The Blackboard

“*I’m* Sparticus!”

Wouldn’t Eil be “rabbitting away”?

Dougrrel, surely Eli would rabett away. No matter what the spelling, the theories are often harebrained.

CRU ‘Hacker’?

Did some conclusive evidence of this come in?

Andrew

Conclusive evidence this Jimi Bostock guy posted something that sounds like a hint of an admission? Yes. Click the link to his blog post. Read the ramblings– about 1/2 down you’ll get to some text.

Conclusive evidence the hints are based on something other than delusions? None. The post seems to be dated Dec. 2009. I guess someone with web-foo could figure out whether the web-recording services that be agree the post was first posted in dec. 2009.

Chris
The profile says female, but shows this image which also appears at the blog:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hkeJ.....i08_sm.jpg

Hmmm… a bigcitylib tip. This must be real! HAHA!

Andrew

Andrew_KY–FrankBi must be actively scouring blogs to discover the busy, motivated, hard-working “inactivists” who must have worked day and night for months to advance their cause.

The “hacker” had access to the Real Climate administrative password. Not something one would presume was left out in the open.

just a guy with too much imagination, methinks.
.
—————-
.
as i pointed out multiple times, the guy who did this was a hacker. he “hacked” data that he was not supposed to have, and he tried to hack RC.
.
he is not a whistleblower. you need a crime, to be a whistleblower. you can t “whistleblow” my saturday shopping list.
.
he might be (or have been) a CRU insider of some sort. that has basically no influence on the hacking incident.

Has anyone even established that it was a hack rather an a leak?

The evidence presented in the cited blog post was pretty thin: A guy with a blog who is openly opposed to the political agenda behind AGW orthodoxy who reads and communicates with like-minded bloggers appears to have knowledge of the FOIA zip file about the time it was known to be first out. Oh, and he used the word “campaign” to refer to all of the anti-AGW opinion that exists in the blogosphere (on account of it is not permitted in the MSM or academia).

So it all clearly points to a large EXXON payoff. Clearly.

hswiseman, they wouldn’t necessarily need access to the password. There is a well known exploit/security hole in wordpress that matches the description of what happened at RealClimate and the evidence is that RealClimate upgraded their server software after the break in.

It’s also possible that since the person had access to the full emails, that somebody at RealClimate simply emailed a user name and password via open email. Of course, that would have compromised the server too.

sod:

he is not a whistleblower. you need a crime, to be a whistleblower.

Actually, you don’t need a crime, just a belief that wrongdoing is occurring. If you’re going to lecture on the meaning of words, my suggestion is know what they mean first.

In any case there was a finding of fact by the British Information Commissioner’s office that a crime had occurred, but that the statute of limitations had already expired.

Even by your own definition you are provably wrong.

Re: Carrick (Feb 17 12:15),
“In any case there was a finding of fact by the British Information Commissioner’s office that a crime had occurred,”
Your link doesn’t say that at all. It says that (in Bishop Hill’s view) withholding information would be an offence, but couldn’t be prosecuted because of the lapse of time. There is no finding that any offence did occur.

NO

(in my opinion).

The only things in his story are
(a) Vague
or (b) Well-known public information, that was widely available long before his blog post.

AND when you look at the details in his post – turns out some of them are wrong!

See February 12th post at http://ijish.livejournal.com/

yup, Jim Bostock is part of the secret international cabal of climate spies

that’s why he has one follower in google, cuz it’s super secret

@NIck:

Try for example
http://www.timeshighereducatio.....ode=410209 (reference to ICO statement)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8484385.stm (statement by deputy ICO, Graham Smith)

http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/.....cstatement (acknowledgement by UEA that ICO made a statement alleging UEA acted illegally in breach of section 77 of the FOA legislation)

Re: AWatcher (Feb 17 12:46),
Again, no “finding of fact … that a crime had occurred,”. There’s a statement that ‘requests under the Freedom of Information Act were “not dealt with as they should have been”‘. This is based on an interpretation of emails found on the Web; evidently UEA had no chance to put their view. It seems to me quite improper of the ICO to make comments in this way. But anyway, there’s no finding of fact about a crime.

This individual has requested to be in contact with me a while back. Since he didnt come with a referral I have not responded to him.

Oh Did you guys see me on PJTV?

Steve– Send me the link to PJTV!

Nick the story of the violation was already covered.

here, your favorite writer, me

http://biggovernment.com/smosh.....rted-foia/

Nick Stokes (Comment#33813),

Your take on PJ and FOI seems to me obtuse, but at least it’s consistent form one thread to the next. One of the many reasons the email messages are embarrassing to PJ is because they clearly show he acted to obstruct FOI requests. Crime or not, most people see his actions as improper, and that is one of the reasons he has “stepped down”. Had he done nothing wrong, do you really thing this would have happened? Come on!

Re: steven mosher (Feb 17 12:59)
OK, so the alleged “finding of fact” by the ICO takes the form of an email to a journalist beating up a story. Doubly improper. But there’s still no finding of fact that a crime occurred.

I think Nick Stokes is using the Argument By Legalism that most Leftist/Totalitarians/Progressives use. Most people though, probably Nick himself, do not make judgements in their lives based strictly on someone else’s strict intepretation of the letter of some law.

People want to be treated justly and want to treat others justly. They don’t need Nick Stokes to instruct them on what is a crime and what isn’t, when the above idea of fairness/justice is violated.

Andrew

Re: Andrew_KY (Feb 17 13:14),
probably Nick himself
Indeed. It probably wasn’t a crime for the ICO to announce in an email to a journalist that, based on its interpretation of hacked emails selectively placed on the web, that UEA had “not dealt with [FOI's] as they should have been”, and without any opportunity for response from UEA. But it’s a gross breach of fairness.

Nick Stokes,

You you agree with me then also, that climate scientists avoiding their FOI requests is a violation of a common sense of justice/fairness that a lot of us share.

Andrew

Re: Andrew_KY (Feb 17 13:33),
That’s a one-sided view. There were other issues like obligations that PJ may have had to his sources. But I do think that unsubstantiated allegations of “findings of crime” are unfair, and as such should be repudiated.

@Nick:

> Again, no “finding of fact … that a crime had occurred,”.

> But there’s still no finding of fact that a crime occurred.

What kind of finding would you accept? Presumably only a conviction in court?

In that case, there will never be a finding of fact, because the ICO has also said they will not be bring a case since the statute of limitations has passed.

That said, the fact that the ICO office made the statement (I’m not sure it was by email, ICO people have appeared quite often on Radio 4, so some sort of interviews seems possible by maybe) is certainly more than one blogger’s opinion.

And whether or not there’s a finding of fact by a court — and innocent until proven guilty and all that — the ICO office certainly said there’s certainly a case to answer (or rather would have been if the facts had come to light earlier)

@Nick: No finding of fact?

I assume you only would only accept a court conviction? Well there won’t be one, because the ICO has said it’s already too late for them to bring to court.

But the point is
(a) it’s more than a blogger’s opinion
(b) The ICO says there is a case to answer (or would have been if the facts had come to light earlier).

@Nick: No finding of fact?

I assume you only would only accept a court conviction? Well there won’t be one, because the ICO has said it’s already too late for them to bring to court.

But the point is
(a) it’s more than a blogger’s opinion (which is what you claimed earlier)
(b) Yes innocent until proven guilty and all that – but the ICO says there is a case to answer (or would have been if the facts had come to light earlier).

“There were other issues like obligations that PJ may have had to his sources.”

Nick, “may have had”? You mean you don’t know all the facts?

Andrew

Re: AWatcher (Feb 17 14:24),
“the ICO says there is a case to answer”
Where does the ICO say that? And who has a case to answer?

You won’t get a finding of fact until someone first blows the whistle.

Re: Andrew_KY (Feb 17 14:27),
“You mean you don’t know all the facts?”
No. And neither do you.

Re: Nick Stokes (Feb 17 13:49),

“There were other issues like obligations that PJ may have had to his sources.”

It appears he felt little obligation to keep track of his obligations, and, given what he later claims his obligations may have been, he appears to have not kept these when he blithely handed data over to Peter Webster.

It would be a lot easier to regard this claim of obligation to others with sympathy if there was any evidence it existed, PJ didn’t ignore the claimed limitations when he wished to ignore them, and only felt bound by them when their presumed existence and possible unwritten strictures conveniently prevented him from doing precisely that which he did not wish to do.

Re: lucia (Feb 17 14:32)
That’s been thoroughly gone over already – I don’t agree, and said so in explaining why it can’t be inferred that I agree with Andrew_KY. The issue here is whether it is fair to say that the ICO made a finding of fact that PJ had committed a crime.

