While many websites are deriding me for my mentions in the Fakegate emails distributed by Dr. Peter Gleick, and many now (including Dr. Gavin Schmidt) are coming down on Dr. Gleick for his lack of ethics, I thought it might be useful to remind the climate community at large that I too was recently in receipt of private documents through a security lapse presented in the Climategate 2 emails.
I (and many other WUWT readers who notified me about it) had full and open access in Dr. Phil Jones Journal of Physical Research (JGR) author account, which showed all of his papers (including some not published yet) plus comments from reviewers.
What did I do with the access? Read below to find out.
To demonstrate what I did, I’m reposting an excerpt from this WUWT essay: Who gets the most access to network data (like emails at CRU)? published Dec 6th, 2011 on WUWT.
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The sharing of system access in emails was broadly demonstrated in Climategate 2.0. For example, Dr. Phil Jones and others at CRU sent some emails out years ago that linked to papers under review at the Journal of Geophysical Research. Some WUWT readers found these early on, and sure enough, such links from years ago in the CG2 emails still worked.
A few days ago I made the issue known to Dr. Phil Jones and to the JGR journal staff so they could close this security hole. As far as I know, all have been closed. I’ve tested again tonight and the live link fails now. Now that they have been closed, I can talk about it safely without putting JGR’s manuscript system at risk.
From: Anthony
Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2011 5:10 PM
To: p.jones@uea.xxxx.xxx
Cc: grlonline@xxxx.xxx ; jgr-atmospheres@xxxxx.xxx
Subject: password enabled JGR links in Climategate 2 files
Dear Dr. Jones,
I know that you know me, and probably do not like me for my views and publications. Regardless of what you may think of me and my work, it has been brought to my attention by a reader of my blog that there are open access links to your manuscripts at JGR included in the email that are now in the public view.
Therefore, it is my duty to inform you that in the recent release of Climategate 2 files there are links to JGR journal review pages for your publications and also for the publications for Dr. Keith Briffa.
For example, this link:
http://jgr-atmospheres-submit.agu.org/cgi-bin/main.plex?el=
I have verified that in fact that link opens your JGR account and provides full access to your JGR account.
In fact there are 35 different emails in this release that contain live links to JGR/AGU author pages. Similar other links exist, such as for Dr. Keith Briffa and others at CRU.
This of course is an unintended and unacceptable consequence of the email release.
I am cc:ing Joost de Gouw Editor, JGR Atmospheres in hopes that he can take action to close this open access to these accounts. It is a holiday here in the USA (Thanksgiving) and there may not be office hours on Friday but hopefully he is monitoring emails.
JGR should immediately change all passwords access for these CRU members and I would advise against allowing transmission of live links such as the one above in the future. JGR might also consider a more secure method of manuscript sharing for review.
The open nature of these links is not publicly “on the radar” even though they are in fact public as a part of the email cache, and I do not plan on divulging them for any reason. Any mention of these links will be deleted from any public comments on my blog should any appear.
Dr. de Gouw (or anyone at JGR) and Dr. Jones, please acknowledge receipt of this email.
Thank you for your consideration.
Best regards,
Anthony Watts
So clearly, CRU and others in the emails didn’t think twice about sending around open access live links. As David M. Hoffer points out in his article, the researchers don’t seem to have a clue about security. They also leave “sensitive” files they don’t want to share under FOIA requests lying about on open FTP servers. Based on what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think any of the research staff at CRU had either broad access nor the specific tech knowledge to pull this “hack” off.
Somebody who had the ability to peek at these emails as part of their job might just as easily have had access to the RealClimate Server too. Remember there’s almost a quarter million emails we haven’t seen. Chances are, one of those contained the key to the RC server, which allowed them to become an RC administrator and post the original FOIA story which Gavin Schmidt caught and squelched.
I and others I correspond with have our theories about who the leaker might be. From my perspective now, someone with broad system access looks to be a more likely candidate than a malicious outsider.
