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.
Jeez, poor TallBloke. This is sick!
But not unprecedented for our wonderful boys in blue. A couple of years back they raided the offices of a British Member of Parliament, suspecting him of being in receipt of leaks from a whistleblowing bureaucrat. They had no search warrant. The police have no jurisdiction within Parliament. The whole raid was filmed by aides. When other MPs asked what the **** the police were doing they were told to go away. Eventually the hapless Speaker of the House of Commons had to apologise to all MPs for letting the police into the building.
Which made no difference. The MP was arrested (although he’s now a senior government spokesman). The whistleblower was found, arrested and charged. As I recall no action was taken against the police.
All this in Parliament, involving MPs, and on the telly.
What chance for a mere individual blogger in this increasingly scary country, once the citadel of democracy and individual rights?
You need to have a read of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Powers_Act_2000
Your computer can be seized and you are required to reveal any and all encryption keys as required. Failure to reveal is a separate offence.
The above act is also used by local councils to obtain information about people living in a house, the amount of rubbish they throw away, and anything else that fits….and there is loads of fitting.
AND they do not have to say why they are doing anything, and they can require you to not inform others (including the press)
My apologies for asking, but I haven’t been following things very closely. Can someone enlighten me?
As I gleaned in passing, there is a further cache waiting to be released, but it is encrypted and the passcode has not been released. Does that mean the encrypted files are already widely distributed and all that is required for them to see the light of day is someone publishing the passcode?
Hope you don’t mind Tallbloke I’ve forwarded your story to El Reg as they are the guys that know about all thinks IT, including the law.
Tallbloke’s main allies are the IPCC now. He sent a complaint to the IPCC to investigate the police. Well, it’s this IPCC:
http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/en/Pages/how_complaint.aspx
Carefully note what the IPCC stands for. Pretty cute, right? 😉
Was Tallbloke arrested? or can the police just turn up and copy your hard disk these days ?
UK law is imposed from the EU. Is this Sarkozy’s revenge?
For:
The answer is yes.
If you downloaded the FOIA 2011/Climategate 2 files, the encrypted ones are in it.
Steve from Rockwood says:
December 14, 2011 at 6:13 pm
Steve, please……. it was George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Blair) who published “1984”
@tallbloke and others,
It is an urgent matter to assemble relevant expert advice on legal and digital issues….. there may be organizations which might lend free expertise if they see this as germane to their work, such as possibly the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):
https://www.eff.org/bloggers
I don’t know much about them except that I understand they are very ‘purist’ digital libertarians fighting against govt intrusions upon the internet, and they have this specific focus upon defending and enhancing “blogger rights” —- so they may well lend at least some expertise and advice.
May the call go out to FOIA,wherever you are, to monitor this matter closely and strike like Robin Hood as needed!
Timely releases of more emails may be just the thing to embarrass powers-that-be.
I have no idea whether this raid represents a credible investigation or merely some fishing expedition, but I am astonished that UK law can allow police to just sweep up some hard drives merely because they are interested in seeing all the data they can find. Was there a detailed search warrant???
If Tallbloke is not any designated ‘suspect’ it seems amazing (too innocent minded me anyway) that authorities can simply seize his computers.
I don’t know much about any aspects of any of this but I hope that folks reading this thread are thinking hard about any possible contact(s), legal, digital, political, and otherwise, who might have useful advice and information.
@davidmhoffer
Where did I suggest that the recent posts on WUWT ‘sparked an international investigation’?
My point was that the efforts to track down FOIA are ongoing and speculating about the identity of FOIA are out of place.
You also seem to think the short time interval between the latest post of this type and the police action in the UK rules out WUWT as the trigger for this action.
On that you’re probably right, but irrelevant, since I never said it was the trigger.
However, I seem to remember a ‘Guest Post by David M. Hoffer’ on November 30, 2011 in WUWT entitled ‘The Climategate email network infrastructure’. Was that you suggesting that ‘we can then discuss everything from the simple questions regarding who could delete what (and when), how the emails might have been obtained’?
Some interesting contributions in the comments on that article too, for example Johnnythelowery: ‘And as he posted on TallBlokes under FOIA….wouldn’t Tall Bloke have some basic information to identify something about this……….hero??’
Great minds think alike, it seems.
Might be time to emai/upload foia.zip everywhere possible.
Email may propagate it better. The file has to go through Mail Servers and be back’dup by sys admins.
It is a little big though, so may cause some data issues for some.
This ought to be terrifying, but TBH in the UK these days it will cause scarcely a ripple – I haven’t, for instance, heard a word about it on the “objective and impartial (ho ho) BBC”, who you would think must be rubbing their hands with glee. TB, I echo every word above about never again using or trusting that kit (if you get it back) and about making darn sure you have a fully briefed solicitor onside – police protestations that they don’t suspect you are just words. I’m not rich, but will cheerfully contribute what I can to a TB restoration fund – assuming that it remains possible to, think Wikileaks.
sky says (December 14, 2011 at 7:20 pm):
It really shouldn’t surprise you. The UK has been a cheap suit police state for years now, and the suits are getting smarter by the week. FFS, a few years ago the Chinese sent a team over to London to learn how best to run CCTV systems for public surveillance; how big a red flag (no pun intended) do you need? There are literally millions of cameras continually recording the innocent activities of innocent people in this country, quite apart from the Automatic Number Plate Recognition system which does the same job for innocent vehicular journeys and God knows how many other systems. Oh, and I wonder how many people register the occasional mentions of how they’re working hard at improving their facial recognition software – not everything you hear on the BBC is a lie. “Innocent until proven guilty” means precisely nothing in the face of an authoritarian government dedicated to removing every check on its actions against the public, and the evidence suggests that we have that on both sides of the pond.