(sorry for the triple post above – having trouble with the spam filter)

> Where does the ICO say that? And who has a case to answer?

UEA

From the BBC article:

In a statement, Deputy Information Commissioner Graham Smith said it was an offence under section 77 of the Freedom of Information act “to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information”.

He said the requests were made by a climate change sceptic in the 2007-2008 period and as the case was more than six months old “the opportunity to consider a prosecution was long gone” under existing legislation.

‘Legal obligations’

Mr Smith said the ICO was “gathering evidence from this and other time-barred cases to support the case for a change in the law”.

…

In a statement, Professor Edward Acton, vice-chancellor of UEA commented: “We have not received any further information from the ICO although we are urgently trying to contact them.

“The ICO’s opinion that we had breached the terms of Section 77 is a source of grave concern to the university as we would always seek to comply with the terms of the Act.

Re: AWatcher (Feb 17 14:49)
I can’t see anything there that actually makes any finding of fact. Obviously something’s bothering the ICO, and that’s why they talk about the time limit. But that’s not a finding. And PJ isn’t mentioned.

Prof Acton is rightly perturbed to find the ICO saying these things to journalists. I wouldn’t have described what the ICO said as even rising to the level of an opinion about a breach. But if it is, and if it is based, as they say, on just reading hacked emails, then it is very poorly supported.

Nick Stokes:

Prof Acton is rightly perturbed to find the ICO saying these things to journalists. I wouldn’t have described what the ICO said as even rising to the level of an opinion about a breach. But if it is, and if it is based, as they say, on just reading hacked emails, then it is very poorly supported.

They owe Acton absolute nothing on this, unless he is their boss or they have a legal obligation towards him. UEA had their chance to operate above the board, and they choose to do an end-around on applicable law. Now they get to deal with the consequences of that.

And as to “on just reading hacked emails”…

If the emails contain an admission of guilt, that is plenty of grounds for a finding.

I love how after you are so completely insistent that other people use precise language, you throw in the word “hacked” as if you actually knew that to be true.

This is such total hypocrisy on your part.

In any case, the following doesn’t sound like a finding of facts to you?

The University of East Anglia broke the law by refusing to release data requested under the Freedom of Information Act by climate-change sceptics, a watchdog has ruled.

However, the laws were flouted too long ago to make prosecution possible in the case, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said.

The ICO did determine there was evidence of the commission of a crime (this is a “finding”), they did release this finding to the press corp, which dutifully reported on it. They also determined there was no legal standings for a trial because of the short SOL on this case. That is also clearly stated.

Unless you want to employ a new meaning to “finding”, and care to share that with us, that sounds like a “finding of fact” as those words get used. (And yes, I know my link didn’t contain this quote, what I provided a reference to the story I was describing, I was not intended a full-on defense of that position with one url. My assumption at the time was that any learned reader could process the available documentation and come to a sensible conclusion about what it said.)

Re: Nick Stokes (Feb 17 14:45),

That’s been thoroughly gone over already – I don’t agree, and said so in explaining why it can’t be inferred that I agree with Andrew_KY.

As long as you keep feeling the need to repost your point of view on this, it’s fair for others– like me to point out to respond. If you feel the subject has been thrashed about sufficiently, feel free to stop adding your 2Cents. Lecturing others about how they should not be pointing out that your point of view is flawed is pointless.

Carrick,

What Nick wanted the ICO to do was this.

After they found the violation and found they could not prosecute, he wanted them to issue a finding that would have no effect.

So the internal discussion goes like this. They violated the act but nothing can be done about? should we issue a finding? what for?
well we want a complete and accurate record! what for, CRU is already in deep shit, let the inquiry handle it. We’ve done our job.

So, if somebody wanted to grant Nick a point on this. there is no “official finding” . that’s just another way of saying that the ICO does business in this case as shoddily as they have done it in the Keenan case.

add another brick to the wall.

It’s funny for me. everybody complained about reading the mails in context. we do. we find a violation. its very clear from the mails. ICO find the same violation. They cant do anything so they dont do anything. And for Nick this is vindication.

Re: Carrick (Feb 17 15:37)
“Now they get to deal with the consequences of that.”
Giving off-hand opinions to journalists with an agenda is not supposed to be how the ICO deals with these matters.

“If the emails contain an admission of guilt”
The emails do not contain an admission of guilt. The accused party, if any, is UEA, and it did not write any of those emails. At most there is hearsay from other parties.

“following doesn’t sound like a finding of facts to you?”
Yes, but who said it (you don’t say)? It’s not supported by the email to Leake.

The only purported statement of fact from the ICO is:
“The emails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation.”
That does not mean that a crime has been committed. The rest is discussion of the state of legislation.

Nick Stokes (Comment#33855),
.
Every time you address this issue it seems that what you say becomes more disconnected from reality. You ought to just admit that Jones acted improperly in his efforts to obstruct FOI requests, and leave it at that. Everything else you are saying is arm-waving nonsense. Jones is out, and rightly so.

Well done Steve. You are a gracious man. I however want my
pound of flesh. Have you wondered just what the Supreme
Court thinks, being lied to about the science as it relates to
their EPA ruling? OMG…they made them look stupid. I make
myself look stupid all the time, but this is the SCOTUS. Is this
just suppose to disappear, just spin away? I don’t think so.

“That does not mean that a crime has been committed.”

Of course they didn’t. What they did is perfectly normal and accepted practise in the Temple of Tipping Points, right? I wonder why these deniers get their knickers in a knot *shaking head*

Jimi is trying to write a book – fiction thriller probably.

SteveF (Comment#33860) February 17th, 2010 at 5:01 pm

Nick Stokes (Comment#33855),
.
Every time you address this issue it seems that what you say becomes more disconnected from reality. You ought to just admit that Jones acted improperly in his efforts to obstruct FOI requests, and leave it at that. Everything else you are saying is arm-waving nonsense. Jones is out, and rightly so.

Jones sought approval for deeming the requests as vexatious, and received it. You will have to take up that matter with the FOI officer, not Jones.

bugs,
Can Jones travel in time?

He would need to in order to us the 60 similar requests that arrived in late 2009 as a justification for refusing requests in 2007-2008.

Jones sought to break the law and make no attempt to hid that from his collegues. The only reason he will avoid charges is because of the 6 month limit in the UK FOI law.

NIck:

Giving off-hand opinions to journalists with an agenda is not supposed to be how the ICO deals with these matters.

It doesn’t look that off-hand to me. They talked to several news agencies, not just one.

And for somebody who appears not bothered one iota with how Jones and UEA handled the FOIAs, I don’t think you have much of a leg to stand on complaining on how the ICO handled this.

Seriously, at least nobody is question whether the ICO broke the law or not.

The emails do not contain an admission of guilt. The accused party, if any, is UEA, and it did not write any of those emails. At most there is hearsay from other parties.

LOL. I need an electron microscope to view those nits you’re picking now!

Seriously, the emails demonstrate a pattern of behavior that the ICO construes as consistent with an illegal evasion of the FOIA.

Phil Jones is the former director of the Climate Research Unit, a component of the UEA. You are seriously trying to claim he’s a “third party”???

“The emails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation.”
That does not mean that a crime has been committed

This seems to say otherwise:

The University of East Anglia broke the law by refusing to release data requested under the Freedom of Information Act by climate-change sceptics, a watchdog has ruled.

You want to argue that the ICO didn’t actually say this? Why not take it up with them?

This has gotten entirely too silly.

Re: Carrick (Feb 17 20:35),
“It doesn’t look that off-hand to me.”
Not only did UEA not get a hearing before this “finding”, but it seems they read about it in the newspaper, to whom it had been addressed. Odd way for a supervisory body to deal with the people they are supposed to administer.

You are seriously trying to claim he’s a “third party”???
The responsibility for responding to FOI is with the University. If anyone were to be prosecuted it would be that body. No-one can make “admissions” on their behalf. It’s their management task to get their staff to cooperate.

That said, I’ve looked at what seem to be the relevant emails, and can’t see an admission by anyone re the Holland matter.

You want to argue that the ICO didn’t actually say this?
Yes. You still haven’t given a source, but it seems to be a Murdoch press paraphrase. And if it’s based on the Smith email, it’s wrong. For a start, there’s no “ruling”.

Nick Stokes,

Thank you for extending Al Gore’s “There is no controlling legal authority that says this was in violation of law.” to Phil Jones, the ICO, and Climategate!!

You really know how to kill your own team don’t you??

Nick:

Not only did UEA not get a hearing before this “finding”, but it seems they read about it in the newspaper, to whom it had been addressed.

