must state on the warrant exactly what they are looking for. They can’t just have a warrant that says “we want to come in a look around and see if we might find something incriminating”. In other words, searches are not supposed to be “fishing” expeditions. They are supposed to know exactly what they are looking for.
I would tell them “fine, you can have copies of any file you want, which ones would you like?” and make them very clearly specify what they want and what they are looking for. It sounds to me like they just got a pass to go fishing and look to see if there might be something interesting in there.
They can’t show up and say “hey, we would like to make copies of all your personal paper files to peruse at our leisure to see if there might be something in there that interests us”. They have to specifically state what records they are after. Same should be true with files on a computer.
BTW, lest any one think this is a funny in the UK, it is not. Like the Justice Department in America, the police and national government officials have no compunction about destroying the lives of ordinary citizens. And there is no redress, attorney fees or even discipline. Free speech in the UK is sharply limited. Even a town council can destroy a family and career with impunity, much like the boards in Canada.
There is clearly an attempt in America to shut down thought that varies from the bureaucratic line, at least on a national level. I dare anyone to pose a question to the EPA about something they wish to0 do that involves a proscribed activity in the minds of these creeps.
Tallbloke: Call a solicitor NOW. I don’t care if the police are polite and promise to return your equipment. They might also politely slip in some “evidence” before cloning the drives, so you need legal protection before anything untoward happens. DO NOT TRUST persons in authority when they are snark hunting!
Larry Fields says:
December 14, 2011 at 8:34 pm
….The Land of Orwell has done some backsliding on the rights of the accused. I remember reading a year or three ago that some bloke or blokes charged with bank robbery were denied the centuries-old right to trial by jury! What’s next? The resurrection of the Star Chamber?…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>..
Actually it is more like disappearing into a black hole never to be seen again according to the bill just passed in the US Senate. The President has been given the right to declare a US citizen an enemy “Combatant” who can then be “detained” indefinitely without trial.
I am not sure whether the matching bill in the house has passed yet.
See my comment: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/14/ipcc-declares-itself-exempt-from-foia-laws/#comment-830959
crosspatch
They are supposed to know exactly what they are looking for.
——————-
It’s the UK – who knows what the laws are
Tucci78;
Is WordPress therefore compensated for the archiving being required of them under this law, >>>
Any organization the size of WordPress would (or should) have tools in place that would automate complying with this request. The amount of disk space and/or backup tape required would be miniscule, pennies more than likely. We’re talking server logs and such, they are tiny. If they don’t have the right tools in place…then it could be a major expense. Nor would they necessarily implement such tools merely to respond to requests by the DOJ. Standard evidenciary rules apply just as much to electronic evidence as anything else. If they were sued for example, and the judge ordered their electronic records be preserved, no extraordinary laws would be required to make it stick. The tools that all large IT shops should have in place to deal with something as simple as discovery processes in legal disputes work just as well for requests such as this one.
On the other hand, if they DON’T have those tools in place, then it would be a hassle. Their risk would not be so much in terms of the cost of preserving those files manually (which still wouldn’t be all that large) but in terms of accidently MISSING something that they SHOULD have preserved and accidently deleting it. THAT could be a VERY bad thing, and jail time for the executive a real possibility.
Brian Epps;
They might also politely slip in some “evidence” before cloning the drives, so you need legal protection before anything untoward happens. >>>
That is why I would have recommended taking my own complete copy of the hard drive before turning it over to them. That said, I kinda doubt they could make something like that stick. Once they walked out that door with his computers, he no longer had control of them, and anyone who had custody of them could have modified the contents of the drive at any time in any way. If they were actually after Tallbloke, and actually had anything serious to go on, and were actually competant, they would have ensured he had legal representation, and made copies of the hard drive under supervision of both legal council and a qualified neutral expert in computer forensics.
The fact that they didn’t do those things suggests to me they are either after corroborating evidence that has nothing to do with Tallbloke directly, or they just do not have a clue. Once out that door without first making a reference copy, they broke chain of custody.
This is all a big show. They’ve been ordered to investigate, and so they are running around showing everone how serious they are about this, and then they’ll throw up their hands and say it was nothing but dead ends.
You know, it may actually be Jones, Mann, et al. that need to be nervous right now, and not “our” guys. Perhaps someone in the gov’t thinks there might be evidence of Climate Shenanigans on those servers & computers.
Pamela Gray says:
December 14, 2011 at 7:28 pm
If I recall the movie correctly, the Romans (aka the Norfolk Constabulary) needed to execute (crucify) the protagonist forthwith. Numerous false confessions (led by Tony Curtis) required the execution (no pun intended) of many fruitless warrants and computer/hardware seizures. In the interests of avoiding a similar unfortunate situation, I unreservedly withdraw my false confession, and urge others to ignore Tony Curtis (or diminutive Celts?).
Remember the recent posts on WUWT on the theme ‘Let’s see if we can work out who FOIA is’? Fun, wasn’t it?
A few contributors, me included, tried to get the ‘Colonel Nicholsons’ to shut up, but the IT ‘experts’ just carried on playing with themselves in public.
Some people on the thread opined that the authorities were no longer interested in exposing FOIA and wouldn’t risk creating a martyr etc. etc.
Fortunately, most of the IT ‘experts’ were just windbags, but even so, why do it?
I wrote at the time: ‘The police seem to have dropped the investigation into C1? Well then, let sleeping dogs lie.’
Well, the dogs are clearly not sleeping. Well done, guys!
“They say I am not a suspect for any crime.”