If nothing else the fact that this happened under a “Conservative” government ought to give pause to those who still try to paint the encroaching totalitarianism with a “leftist” tag. As I’ve pointed out before, what we’re all seeing is taking place on the authoritarian/libertarian axis, it’s nothing to do with left/right.
And “FOIA”, man, if you’re reading this, I hope that this act ratchets you a step or two closer to releasing that encryption key. Be very careful how you do it when you do.
Remember. There are four lights. Don’t let them talk you into seeing five.
Bart says:
December 14, 2011 at 11:54 pm
“As I gleaned in passing, there is a further cache waiting to be released, but it is encrypted and the passcode has not been released. Does that mean the encrypted files are already widely distributed and all that is required for them to see the light of day is someone publishing the passcode?”
Everyone who downloaded the full ZIP (60MB or so) has a copy of the encrypted, yet to be decoded stuff. A million copies of Pandora’s Box. All it takes is one word… 🙂
Just to drop here a line of support to Roger.
Don’t forget: The Inquisition is back!
Ecotretas
“But cell phone? No, not an obvious meaning for the word “mobile” in all parts of the “English”-speaking world. ;-)”
I’m in the US and knew what he meant right away. Of course I’m old enough and still have enough wits left about me to remember that mobile phones were what the first, well, mobile phones were called.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone
A mobile phone (also known as a cellular phone, cell phone and a hand phone) is a device that can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator, allowing access to the public telephone network. By contrast, a cordless telephone is used only within the short range of a single, private base station.
In addition to telephony, modern mobile phones also support a wide variety of other services such as text messaging, MMS, email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications (infrared, Bluetooth), business applications, gaming and photography. Mobile phones that offer these and more general computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones.
The first hand-held mobile phone was demonstrated by Dr Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973, using a handset weighing around 1 kg.[1] In 1983, the DynaTAC 8000x was the first to be commercially available. In the twenty years from 1990 to 2010, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew from 12.4 million to over 4.6 billion, penetrating the developing economies and reaching the bottom of the economic pyramid.[2][3][4][5]
Hello, you have reached the IPCC. All of our agents are currently busy assisting others, please hold the line and your call will be ignored in the order in which it was received … (click) (buzz).
Under the freedom of information law, most of these emails should have been made public anyway. Under the human rights legislation, the police are breaking the law if they attempt to deny the free movement of information, particularly for journalistic purposes (and leaking to the press clearly comes under this category).
Only where there is a specific offence can the police action contrary to our human rights be legal. There was no theft of information: it was already public under the FOI law, but the only offence was the denial of the public of OUR information. In otherwords, if anything the law is on the side of disclosure and not prevention of disclosure.
Which all goes to prove this has nothing to do with enforcing law let alone justice. This is really the action of a police state enforcing the will of the elite irrespective of the law.
Tallbloke should sumit a FOI request on Norfolk Police to find out what promted them to raid his computer.
I’m Spartacus too. Tallbloke, if you need help drop me a line. This nonsense should soon blow over, but if it doesn’t, you aren’t alone.
Tallbloke has my deepest sympathy for this outrage and the inevitable worry and distress it causes him. And I have no idea of any kind as to why the police have violated his privacy as they have.
I write to correct some misunderstandings repeatedly presented in above comments.
Firstly, the UK is a Constitutional Monarchy. We members of the UK are subjects of Her Majesty, and we are under the protection of the Crown. But several above posts from Americans seem to think we have “rights” as defined by a piece of paper which American’s value. We don’t have such “rights”, and most of us don’t want them because most of us prefer the protection of the Crown.
So, all the above comments pertaining to “rights” are not relevant because they do not apply to a UK subject (i.e. Tallbloke) in the UK. A UK subject has the protection of the Rule of Law which formalises how the Crown protects subjects.
Secondly, national security has always taken preference over all “freedoms of an individual” in the UK. This was formalised in the Security Act adopted in the 1960s. Recent anti-terrorist laws have merely clarified the matter.
So, the Rule of Law does not apply when agents of the Crown (e.g. the police) are acting in defence of national security. But an affected subject (e.g. Tallbloke) has a right to appeal to the monarch (i.e. at present HRH Elizabeth 2) who wears the Crown.
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.
Richard
In my experience, the UK is a police state. I lived next door to one for 14 years. He was into everything he could lay his hands and used his mates to try tp prosecute me for some ridulous offence while his senior officers protected his back. Quote from his most senior officer ” I have to get an officer in from another force because I can’t trust my own”.
The skeptic, democratic community here are on red alert, watch dogs for Tallbloke’s civil rights, in the FOI case of the whistleblower who released tax payer funded climate *science* communiques into the public domain.