Excuse me for not crying any tears in this case. It’s not like they were actually innocent lambs, as you keep trying to make them out.

The responsibility for responding to FOI is with the University. If anyone were to be prosecuted it would be that body. No-one can make “admissions” on their behalf. It’s their management task to get their staff to cooperate.

That’s your very weak legal theory. Try conspiring to circumvent the law in real life and see how well that theory holds up.

You still haven’t given a source, but it seems to be a Murdoch press paraphrase

I’m using The Time Higher Education. Not a Murdoch publication, not that this affects whether something is true or not.

In any case, what’s your basis for claiming it’s in error, other than the words “the University of East Anglia broke the law” give you a burning sensation in your tummy?

Since your google kung fu seems weak, here are some other sources:

Times Online

The university at the centre of the climate change row over stolen e-mails broke the law by refusing to hand over its raw data for public scrutiny

Daily Mail:

Scientists broke the law by hiding climate change data: But legal loophole means they won’t be prosecuted

The Guardian:

University in hacked climate change emails row broke FOI rules

All Murdoch publications?

I haven’t see the ICO publishing any retractions or clarifications, have you? You want to claim a systematic error across so many mainstream newspapers, it seems like it’s your responsibility to demonstrate this, if you want your claim to be believable.

Here’s the full statement:

Norfolk Police are investigating how private emails have become public. The Information Commissioner’s Office is assisting the police investigation with advice on data protection and freedom of information.

The emails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information.

Mr Holland’s FOI requests were submitted in 2007/8, but it has only recently come to light that they were not dealt with in accordance with the Act. The legislation requires action within six months of the offence taking place, so by the time the action taken came to light the opportunity to consider a prosecution was long gone.

The ICO is gathering evidence from this and other time-barred cases to support the case for a change in the law. It is important to note that the ICO enforces the law as it stands – we do not make it. It is for government and Parliament to consider whether this aspect of the legislation should be strengthened to deter this type of activity in future.

We will be advising the University about the importance of effective records management and their legal obligations in respect of future requests for information. We will also be studying the investigation reports (by Sir Muir Russell and Norfolk Police), and we will then consider what regulatory action, if any, should then be taken under the Data Protection Act.

and also this:

Now Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office says CRU probably broke the law, but that Jones and other officials won’t be prosecuted because more than 6 months have passed since the alleged breach. “The legislation prevents us from taking any action but from looking at the emails it’s clear to us a breach has occurred,” an ICO spokesman told The Times.

Nick, it seems like your only remaining argument is ICO “didn’t play nice.”

Personally I can’t imagine any agency dealing with an egregious breach of public trust in any other way.

“Not a Murdoch publication”
Well, it certainly was until recently. As to your other sources, they are obviously inaccurate. Holland’s application did not involve climate data. And I suppose you won’t be supporting the report about hacked emails, although it’s probably the most accurate paraphrase.

But I don’t know why you’re relying on shaky British reporting. The original is available. That’s all I need.

Carrick,

Although it does seem odd to me that there is no primary source on the ICO web site as yet. They publish all rulings and press releases. But there is nothing regarding this that I have been able to find. However, the person quoted, Graham Smith, is indeed a Deputy Commissioner with the ICO.

Regarding the media reports, it does seem as if they are quoting each other to some extent. For example, the ScienceInsider report refers to other news reports.

“Climate researchers at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom broke the law by withholding data from public scrutiny, say various reports today. ”

It is probably fine, and simply a reflection of my poor google skills that I am unable to find Mr Smith’s statement/ruling on the ICO web site.

Nick:

But I don’t know why you’re relying on shaky British reporting. The original is available. That’s all I need.

LMAO.

“Shaky British reporting”? Why is it suddenly shaky?

In this case, most or all of these shaky news organization obviously contacted the ICO for clarification…and the responses of the ICO spoke persons that framed this in terms of a breach of the law are certainly germane to the interpretation of the original report.

. The original is available. That’s all I need.

And you could have found it in two minutes. Google Wikipedia is your friend.

Nick Stokes (#33855) wrote:
“The only purported statement of fact from the ICO is:
“The emails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation.””

Not dealing with something as they should under the legislation is like not keeping under the speed limit or not taking somebody elses money — it is a crime. And so I agree with you as outlined in your statement above PJ and CRU commited a crime

This is supposedly the reference number for Mr Holland’s request:

FER0238017 (taken from the link on the ScienceInsider story linked to by Carrick).

There is no decision notice for that reference when the ICO decision notice system is searched, either by using the number or searching under the University of East Anglia.

So whatever the statement was, it was not an official decision by the ICO (unless they are yet to publish the decision on their web site).

Re: Carrick (Feb 17 22:52),
Well, your original statement was
In any case there was a finding of fact by the British Information Commissioner’s office that a crime had occurred
Now it still comes back to simply a comment on the stolen emails, and there’s no “finding” that a crime has occurred.

David Gould,

This story has been in the news for a couple weeks. UEA published a press release about it. If there was not sunstance to it would have been retracted. I suspect there is no official decision yet but they would not have made the statement if they were not confident in it.

In any case, the emails make it clear the Jones conspired to break the FOI law. Whether he broken the exact terms of the law is not that important – he definately broke the spirit of the law.

David Gould:

Although it does seem odd to me that there is no primary source on the ICO web site as yet. They publish all rulings and press releases. But there is nothing regarding this that I have been able to find. However, the person quoted, Graham Smith, is indeed a Deputy Commissioner with the ICO.

If you read the context from the various news accounts, it was a public, oral statement by Graham Smith. The Brits don’t seem to be as aggressive as us Yankees about putting their comments up in writing or on youtube.

The ICO certainly has had plenty of opportunities to clarify the record if they though there was substantive errors in the reporting of the story. If anybody here really doubts it, you can always email them.

Nick Stokes:

Now it still comes back to simply a comment on the stolen emails, and there’s no “finding” that a crime has occurred.

the ICO very clearly stated that in their view a crime had occurred and that the statute of limitations had expired.

Keep trying to create some ambiguity where none exists, if it makes you feel better, no matter how lame you look to everybody else by trying.

Nick Stokes:

Now it still comes back to simply a comment on the stolen emails

And again, how do you know the emails were “stolen”?

For somebody who is a stickler for microscopic accuracy in wording from others, you have no problems with brash use of language yourself, do you?

David Gould:

So whatever the statement was, it was not an official decision by the ICO (unless they are yet to publish the decision on their web site).

So it’s your argument that an official statement from the Deputy Commissioner is not “official” now?

You guys are just nuts.

Re: Carrick (Feb 17 23:09)
suddenly
No, British newspapers have been shaky for years. But the evidence is in what you quoted. None of them have the ICO statement right. And two say the offence was refusing to hand over climate data, which is obviously not what the statement was about.

There’s no evidence that they all contacted the ICO – as far as I can see, they are all quoting the Times. That’s Ben Webster and Jonathan Leake, who are untrustworthy.

Re: Carrick (Feb 17 23:31),
Well, here’s The Times headline:
Scientists in stolen e-mail scandal hid climate data
So we’ve both got something to complain about there.

Nick, Os the BBC good enough for you?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8484385.stm

In a statement, Deputy Information Commissioner Graham Smith said it was an offence under section 77 of the Freedom of Information act “to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information”.

He said the requests were made by a climate change sceptic in the 2007-2008 period and as the case was more than six months old “the opportunity to consider a prosecution was long gone” under existing legislation.

Mr Smith said the ICO was “gathering evidence from this and other time-barred cases to support the case for a change in the law”.

He added: “We will be advising the university about the importance of effective records management and their legal obligations in respect of future requests for information.”

Again Nick, if you want to question the accuracy of the various news accounts, the ICO is one click away.

I’m certain that had the story been favorably slanted to your disposition as the other 99.999% of UK news is, you wouldn’t be testing the veracity of the reports.

Beyond that there isn’t much to say here is there? Quite obviously the news accounts frame this as a finding by the ICO of an illegal act or acts by the UEA and its officials.

Interestingly even the untrustworthy news articles included a direct quote:

“The legislation prevents us from taking any action but from looking at the emails it’s clear to us a breach has occurred.”

No doubt this would be a violation of British libel law, if this quote is manufactured. So there you go David and Nick:

If you can prove this supposed direct quote is false, you can provide the UEA for the basis of a law suit!

I say go for it if either of you actually has even a single mitochondria that actually believes your own riff that the British newspapers just made all this up.

Re: Raven (Feb 17 23:47)
It’s more accurate. But it’s a description of the law. There’s no finding that it has been broken.