UPDATE: Many people in comments think I’m doing something wrong by writing to Phil Jones and AGU/JGR. In Phil Jones reply to me, he wrote: A couple of other people sent me emails about this issue.
So clearly I wasn’t the first to notify him of the open links to AGU. But more importantly, my email was also sent to AGU editors and the editor of JGR Atmospheres. Despite what troubles Jones and his group have caused over the year with skeptics, AGU/JGR has been a reasonable journal that has published skeptical papers, including my own. Protecting that relationship with skeptics who publish is valuable and the last thing we need is a scandal where papers submitted to AGU/JGR are showing up on other skeptic websites before they are reviewed because Jones sent active links around in emails. Having the knowledge of the security holes was a damned if I do damned if I don’t proposition, but I opted on the side of doing what I felt was the right course of action. If that upsets a few people, so be it. – Anthony
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I’ll note that Phil Jones recently had his CRUTEMP4 paper published…
Jones, P. D., D. H. Lister, T. J. Osborn, C. Harpham, M. Salmon, and C. P. Morice
Hemispheric and large-scale land surface air temperature variations: An extensive revision and an update to 2010
J. Geophys. Res., doi:10.1029/2011JD017139, in press.
…and no skeptic I know of, including me, has yet “outed” the early drafts and author notes contained in Phil Jones JGR account. It would have been easy to do so, to publish Dr. Jones first submitted draft for the broadest peer review possible on the Internet. But no skeptic (that I know of as of this writing) did.
That’s a distinction of difference compared to the actions of people who created Fakegate via potentially criminal actions.
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It is a bit of a sad day when one is prompted to offer congratulations to someone for doing the right thing. Shouldn’t that be so routine it doesn’t deserve remark? Answering my own question, yes it should, but it isn’t.
I do appreciation the temptation to sit on this information, and I’m happy you did the right thing.
Let’s hope it becomes a model.
Forrest M. Mims III – quoting Gleick: “Data cannot be chosen selectively to prove a point.”
But as we know, it is perfectly acceptable to Pro-pundits of Global Warming to: leave out data to prove a point(1), bias data to prove a point(2), massage data to prove a point(3), and create data to prove a point(4).
(1)(3) http://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2 (unentered data) (bias)
(2) http://www.surfacestations.org (UHI & quality)
(4) http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/28/giss-polar-interpolation http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/30/nasa-data-worse-than-climategate-data (interpolation & estimation)
Gavin Schmidt, I’m sure you read WUWT.
Wouldn’t now be a good time to ‘come out’ and voice the reservations you must have about Carbon Monomania and the unfortunate groupthink you’ve got stuck in?
A few paragraphs about the growing case for solar activity dwarfing CO2 as a climate driver, telling us that your integrity obliges you to distance yourself from the IPCC and its silly Global Warming scare tactics. We’ll understand, we’ll make you welcome. Tell us about your former loyalty to members of the Hockey Team (a virtue, yes?) blinding you to a lost cause (hey, we’ve all done it, and made ourselves look a chump).
Come on, Gavin, you can do it. When you write, “Whan the facts change I change my opinion, sir. What do you do?” we’ll applaud you, we’ll offer support, and shower you with respect for having had the courage to break away from the bad guys who (for a while) turned you away from the path of scientific truth.
Good show.
Congratulations Anthony and others who knew the inadvertedly “open access” of private inflormation. Some fighters for “the cause” could learn a lot from the standards the other side maintains…
Anthony well done. I think that was entirely appropriate.
However, I suspect by the time it reached the paranoid crowd in CRU, it was probably seen as “you laughing at them after doing the damage and/or not being able to do anything more so then you sent it to them”.
It feels good to do the right thing even if the person you helped has shown ethical problems of his own.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
You are a Good Man, Mr. Watts.
What do you do when you are a climate skeptic (or anyone) and have access to sensitive private documents? The answer is … you behave responsibly. Well done.