But they do suspect a crime somewhere, and they do want to look for evidence on your computers to find out whether you’re involved in that crime.
Something similar once happened to me. My work was raided after my employer’s stock price had crashed 50%. This was in the aftermath of the dot com thing. There were a few employees who thought that the prices in the weeks before were a good deal and sold, including me since I had bought a home, and within minutes of that commitment I did of course secure the money for it. So the suspicion was that the management had leaked information to employees. While I officially was regarded as a “witness” and interrogated, in reality I was of course suspected for insider trading.
(They cloned the hard drives and returned the computers the day after, but my computer had apparently been dropped and badly damaged. The hard drive was broken. The police sent it to a company who have experts in recovering lost data (whether this was an honest attempt to repair what they had broken or just because they badly wanted the contents of the drive, I don’t know). But even that company could not extract anything. I lost a couple of weeks of work.)
tallbloke says:
December 14, 2011 at 5:05 pm
“They were polite and promised to return the kit after cloning the disks.
They say I am not a suspect for any crime.”
Roger,
That makes me wonder how they came by a search warrant that has to be issued by a Judge/Magistrate and the reason the police gave to them for the issue. Its been a while since I left the UK so maybe they have amended the law under the “terrorism threat”. Roger, you better have a word with Gary McKinnon’s legal council as the the U.S. Department of Justice seems to have had a hand in all this!
The Other Pamela Gray said:
December 14, 2011 at 9:19 pm
crosspatch
They are supposed to know exactly what they are looking for.
——————-
It’s the UK – who knows what the laws are
=================================
Yeah – I think they’re under Sharia law now.
Inspector Knacker of the Yard “Tell us what you know or we will find kiddie porn on your hard drives”
RichardSmith;
I wrote at the time: ‘The police seem to have dropped the investigation into C1? Well then, let sleeping dogs lie.’
Well, the dogs are clearly not sleeping. Well done, guys!>>>
That thread was dated Dec 6th. The legal order from DOJ to WordPress was dated Dec 9th. If you think that a thread on WUWT sparked an international investigation that coordinated multiple police forces in the UK and legal orders by the DOJ in the United States in just three days….Actually, based on the time of the thread and other factors…more like two days or less…
Well, you’re free to believe whatever you wish.
Use the free Trucrypt program to encrypt your harddrive or to create an encrypted volume on your drive.
http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/your_rights/legal_system/police_powers.htm#Powersofentry
Tallbloke,
Anything we can do to help?
MtK
If the hacker had a sense of humor he would post links to the files on Joe romms site
I wonder of the cops would seize those computers.
It would be interesting to have the hard discs checked to see what documents were accessed, but I guess that they won’t do anything other than clone the disc, then work on Tallblokes private information on their copy.
In that regard I would think there is a great risk of privacy abuse as you will never know what has been accessed, or copies made or distributed. In those circumstances the police who seized the hard discs, should be restrained with an application to the supreme (higher) court.
That they show cause for the search, specify the purpose of the search, and in the interests of the individuals privacy specifically record any access or document or copy, and be be limited to the specified matter under investigation. Undertakings be given to the court to preserve the individuals privacy and rights and document the process.
Blanket seizure and open ended perusal is not a light matter in law. I am sure that any high profile legal person in the UK would be capable of getting an injunction to prevent such open ended examination and it should be easy to impose court ordered supervision of the process.
My guess is that some one is frightened at what might be revealed if the password is cracked or released before they have their actual suspect in some bargaining position to prevent that happening.
Tallbloke and his privacy, becomes a pawn in that larger game. British law usually depends on the co-operation of the general public with the police and naively surrendering personal rights to that higher purpose.
Perhaps this is the time to put that to the test and impose the supervision of a court in their evidence discovery process.
Given the vast eclectic intelligence of the WUWT readership I have no hesitation in saying….
Oscar Wilde.
A proto-celebrity if ever there was one. The ‘flamboyant’ Mr Wilde sued someone who had made unpleasant allegations about him.
He didn’t win…no…in fact the revelations about his life that ‘came to light’ during the trial was sufficient for the poor fellow to be ‘banged up’ in Reading Gaol. (See poem very good).
I always think that anyone who initiates legal proceedings should be very very careful, courts are great places for revelations and uncoverings.
I for one would love to see poor Mr Tallbloke in court. (Of course another part of me really feels for him, being harrassed by the police is never nice…even when you know you are absolutely innocent.)
No, I would love to see him in court because with some top legal aid (pro-bono), and a fighting fund behind him he could really shine the spotlight on the nefarious activities of Jones, Mann, etc…a Trial…what a great way to let the world see the antics of the ‘climategang’!
RichardSmith says:
December 14, 2011 at 10:00 pm
I agree completely. STFU, people. This is serious. Always was, but now it is pretty clear.
“they’ll clone his hard drives and return the computers to him.” They will but don’t hold your breath, it’ll take forever. Also it’s an invasion of privacy.
As to the theory that they are wondering what’s on the FOIA encrypted emails?
You have to be kidding!
They KNOW what’s in the encrypted files.
“steven mosher (Comment #86227) November 26th, 2011 at 3:53 am
Bugs.
There is a reason why the case is open.
There is a reason why the file is in the open password protected
No deal has been done. Yet.
He may want to come in from the cold.
He has contacted the other side.
he’s not a hacker.”
Above, you referred to the revealer of the emails thusly;
“If the hacker had a sense of humor he would post links to the files on Joe romms site”
Hacker, or not hacker? What do you know, and when did you know it? 🙂