Nick:

So we’ve both got something to complain about there.

LOL. True that.

But I hold you (and myself for that matter) to a much higher standard than I hold them! Hell I hold my 15 year old kid to a higher standard. >.<

Re: Carrick (Feb 17 23:51),
You can’t libel a University. But if libel was the issue, it would be valid whether or not the quote was manufactured.

Nick:

It’s more accurate

More accurate, or it just sits better in your stomach?

Of course, can always count on the BBC to slant things as heavily as possible towards their own agenda in any case.

Same is true for CNN (barely a real news agency anymore in my opinion) or any of the other US media, in case somebody suddenly feels a need to defend British press after an uppity American had the nerve to criticize them.

Nick,
.
The BBC quoted from the same statement that has been reproduced elsewhere. I am quite amazed at your outright denial on this point. Do you really believe that anyone other than you interprets the words the way you do?

Nick Stokes:

You can’t libel a University. But if libel was the issue, it would be valid whether or not the quote was manufactured.

Is that really true?

In the US organizations can sue for libel and/or slander.

Same appears to be true in Britain.

Re: Carrick (Feb 17 23:59),
From your second link:
Government bodies, which include for example local authorities, the police, state schools and NHS hospitals cannot bring libel claims.

Government bodies, which include for example local authorities, the police, state schools and NHS hospitals cannot bring libel claims.

Ah OK.

Did you mean to leave this out though?

If, however, individual members, officers or employees are the subject of the defamatory statements these individuals can sue.

This is somewhat germane I think. >.>

Re: Carrick (Feb 18 00:17),
Not very germane – as I said, Graham Smith mentioned only the University. The reference to PJ etc was a Times add-on.

i agree with Nick.
.
reading sceptic and denialist blogs and comments, i noticed this representation of the past and future of the individuals involved:
.
Phil Jones will be arrested for the crimes he commited. the only reason he has not been arrested so far, are legalistic ones. anyway, unless the AGW conspiracy manages to hide another crime, he is in for some severe punishment.
.
the whistleblower was a true believer and serious member of the team, before he got fed up with the lies and distortions. when he could not stand it any longer, he made available a dataset that was in his possession. a set prepared for a FOI request, but hidden by the evil AGW conspiracy in the CRU.
should he get caught, he will be protected by the full force of the whistleblower protection. (some evil AGW conspiracy act could be the only thing that might prevent this, though) apart from being protected from punishment for leaking the mail and data (which were public property anyway), the whistleblower wll receive medals and possibly knighthood.
if his/her identity becomes public, additional revelations will completely break the AGW theory. (like the broken hockeystick..)

a more realistic scenario looks like this:
.
even if a problem with the FOI requests is found, the problem is with the university. Phil Jones could, under this condition, face some disciplinary action. the university might not give him back his director of the CRU position. (with the experiences he made recently, i am not sure he really wants it back. congratulations to the denialist blogosphere. success for a criminal scare tactic!)
.
i don t see any form of whistleblower protection for the hacker. even ignoring the RC hacking, his deed simply doesn t qualify. there is no crime involved, and definitely none that allows the leak of the mails to the public.

if you want to figure out, what is behind those FOI and FOIA request, read the latests wattsup news.
.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201.....ow-online/
.
thank Chris Horner of CEI for making this happen
.
the same people, from the same institutions, doing the same thing they did to tobacco legislation.
.
it is a little scary, that so many people want to be part of this scam.

briffa

Lucia: “FrankBi must be actively scouring blogs to discover the busy, motivated, hard-working “inactivists” who must have worked day and night for months to advance their cause.”
.
Why the sarcasm?

It occurs to me that one should not limit the possibilities of the UEA CRU emails event as being only caused by either a leak or a hack. Certainly, whatever happened was unauthorized. Unauthorized release seems to cover all possibilities. Given that, we have not much in the way of facts. The police have some facts, sure, not us.

But we can speculate and what fun that is to do that. Hercule Poirot/Agatha Christie here we come . . .

My speculation “du jour” (to paraphrase Anthony) is that the unauthorized release was caused by a “principled” person with access to the Team. Someone they had some climate science relationship with. Someone who was working in their community who never committed to the Team’s cause but worked with them. This implies an underling persona. A mole kinda person? Nah, no mole, says my instinct. Instead my gut says it was just happenstance the person was at the right place at the right time. No conspiracy. No long range campaign. Only that is my daily speculation.

This is fun stuff.

Happy Chinese Lunar New Year holiday week from Taiwan!

John

Re: sod (Feb 18 03:00), sod
It seems all you guys can do is resort to “ad hom” arguments. The joy of the internet, and its transparency, is that we can judge Chris Horner on what he does, rather than who pays him. I don’t see any fundamental difference between the left-wing lobbyists who fund Real Climate, and the right-wing ones who fund Horner. Nor can you raise issues about the Heartland Institute when the CRU and other pro-AGW operations get so much finding from BP and other energy companies. So we can put funding to one side and concentrate on the facts, particularly Phil Jones’ apparent invention of time travel, and the appalling state of the databases that underpin so much of the alarmist material – see Harry ReadMe etc.

“Why the sarcasm?”

Because it’s fun?

Andrew

Re: Neven (Feb 18 04:29),
That wasn’t sarcasm. I think that’s what FrankBi must be doing. Are you suggesting there is something contemptible about the activity? I wasn’t.

I thought you were suggesting there is something risible about the activity of looking for “busy, motivated, hard-working “inactivists” who must have worked day and night for months to advance their cause”, ie making the public believe AGW is a hoax.
.
If this isn’t the case, my bad.

Carrick,

I admire your tenacity but decline to join the fun. There’s always an other argument. Then an other other argument, ad infinitum. What is the meaning of a statement about the meaning of a statement about the meaning of the word “is”?

Meanwhile, outside of the hall of mirrors, you showed convincingly that CRU did violate the spirit of the FoI law, and that ICO has expressed that viewpoint.

AMac (Comment#33938),
“I admire your tenacity but decline to join the fun.”
.
Spot on, as the Brits might say. It is just a waste of time discussing this subject with Nick and sod; with them it appears to not be a subject suitable for factual analysis. You might as well try to convince the Pope to become an atheist. Good luck with either effort.

SteveF:

You might as well try to convince the Pope to become an atheist

Too easy.

How about trying to convince radical AGW’ers like Al Gore to embrace empiricism? Now that would be a real challenge.

Nick Stokes,

“You can’t libel a University.”

You are at best half right. Most countries (including the UK) recognize the right of private organizations to sue. So it is quite clear that Oxford university, for example, can sue for libel. So, at best, your statement is significantly over-broad. UEA is a public university and whether a public university in the UK can sue for libel is somewhat unclear. The landmark case is of course Derbyshire County Counsel v Times which dismissed a libel lawsuit by an elected local government. There is some debate about just how broad the decision in that case is. A public university with an independent senate may be distinguished from the decision in that case. Certainly a recent decision from your home country (Lange) did not feel compelled to follow a broad read of Derbyshire. Oh, and don’t be so quick to dismiss Carrick’s point about individuals having the right to sue. The judges (or Law Lords to be precise) in Derbyshire highlighted this ability as a part of the reasoning behind their decision. The fact that no individuals from UEA were specifically named is a specious argument, and you know that.

Apologies to all for going so off topic.

No this guy isn’t the hacker. The only evidence that he is is that he has several key details wrong, like A miracle has happened was posted at RealClimate, which may be deliberate subterfuge on his part. Beyond that, I can find no link between him and the scientist I identified on this site last week in the thread Paul Dennis speaks.

Re: Neven (Feb 18 08:20),

I thought you were suggesting there is something risible about the activity of looking for “busy, motivated, hard-working “inactivists” who must have worked day and night for months to advance their cause”, ie making the public believe AGW is a hoax.

I was describing what I think he is doing. Would you think I was suggesting there was something risible in FrankBi’s activities if I’d written:

“FrankBi must be actively scouring blogs to discover the busy, motivated, hard-working chefs who must have worked day and night for months to come up with the best chili recipe.”

I’m a bit surprised you would assume describing an activity implies I think the activity is risible. FrankBi may be spending a lot of time hunting for these hardworking, diligent inactivists. He found Jimi Bostok.

Neven is scouring the intrawebs so he can put the names of political opponents in his “categories”. Or was that Nathan?

Andrew

Carrick,

I thought that the newspapers were claiming that the ICO has ruled, which I took to mean was an official ruling. All official rulings are published on the site, under the ‘rulings’ section.

If it was an official oral statement, then obviously you are correct and there will be no record of it. Although in Australia, at least, if a senior government official makes an official oral statement a transcript is published on their web site.