That is like the old joke about a man who holds a door open for a women in the 1990’s when some were getting very aggressive about being treated equally. In the joke the woman chastises the man for holding the door open for her because she is a woman, and his response was, “nothing of the kind, I held the door open for you because I am a gentleman!”
It does not matter, if Phil thanked him, he did it because it was the right thing to do. Principles do not depend on a quid pro quo, you adhere to them because you believe that they are the proper and civilized thing to do, not in the hope that by doing them you can manipulate another into changing their behavior.
Goes back to the old fashioned golden rule. In most cases, the right thing to do is what you would like others to do if the circumstances were reversed.
Larry
I imagine that it must have hurt for Jones to even acknowledge your email.
What I hope is that in the future that the CAGW crowd are held accountable for their fraud and their crimes against science and humanity, but especially the US taxpayer. I hope beyond all reason that they are made to pay in substantial ways.
But so far, they are laughing all the way to the bank, with govt. jobs, govt. pensions and US govt. funded NGO financial awards and stipends.
Cloward, Piven & Alinski are laughing now.
Anthony,
You’re a gentleman and a scholar, and your kindness is only superceded by your good looks.
Honour is a gift a man gives to himself. Well done brother.
Anyone who knows Anthony or knows of him shouldn’t be surprised at all by this.
I hope all those commentors who’ve been attacking Anthony in the past about his work (UHI etc) reflect on their unseemly actions and realise that their actions speak clearly and loudly about them.
Food for thought
I’m a sceptic, as such I have on my side the likes of Watts, Nova, McIntyre, Chiefio, Tallbloke and the Bishop. (apologies to a long list of others)
Imagine if I was a believer in the evils of CO2. Then I’d have the likes of Gleick, Mann, Connelly and Clive Hamilton on my side. (Apologies to many many others)
Proud to be a sceptic
Well we all know that prediction, can be particularly hazardous.
Case in Point: I would never have predicted the soup strainer Anthony; big surprise. But one out of two isn’t bad, and I did predict that you would take the high road, in the case of your inadvertent aquisition.
When I was in high school, a favorite Maths teacher dubbed me “Smith the incorruptible”. I am pleased to find I travel with others like you Anthony; jolly good show.
George
How anyone could expect ethical behavior from Gleick amazes me. Look at his photograph. He’s a pencil necked gleick.
[+emphasis]
Does not allow you even to THINK ABOUT looking at prohibited files? How would thinking about it even be known?
I think your statement, as written, is a bit over the top. If you are quoting the law, even worse for freedom of thought.
It was a similar lapse in even kiddie level security that converted me from a believer in AGW to a total cynic. I was actually sent a full critique on the “ambiguities” in interpretation and how under no circumstances certain information should be released as the public would draw their own conclusions. What was sickening was that all that information was acquired using public funding.
I really do wonder whether Climategate was actually hacked data or just another example of the lack of technological awareness and security considerations common to senior staff in many occupations and not just climate science.
honor is the gift a man gives himself.
Well said Baa Humbug . We all on WUWT are proud to be associated with Anthony because he is a man of honour.
I’m a regular reader of this site and an infrequent commenter. However, I’m compelled to post something applauding Anthony and his honourable attitude.
You are absolutely correct.
Can you please send an email to your regular readers when you decide to move on from this Gleick obsession and start reporting a slightly wider range of climatology issues again.
I love your site, but this is frankly becoming like a tabloid pack on the run this week.
I’m not telling you to stop what you’re doing.
I’m just saying that I’m already bored stiff reading about it.
Rhys,
The mainstream media is not saying a word about this. If Anthony and a few other skeptic sites don’t publicize it, who will know? The alarmist crowd would like nothing better than to have this whole affair swept under the rug.
Anthony posts just as many articles as he always has. If you’re not interested in Gleick’s lawbreaking, just scroll down to the latest articles. Then everyone is happy. Win-win!