I am sure it is all fine – it just seemed a little odd to me that a supposed ‘ruling’ was not put on the web site and does not appear to have been officially communicated to either UEA or the complainant. I guess the British public service are even slacker than the one I work in.

The ICO do seem to publish transcripts of oral statements by their officials – for example:

http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/d.....taking.pdf

The fact that the ICO have not issued a denial is a major piece of evidence that the statement is correct, of course. So, I accept that it is real. The ICO handling of it still seems a little odd to me, though.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/23993708/Climate-Email

This seems to be the original source, which seems fine.

Carrick, OIC, kind of the Authorize.net and Card Services International technique. Admin Password in clear text, embedded in a publicly accessable field!!!! My biddy got 250,000 phishisg hits over the weekend and Authorize tried to make him pay for the authentications. In the end 60,000 valid CC#’s were compromised. NO one gave a rats buttocks either, not local, not Secret Service, not Treasury not, not FTC, not OTS.

I’ll get serious about this government when they get serious about….anything.

Lucia, it looks like I misinterpreted the tone of your comment.

Neven–
That’s ok. I’ll admit that I don’t think he’s likely to actually find precisely what he’s looking for. I don’t think whoever was responsible for the unauthorized release of CRU emails is likely to write a blog post about it.

Although who knows?

My theory is this Jimi guy has nothing to do with the emails becoming public. He may be doing something he considers important and effective. What that might be I cannot begin to guess!

Re: David Gould (Feb 18 17:03)
Yes, it’s the original source that we’ve been quoting. But note the venue. Not on the website, nor something accessible to UEA, but an email to an activist journalist, with talking points for him helpfully underlined.

And read it carefully. The press reports didn’t.

Re: Nick Stokes (Feb 17 16:35),

“If the emails contain an admission of guilt”
The emails do not contain an admission of guilt. The accused party, if any, is UEA, and it did not write any of those emails. At most there is hearsay from other parties.

“following doesn’t sound like a finding of facts to you?”
Yes, but who said it (you don’t say)? It’s not supported by the email to Leake.

The only purported statement of fact from the ICO is:
“The emails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation.”
That does not mean that a crime has been committed.

Nick, with respect, the emails don’t actually need to contain an “admission of guilt” because they contain a blatant incitement to commit an offence instead:

http://eastangliaemails.com/em.....ename=.txt

This email was sent on 29th May 2008, just under 4 months before the Serious Crimes Act 2007 (c.27) replaced the common law offence of incitement with the statutory inchohate offences of “Encouraging or assisting crime”.

Now, if you’d care to follow, I’ll lead you through step by step.

Deleting emails or other information that is subject to an FOI request is an offence under s.77 Freedom of Information Act 2000 (c.36). This is exactly what Jones asked people to do in the email linked above. He was, therefore, inciting (which means suggesting or encouraging) other people to commit that offence.

Funny thing with incitement (as with the SCA offences) was that the people you “incite” didn’t actually have to commit the act for you to be guilty. Simply encouraging someone to break the law was enough. Unfortunately, the potential penalty was the same as the offence itself so, like any actual FOIA offences, couldn’t be brought to trial after 6 months.

That technicality doesn’t, however, alter the fact that there is clear documentary proof of the incitement happening – so a crime was committed. To argue otherwise would be like saying that someone who gets off a murder charge on a technicality hadn’t actually killed anyone – try selling that logic to the deceased or their family!

As for the ICO’s statement, an official statement of the outcome of an enquiry is, in any normal language, a “finding”. Thus, there was a finding that the UEA had not dealt with the requests as required by the law. Failing to do something that the law requires you to (or doing something it says you mustn’t do) do is, generally, known as “breaking the law”. So, we have a “finding” that UEA “broke the law”.

If you want to split hairs over the difference between “breaking the law” and “committing a crime” then feel free – just don’t expect anyone with a brain to take you at all seriously

I have to say that that email address is weird.

This is grayling .com:

http://www.grayling.com/

That is not the ICO.

ICO email addresses seem to have this format:

scotland@ico.gsi.gov.uk

But I guess the ICO not complaining about it points to it being real. It is just … odd.

Anyway, I have sent a request to the ICO asking them to confirm the statement. Hopefully, they will respond within the next couple of weeks.

The automated response confirms that ICO email addresses do not have the format laid out in that document. They end with:

ico.gov.uk

Colour me … suspicious.

Although again the lack of denials indicates that the ICO do not have a problem. Ah, well. An oddity to be resolved …

Re: Joe (Feb 18 17:20)
“Deleting emails or other information that is subject to an FOI request is an offence under s.77 Freedom of Information Act 2000 (c.36). This is exactly what Jones asked people to do in the email linked above. “
Actually, it isn’t. The only person “incited” is Mann, of PSU, Sec 77 says:
“Subsection (1) applies to the public authority and to any person who is employed by, is an officer of, or is subject to the direction of, the public authority.” It is not an offence for Mann to delete emails at PSU.

“As for the ICO’s statement, an official statement of the outcome of an enquiry is, in any normal language, a ‘finding’.”
There was no enquiry. Any enquiry would have involved getting at least some response from UEA. As they explicitly said, they are referring to the content of some emails that they read on the web.

As for the “breaking the law” stuff, where I am we had an Administrative Appeals Tribunal. It now has another, less clear name. It had, in my town (Melbourne) about ten tribunals, all continuously hearing cases of alleged maladministration by public bodies brought by citizens. Many were upheld. That generally means that the citizens original matters were not dealt with in accordance with the relevant legislation. No-one thought that crimes had been committed; the tribunal simply ordered that the matter be corrected.

David–
grayling.com appears to be a PR firm.
http://www.grayling.com/

I don’t know what that means. Maybe the ICO press officer is affiliated with Grayling somehow?

Re: Nick Stokes (Feb 18 17:39),
Some things are crimes. Some things are just administrative errors. We all know that. Why do you think this clarifies anything about FOI? These lapses don’t seem to be merely administrative errors; they seem to be violations of the law. However, the statute of limitations has lapsed.

I’m not going to jump into the issues of “finding of fact” etc. I don’t know how lawyers would a actually characterize what the ICO did in terms of specific legalese.

lucia,

It seems very, very weird that a government organisation in the UK would have the email for its press office go through a private PR firm, when all their other emails use standard government format.

I have the sneaking suspicion that Jonathon Leake has been played here, and all the other press organisations simply copied the story.

But the counter evidence to that is the ICO not commenting, and it is strong counter evidence.

However, we will see where this leads. I do not think it is as cut and dried that this is legitimate as Carrick, Raven and others have suggested. I think that I have reasonable grounds for suspicion.

(And obviously my suspicion may well be completely false – indeed, I think, based on the lack of comment from the ICO, that it is more than 80 per cent likely that my suspicion is false. But we will see.)

David–
I agree it seems weird that a government agency would have it’s press office go through a PR firm. I don’t know enough about the UK to judge their propensity for weirdness though.

It’s a bit difficult to believe press organizations wouldn’t notice the something@NOT.uk.gov email address and be puzzled if it is out of the ordinary. Also, I would think UEA would notice and sqwack. So, either way, I think there is something weird.

lucia,

Some allege that Jonathon Leake is not the greatest fact checker in the world of journalism.

The only way the UEA would have noticed would have been if these details had been published. In the news reports that I have seen, the email address was not mentioned; indeed, on one linked blog, the ending of the mail address was blanked out.

I have my doubts that the UK operates much differently than Australia: our public service basically copies theirs.

But this is all fun speculation until I get a response from the ICO.

http://www.grayling.com/Indust.....licSector/

Grayling do not appear to have the ICO as a government client – not one that they admit to having, anyway.

And searching their web site seems to throw up no link to the ICO.

Likewise, searching the ICO web site does not seem to throw up anything to do with Grayling.

But there will almost certainly be a mundane explanation – disappointingly. It is nice to fantasise that I am about to find out something cool.

I called the number in the press release: 020 7025 7580
And confirmed it was the ICO Press Office.
.
Grayling claims to represent government clients on their website:
http://www.grayling.com/Indust.....licSector/
.
The ICO press releases on their website list two numbers: one for technical assistance and one for media. The media number is the 020 7025 7580 number (i.e. it looks like they have outsourced their PR functions).
.
Lastly, Jeff Id has a response from the ICO posted:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.c.....-responds/
.
I realize David and Nick would really like this to be a hoax but I am pretty sure it is legit.

The Grayling London office details:

London, Soho Office
Telephone: +44 207 025 7500
Facsimile: +44 207 025 7588

If UK phones work like NA phones I am 99.9% certain the 020 7025 7580 number goes to the Grayling office.

Raven,

The Air Vent post does not appear to be a response from the ICO to this particular issue, although I could be reading it wrong.

As to the number being correct, so is the web site address given. But those are easily found. And IT support is just as likely to be outsourced.

But you are right: it is highly likely that it is legitimate. There are just some oddities around it.

Certainly, I would love for it to have been a hoax: that would be cool! But the odds are very much against that.

That number certainly looks right.

“Grayling works with a range of government departments, not-for-profit organisations and non-governmental department bodies, supporting their in-house teams, as well as providing a full service press office and media relations function.”

It certainly is a service that they provide.

David,
The 020 7025 7580 phone number goes to Grayling’s London office. That confirms that the ICO outsources it media relations biz to Grayling

Raven,

Well done.

#34008 Raven,
I have no doubt that the ICO statements that I have seen are legit. They just need careful reading.

#34001 Lucia,
The issue is that people are saying that the ICO’s comment that the emails make it appear that an FOI request was not handled in accordance with the Act, is equivalent to a finding that a crime was committed. I’m saying that it isn’t.

A better example might have been to point to the long list of successful FOIA appeals on the ICO’s own site. These represent cases where a refusal was ruled to be not in accordance with the Act. No-one’s saying that the losing institutions were committing crimes.

Nick,
.
You are losing sight of the big issue here. I don’t really care if Jones gets charged with a crime – I just want an end to this nonsense argument that his actions were acceptable and he did nothing wrong.
.
The ICO statement should make it clear that the refusal was wrong and Jones and has no business complaining about the repeated requests from sceptics trying to get access to information that Jones was legally obligated to release.

Re: Nick Stokes (Feb 18 17:39),

Re: Joe (Feb 18 17:20)
“Deleting emails or other information that is subject to an FOI request is an offence under s.77 Freedom of Information Act 2000 (c.36). This is exactly what Jones asked people to do in the email linked above. “
Actually, it isn’t. The only person “incited” is Mann, of PSU, Sec 77 says:
“Subsection (1) applies to the public authority and to any person who is employed by, is an officer of, or is subject to the direction of, the public authority.” It is not an offence for Mann to delete emails at PSU.

Ok, fair comment. Unfortunately, he also states that “Keith will do the same” – referring to Keith Briffa who is at UEA. So he is still encouraging Mann to join a group of (at least) two UEA employees – himself and Briffa – who are attempting to have these emails deleted. Two (or more) people forming an agreement to break the law is called a conspiracy and is also an offence (again, regardless of whether or not the intended acts ever actually occur). So, either way, clear evidence of an offence

“As for the ICO’s statement, an official statement of the outcome of an enquiry is, in any normal language, a ‘finding’.”
There was no enquiry. Any enquiry would have involved getting at least some response from UEA. As they explicitly said, they are referring to the content of some emails that they read on the web.

No, when the ICO receives a request for a decision 9as they did from Dave Holland, they’re required by s.50(2) of the FOIA to make a decision. This is a formal legal requirement and any such decision must, therefore, be based on evidence. In this case, the ICO decision was that UEA had not followed the law.

Perhaps you’re suggesting that the ICO didn’t discharge their legal obligation to make a decision in the correct way?

As for the “breaking the law” stuff, where I am we had an Administrative Appeals Tribunal. It now has another, less clear name. It had, in my town (Melbourne) about ten tribunals, all continuously hearing cases of alleged maladministration by public bodies brought by citizens. Many were upheld. That generally means that the citizens original matters were not dealt with in accordance with the relevant legislation. No-one thought that crimes had been committed; the tribunal simply ordered that the matter be corrected.

Where you are you also have kangaroos but that doesn’t mean we have them over here. Since the FOIA creates at least one specific crfiminal offence and also allows for action for contempt of court where a public body fails to meet the ICOs requirements it’s entirely possible for a breach of the United Kingdom FOIA to amount to a crime regardless of what Australian law allows.

Note the wording of the ICO statement – they are unable to prosecute because of the elapsed time. That clearly means that they found sufficient evidence to prosecute if the time limit wasn’t there. Prosecution is a process that requires an allegation of a criminal act. So they clearly felt that the conduct “not in accordance with the FOIA” fell under one of the criminal provisions of the Act. Otherwise they wouldn’t have mentioned the P word. Or are you now suggesting that they’re careless with language as well as at meeting their legal obligations?

Joe (Comment#34019)
Your conspiracy theory won’t work. There’s no evidence that Briffa communicated with anyone – Jones may have merely predicted what he would do (maybe wrongly). And Mann, who could not have breached the FOIA anyway, made no substantive reply.

What I’m saying about the Smith email is that there was no inquiry and no “finding”. I think what’s forgotten here is the context. Smith didn’t just decide on his own to write to Leake with comments about the UEA case. He was responding to an email that we haven’t seen. And I think that it’s very likely that Leake asked “What about those emails? Doesn’t that breach Sec 77? Why aren’t you prosecuting?” To which he responded:
1. Yes, the emails do seem to indicate something’s not done according to the act
2. Here’s what Sec 77 says
3. And no, we couldn’t think of prosecuting because of the time.
So when you ask, why did they talk about prosecution, the likely explanation is because Leake asked about it. Certainly you can’t say that a decision not to prosecute implies guilt.

If you don’t like my Australian analogue, then, as I said, to Lucia, just look at all the appeals that ICO upholds. Many amount to saying that an application was not decided according to the act. That doesn’t mean that the institution committed a crime.

Reading that blog posting is somewhat painful. It reads like an Obama speech … “I”, “me”, “my”, etc. It looks like he refers to himself in practically every sentence.

His writing reminds me of someone else I know who likes to claim some special inside knowledge of things. The following passage leads me to believe that the posting is basically a figment of his imagination:

At the heart of our work was our vision of the web as a mighty jungle full of billions of people and machines. Into that ecosystem we went. Over the months, we used every tool at our disposal to locate all key players, track where they congregated on the web (through publicly available information), and then shadowed them.

Through their movements, we were able to completely map the places we needed to operate in. So, that is what we did, we operated (with details censored for commercial reasons).

We also scoured the web for any discussions on the issues and devised ways to bring conversations around from where we found them. These were also places ripe for recruitment and we devised campaigns to help these people spread the messages (with details censored for commercial reasons).

We learnt all there was to learn about search engine algorithms and we ensured that our message was being heard. We used paid advertising to locate more recruits and spread the message further.

Most importantly, we used every tracking device we could find to monitor the people and the discussions in the jungle.

Exactly where do Jones, Briffa, etc. “congregate on the web”? My guess is they don’t and he is making this up and projecting his own internet behavior onto others.

My initial take is that it is the blathering of a nut.

Joe,

There is evidence that Jones and briffa did communicate about the substance of the mails that were supposed to be deleted. There is evidence that Jones deleted mails and evidence that Briffa deleted mails. Either that or Jones encouraged Briffa to lie and say he never received information from Wahl. It’s all in the mails.

Re: steven mosher (Feb 19 01:00),

I know that, Steve, it’s Nick S who seems to have a problem understanding that a lack of prosecution doesn’t mean no crime was committed.

He also seems convinced that an opinion given, on record, by an official from the ICO doesn’t equate to a finding by that Office. From my experience of the civil service, if that’s true then there’s presumably a Deputy Commissioner looking for a new job right about now

Re: Nick Stokes (Feb 18 20:33),

What I’m saying about the Smith email is that there was no inquiry and no “finding”.

So you are saying that the ICO failed to carry out it’s statutory duty in this case then. When an application is received by the ICO they have a legal duty to look at the evidence (to “enquire”) and to make a decision (a “finding”) about what happened.

I’d love to know what evidence you have that they neglegted that duty?

Re: Joe (Feb 19 07:41),
Joe, you’re pretty muddled on the facts here. The ICO didn’t receive any application. The UEA did, and responded, and the ICO has no duty to enquire unless it reaches them on appeal, which hasn’t happened. In any case, by no stretch of the imagination could Graham Smith’s email to Leake be regarded as a response (“finding”) to an FOI application.

Your and Mosh’s conspiracy theorising is unsubstantiated, but anyway, I’m sure that making legal findings on conspiracy law is above the ICO’s pay grade.

Re: Nick Stokes (Feb 19 15:49),

No, Nick, it seems you are. When someone makes an FIO request and they are not happy with the result, they can refer that to the ICO. That is refered to in the legislation as the ICO “receiving an application”. I provided a link to the law earlier, I suggest you follow it before trying to score cheap points

I’m not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that the matter wasn’t referred to the ICO – if it’s the lack of a decision notice on the ICO site then that’s a natural effect of prosecution being impossible. I suggest you read the first line at the top of the ICO Decision Page and note the words “…the ICO investigates the facts behind the complaint and may then issue..” So they have to investigate but, if any decision is clearly unenforceable (as in this case) they don’t have to waste resources publishing one.

As for conspiracy theorising, what planet are you on? I don’t recall ever having suggested any conspiracy in any of this. In fact if you’d care to check (I’m happy to provide a list of sites I post on), you’ll find that I’ve routinely defended the scientists involved against the more outlandish “conspiracy” suggestions.

Of course, if (by “conspiracy”) you mean:

“an interest and willingness to actually discuss and explore matters that arise in order to gain an informed opinion of whether or not they’re an issue”

as opposed to your apparent approach of

“accept everything the Team say and label everyone else a conspiracy theorist”

The I guess, along with most other posters here, I’m guilty as charged.

Re: Joe (Feb 19 16:32)
Indeed there’s an appeal procedure. But you have no evidence that that happened, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t. Everything Holland did do was megaphoned through CA.

Anyway, as I keep saying, Smith’s email has in no way the form of such a finding. If it was in response to some application, the first thing they would do is say so. And they wouldn’t say that they had decided it by reading emails found on the web. And they would communicate the decision to the parties, not Jonathan Leake.

Re: Nick Stokes (Feb 19 17:35),
“I’m pretty sure it didn’t”
I’ve looked further into this. There wasn’t an appeal, but there was a voluminous complaint from David Holland. It’s listed on this site, which is not an official site, but Holland’s own, on which he lists his (frequent) complaints. But as you’ll see, there has been no decision yet. And the Leake email is certainly not a finding. This is what a finding looks like.

Incidentally, how the ICO is now going to make a finding after they’ve been making comments to Jonathan Leake is a puzzle to me.

Re: Nick Stokes (Feb 19 18:17),

I must admit I’d overlooked your continued reference to an “appeal” to the ICO. Of course, if you’d followed my link to the Act itself, you’d have known that there’s actually no such thing. The appeals process for FOI requests is entirely internal to the organisation concerned. When that appeal process is unsatisfactory an “application for decision” is made by a person known as “the complainant”. In other words, that application is a “complaint”. To be an “appeal” it would be by an “appellant”, of course.

As for “what a decision notice looks like”, it’s pretty clear that they haven’t (possibly “yet”) issued one for this complaint but that could well be because doing so would be an entirely pointless action.

They have, however, allowed one of their named deputy Commissioners, to make a statement to the press in which hes says it is “clear” that the law wasn’t followed. One of the cardinal rules of public office is, if you speak to the press in matters pertaining to your office, what you say had better be the official line. As far as I’m aware, there are no sudden new vacancies for Deputy ICO commissioners, so we can be pretty certain that what was said in that statement was the view of the ICO’s Office.

Quite apart from all that, if you can’t see for yourself that there were clear efforts to avoid the FOI law in those emails then there really isn’t any point discussing it. Taking a horse to water and all that…..

Re: Joe (Feb 19 18:40),
Well he didn’t make an “application for decision” either. But the possibility of prosecution is irrelevant to their adjudication of a complaint. After all, you insist they have a statutory obligation. This Ofcom decision (another Holland complaint) puts in context all the heavy breathing here about how an observation of “not being dealt with as it should be” = criminal charge. Here is their bottom line:

55. The Commissioner’s decision is that the public authority did not deal with the following aspects of the request for information in accordance with the Regulations.
> By its failure to explain the reason for its decision, Ofcom has breached Regulation 6(2)(a) of the Environmental Information Regulations
>By its failure to reconsider or review its response within 40 days, Ofcom has breached Regulation 11(4) of the Environmental Information Regulations

56. The Commissioner requires no steps be taken.

lucia:

FrankBi must be actively scouring blogs to discover the busy, motivated, hard-working “inactivists” who must have worked day and night for months to advance their cause.

Nah, it was much simpler than that. There was a widely publicized request by the Guardian for people to participate in their write-up of the ‘investigative report’ on the CRU crack. A link showed up in comments under one of the manuscripts, so I followed it. That was all.

– frankbi

Re: Nick Stokes (Feb 19 19:05),

For crying out loud, Nick, I KNOW what a decision can contain, having just studied the FOIA over the past year as part of legal training.

First of all, please don’t waste my time trying to split hairs over wording. Mr Holland called his application to them a “complaint” but, in legal terms (as it is described in the Act itself), it is an “application” to the Commissioner. So, in this case, the two are completely synonymous because the word “complaint” was used by the applicant in exactly the same way that any layman who feels they have been wronged might “make a complaint”. On his website he could have called it a Sausage if he wanted to, it would still, legally, be an “application” when it arrived at the ICO!

Now, on receipt and investigation of an application (or “complaint” if you prefer), The ICO can make a finding that (1) The application is spurious or vexatious (2) The application is valid but there was no wrongdoing, (3) a finding requiring the body to “make good” any wrongdoing there was, or (4) they can decide that the wrongdoing amounted to an offence (a criminal act) under s.77 of the Act.

In the 4th case they don’t issue a decision like the Ofcom one because (1) once an offence has been committed it requires prosecution (leaving aside the toothlessness of the law as it stands) and (2) issuing such a notice could prejudice that prosecution (being a public statement of wrongdoing before the trial).

Which of those happens depends on whether there is clear evidence of intentional suppression of data rather than simply a mis-reading of the rules. In borderline cases (such as a suggestion of intentional suppression but not enough evidence to take to court) they will use option (3), as they did in the Ofcom decision you keep showing.

In the case of UEA they went on record as stating that their was clearly a breach but that they were prevented from “prosecuting” because of the time limit. “Prosecution” is a specific legal term that only applies in matters involving a crimial act. There is absolutely no point in them going further than that statement because (1) they can’t actually start the prosecution that they clearly feel is justified and (2) by the time that stage was reaced most (if not all) of the information Mr Holland had requested was already in the public domain by other means, so a formal decision requiring action by UEA would have been completely irrelevent.

In this case, because they were unable to act in any other way (prosecution impossible and decision notice pointless) clearly giving their opinion of the matter in a statement to the press is a perfectly understandable step to take, not least as a way to highlight the failings of the law as it stands.

Re: frankbi (Feb 20 03:21),
Ahhh! I’ll have to read what the Guardian dredges up. There may be more ‘Jimi Bostock’s’ out there!

Just found this. Amazing Sherlock. Forget that nowhere do I elude to being the hacker, not even in a personal fantasy.

The blog entry was about my VOLUNTEER work, self appointed, that me an a bunch of mates did all to stop teh warmists getting away wuth the lies. Just our little way of helping.

Do you really truly believe that a hacker would out themseleves in this way.

Lucia, as someone who has read yoour blog for a long time, why are you giving any time to the warmists who suggest they have outed me as the hacker, or some deluded soul.

The sad thing is that all of these really good comments about the information freedom aspects of the debacle are now under this quite unusually flippant and silly BlackBoard entry.

Joe (Comment#34154),
I think your arguments with Nick Stokes are the most complete and detailed yet, and I have absolutely no doubt that what you say pretty accurately sums up the situation. But I note that many others have exchanged (seemingly endless) comments with Nick over this issue, and I am quite certain that you are wasting your time.
.
Your “take the horse to water comment” is a fair description of the situation. Nick with never admit that Jones did anything wrong, even after Jones is officially (and permanently) drummed out of his former post.

Re: Jimi Bostock (Feb 20 18:21),

Do you really truly believe that a hacker would out themseleves in this way.

No. I don’t believe the real hacker would out themselves by writing a blog post with that seems to hint!

Out of curiosity– now that FrankBi, BigCityLIberal and I blogged, this the Norfolk police contact you. (I assume they did not. Right?)

lucia:

I found more weirdness regarding Jimi Bostock.

I’ve issued an update, Jimi!

BCL

Hi Lucia, nope no word from the police.

I have read my words over and over and it is so weird that despite me saying several times in the blog that I did not know about the hack, the warmists still make out that I did suggest. Any vagueness was to do with the way me and a small band of people went about what we thought was important work across the web.

I am sure that the police have better ways to work out these hacks than someones blog. I would think that forensics would be the key and as they could well do that on anyone, me included, they could probably rule me out.

I would be betting on one of the nations but I might be wrong

anyways, keep up the great work Lucia, you have taught me so much about the science

Jimi Bostock:

I have read my words over and over and it is so weird that despite me saying several times in the blog that I did not know about the hack,

Sure, but it’s clear you knew something big was about to happen. So the question is, how did you know?

Jimi Bostock:

Any vagueness was to do with the way me and a small band of people went about what we thought was important work across the web.

Oh, and one simple question: so, does your secret campaign involve people sending hate e-mails?

I hope you can give us a direct answer — the truth.

Absoltely not Frank. I have personally had some ‘heated’ email comversations but they have only been heated for a while and then calmed down. More like a robust debate in a pub thing. Certainly nothing more than what can be experienced at a BBQ in OZ

Maybe the only difference between then and any normal climate blog forum (e.g. RealClimate and Mr Gavin) has ever been that there is not a swear filter on email

I have probably been guilty of being rude and a little over the top at times but again, probably no more than you would find on an average friday night at a pub, sans any physical fighting. I have had ruder exchanges over football games than over climate change

I certainly know that anyone I was rude to over the years were engaging in personal attacks on me or the wider sceptic world. That, to be honest is the only times I can recall being rude. I do know that I have never not apologised for any rudeness and never left an arguament without a civil tone of agreeing to disagree.

Certainly, I have never been rude when science was being discussed. I see no reason to be rude about that when I don’t even know what is the truth and perhaps no one does. Which has only ever been my position, that the warmists did not know as much as they proclaimed, a position I am sure I share with most people on this site.

I can put one key fact forward, every email I have ever sent to anyone to do with climate change has been in my own name with my standard signature at the end, all contact details supplied. It has been the same policy with any blog comments, always my full name. No nicknames, straight up.

I have nothing to be ashamed of in my little effort to bring around the change, to end the scare. I think that anyone who resorts to anon communications is a wimp and worse if they are doing so to threaten people with harm.

The idea of a hate campaign is crazy. I think that the heat in the debate, excuse the pun, needs to get in control. The talk of death threats and the like are just disgusting. Everyone is someone’s son or daughter, or mum or dad, etc in my book.

The stuff that I was doing was much more in the lines of techniques used by any legit pressure group, say the WWF or similar. And it was probably of no real effect but I felt good trying. Maybe it was a little smarter than what the WWF would do, that is probs the only thing I could offer.

In the end, what I felt was that the lack of an organised resistance / pressure group on our sceptic side meant that common folks needed to step up to the plate and do, as I said, things that any normal pressure group would do in a democracy. Remember, the debate was infested with other pressure groups on the other side. I was worried about the imbalance and I tried to do something about it. That, I think, is called democracy.

You may also not know but I have been a pretty well published letters to editor writer on climate here in Australia going back a decade or so. Again, name and address supplied. Hardly a sectret sceptic.

So, really and truthfully, what lttle I did, which was actually reasonably well explained in my blog, was on the record, above board, and without anything more untoward than the odd heated swear word and the odd political rough and tumble, sort of like what you see on any political interview debate.

It was about massing some numbers, again as my blog said. I even gave away little hints about using paid advertising to recruit ( my invention). Hardly a secretive tale.

This is all quite crazy really. As I said, the blog was more detailed than the discussions since suggest. Anyway, it was for my friends and certainly not intended for a wider audience. I am suprised that it has gone this far.

I have taken it all down cause it is just silly. The warmists have it in screenshot and are peddling it. Again, look at it, it says what is so obvious, I didn’t know about the hack. What I did know was that really compelling science was building on our side. These are things picked up from the standard blogs.

If I was writing for an audience who were up on climate, I probably would have just said what these science things were. My audience was friends who said I should write something about what I had been doing. Maybe I will repost with annoations to help?

The only things left out were the actual techniques but, I assure you, they can be found being taught in many a university course. Indeed, I could point you to dozens of books that I have read that deal with them. You will probably find them in a WWF campaign tool kit. I just didn’t feel good about sharing them since it is on the web. Some I am using in a commercial sense as well and I feel quite comfortable about that.

I was also being a little coy about the politica scene. That was probably the only real things I was keeping close to my chest as they were underway as the blog was being written.

Also, people should look at the premise of the original accusation. The original idiot based it on the fact that I had written about the hack prior to it happening. Even someone in the comments points out that my blog was weeks after. Indeed, I did not even have a blog system set up prior. I set it up on the day, well actually a bit before as I did some other entries for specific audiences (political audiences) then I removed them. Nothing sinister, just was a big political time in Australia then.

So, the very premise of the guys claim was so wrong. Of course, not to mention that it is simply the silliest idea that a hacker would talk about it, let alone write about it on the web. I would assume that they would no more about the way the web works than any of us.

Anyway, I think that everyone is just a little too excited like they are in some cops and robbers thing. I know that I have had communications from sceptics nudging me to come clean, Again, as if anyone who did it would do that. It’s a tad infantile, really.

I bet you that it was a leak from CRU.

On the Hamilton article, you really have no idea who this guy is and what he has been up to. Ask Andrew Bolte for a run down. Actually I notice that the worst story is explained in the comments.

This is their new tactic, try to paint the ‘deniers’ as nasty pieces of work. Let us see how he expands on this. Let us see if he is not putting things out of context. Maybe not, I am sure that there is some weridos and idiots that would threaten people with hate mail. I know I am not one of them.

We should not be giving them the time of day. This is a bunch that has people in their midsts that say “cheering news” when alluding to the death of one of the nicest men engaged in the debate. Who do they think they are throwing mud around??

The only thing that offends me is that the warmists say teh blog was rambling. I thought it was well written and I know friends posted such comments on my FaceBook entry that was the only pointer to the blog and it was not in the Ggogle index. I know who tipped them off. Oh well, that is how the whole debate goes and I would sooner see it just all be put to national inquiries where the likes of lucia, Mc, Roger, Plimer, etc can have thier say. After all, that is all I have ever wanted.

So, hope that helps. Can we get back to the real discussions. I want to continue my education via Lucia et al. I want to keep learning about temps, etc. I am not sure why we are even discussion hacks, hate mail, etc.

PS, Frank, what is your real name matey??? Come on, coem out of the cloest.

Jimi–
I post temperatures when they come out!

Thanks for clarifying you are not the hacker. It never seemed likely for many of the reasons you say. But maybe this whole thing got you some fun traffic you can discuss with your friends. ‘eh?

Hmmm.. Google sent me $100 of coupons for google ads. Maybe I should use them. . .?

A bit OT but I’m curious — Now that Jimi has outed himself as an Aussie how many other Aussies are regular / occasional contributors to this blog? I know that David G and maybe Nick S and me but it seems there are more. Now Aust makes up about 0.3% of the world population but we are terrrible CO2 emmitters — maybe that is why we are so active on climate blogs.
My fellow Australians we should be a little cautious in the robustness of our langugae what is acceptable at an Aussie BBQ I think might be thought a little fruity by some others.

Andrew–
According to Alexa, 6% of my readers are from Australia. But I don’t know if I trust it because it also thinks most my readers are female and… well… I don’t believe that.
You can see more here: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/.....=home_home

>The only things left out were the actual techniques but, I assure you, they can be found being taught in many a university course. Indeed, I could point you to dozens of books that I have read that deal with them. You will probably find them in a WWF campaign tool kit. I just didn’t feel good about sharing them since it is on the web. Some I am using in a commercial sense as well and I feel quite comfortable about that.

In other words, you did’t share the code because it is your IP, and you were referring to nothing dastardly, just a common ‘trick’ that is well known to people in your field, and has been published many times?

Re: Andrew Kennett (Feb 22 16:39),
You can work it out – we’re the night shift

Re: Nick Stokes (Feb 22 21:04),
I suspect Alexa figures it out based on IP addresses. I tend to notice the .au emails.

MikeN, I like your humour and take your point to a degree. But the slight difference is that the Mike’s little nature trick was trying to shut the gate on further discussions and my ‘tricks’, if we call them that, were about trying to open the gates.

I know you will shout, but that is going to cost us the earth but I would instead suggest that considering the sort of stuff that has come out of late that this moment in time would have come soon enough. So, best that we just put it all behind us and go forward.

You see, I am a denier. I deny that the science was settled. I am so not sure on AGW either way. I hope that we can move forward in a new transparent and open way and, heaven forbid, with less nastiness from all of us.

Hey, I have blogged on the whole episode. A bit rambling but funny, if it were not so serious.

http://jimidundee.blogspot.com.....proof.html

Thanks for the alexa.com tip but am disappointed that I’m from “other.” I was curious how many from here in Switzerland, there should be at least one more outside of me (the guy who contributed the “Swiss Homogenization” post at Air Vent).

Well, even deleted this stays – it was originally a correction, then saw I could edit the comment itself, great system, thanks!