(Cartoon by Cartoons by Josh, courtesy of Tallbloke’s Talkshop)
Hacked climate emails: police seize computers at West Yorkshire home
Police seize equipment as part of investigation into the theft of thousands of private emails from the University of East Anglia
Tallbloke towers raided: many computers taken
“AN Englishman’s home is his castle they say. Not when six detectives from the Metropolitan Police, the Norfolk Constabulary and the Computer Crime division arrive on your doorstep with a warrant to search it though.
I waved the first three in and bid them head through to the sitting room, where there was less of an chill near the woodburner. Then they kept coming, being introduced by the lead detective from Norfolk as they trooped in. I thought I’d been chosen to host the secret policemen’s ball or something…”
Norfolk police had a warrant to “search and seize” Tallboy’s machines. In the end, they took 2 laptops and a router for the 90 day period of the Warrant.
A spokesman for the University of East Anglia said today: “We are pleased to hear that the police are continuing to actively pursue the case following the release last month of a second tranche of hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit. We hope this will result in the arrest of those responsible for the theft of the emails and for distorting the debate on the globally important issue of climate change.”
What was it that merited such harsh treatment?
“The police told me that I’m not a suspect in any crime and so I am a little bit lost as to understand what they hope to find on my personal computers.
Mr Tattersall said police were interested in a comment posted on his blog which linked to a US website where the leaked emails could be downloaded.
“The bloggers aren’t really responsible for every comment that’s placed in the open public comments sections on their blogs,” he said.
“The police have been very clear that I’m not a suspect in any crime and it’s not illegal that my blog had this comment placed on it and people were able to go and download these emails, so I’m really just puzzled as to the police action at this stage.”
So a mob handed police raid was instigated to have a look at the source of one comment placed on Tallboy’s blog by a reader…not even by him himself.
Surely a polite visit by one of Whitehall’s ‘most senior civil servants’ could have persuaded Tallboy to hand over the IP address and other details of the commenter.
Guess that was too easy. Must have been a case of deliberate intimidation by the State to close down climate sceptic voices.
The BBC are headlining with the Snowden/Greenwald story and giving it plenty of airtime on Today….though it seems a minor revelation that Cameron asked the Guardian if it wouldn’t mind handing over the material.
They dragged in journalist Duncan Campbell, an expert in intelligence and computer surveillance, to tell us how bad things are now…..but, as a surprised Evan Davis pointed out, things were in fact at least the same, if not a lot worse in the past….Campbell had his door kicked in by police , the BBC were raided and an American was deported for writing about sensitive areas….which kind of undermines the Guardian’s stance now….though Campbell, somewhat of a lefty, disagreed….things are so much worse now he assured us, or reassured the ‘Left’.
It is entertaining to say the least to see the Guardian squealing about being treated like terrorists and complaining of the shadowy figures of State Security looming over them.
Remember the rumpus they set up over the CRU climate change emails? The Guardian and BBC worked furiously to denounce those who ‘stole’ those emails.
The Climate lobby demanded the police allocate huge resources to catch the criminals…for the consequences of the ‘theft’ could be catastrophic for the World.
Here the Guardian reveals the importance it gave to those CRU emails and why the thieves really needed to be apprehended…
There is a scandal behind the latest release of emails written by climate scientists but is not about climate science. The true scandal is how, two years on, no one still has a clue who obtained the emails and why they so carefully timed their release for just before the UN’s annual climate change negotiations.
It matters. Those negotiations are central to the world’s efforts to tackling global warming.
Until we know the identity and motivation of those behind the release of the emails, they still present a danger…..until the merchants of doubt who seek to poison the debate are unmasked, that already Herculean task will be even harder.
Just how dangerous were the climate sceptics?….
‘….one scientist stating: “Those who deny the biophysical facts of the world would deny … gravity” and “we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against … merciless enemies.’
The stereotypical Lefty, and favourite economic guru of the BBC compared them to the Nazis…
And Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman evoked Pastor Niemoeller’s cry against the erosion of humanity under the Nazis: “First, they came for the climate scientists…”.
When Foreign Secretary, Labour’s Margaret Becket compared climate sceptics to Islamic terrorists:
On Thursday, Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, compared climate sceptics to advocates of Islamic terror. Neither, she said, should have access to the media.
Beckett is following a trend. Increasingly, environmentalists are calling for the silencing of climate-change sceptics or deniers. The deniers’ words are so dangerous, we are told, that they must be censored for the good of humanity. Some have even claimed that in denying climate change, these individuals are committing a “crime against humanity” and should be put on trial.
The Guardian and BBC set out to undermine the credibility and importance of the exposure of the dodgy science behind the claims of global warming, claims which have cost this country billions and sent the price of fuel skywards, as well as having a drastic effect upon industrial competitiveness and therefore economic growth. They were happy to see Tallboy in the dock so to speak, no problem that his life was turned upside down and his family inconvenienced…and he’s not a journalist either…just a civilian blogger with an interest in climate.
On the other hand the Guardian and Co believes potentially handing enormous amounts of highly secret and sensitive information to terrorists or foreign powers isn’t important…..and you have to assume both China and Russia have their hands on the files now after accomodating Snowden.
It seems that when it suits, the apparatus of a police state should be put at the disposal of the Guardianistas and BBC fellow travellers like Black (RIP) and Harrabin to hunt down the criminals who ’stole’ the ‘smoking gun’ emails but when the spotlight is turned on them they squeal about freedom of the Press, being treated like terrorists and the injustice of dragging in family members into the affair…despite Miranda acting as a willing courier for the highly sensitive information.
As Corporal Jones would have said “They don’t like it up ’em!”.
Alan, an interesting (and disturbing) post. One has to wonder what the police think they going to achieve by raiding Tallbloke? Who’s interest are they acting in?
“…On Thursday, Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, compared climate sceptics to advocates of Islamic terror. Neither, she said, should have access to the media.”
Beckett’s hideous comments are actually a perfect example of just how toxic the Left can be; with typical leftie belligerence (and no sense of irony whatsoever) she fails completely to spot the tenor of her remark – and it’s interesting to see a New Labour grandee now comparing climate sceptics to Islamic terrorists (is that better or worse than being compared to a Holocaust denier..?).
Will this noxious Left (a real and present danger to freedom of speech, thought and action) stop at nothing to silence the critics of the CAGW agenda? In all their efforts to do so, they simply reveal, ever more clearly, the measure of their latent totalitarian tendencies – perhaps we should be grateful, at least, for that.
Let’s ignore the tone about climate change skepticism, since I know for a fact there will be people who think they can deliberately miss the point by quoting some scientific sources about global warming. I’m willing to accept the evidence (at least some of it) that suggests we’re speeding up the process of global warming and regardless of that I’d suggest it’s surely a good idea regardless to try and find sustainable, renewable energy sources and end our reliance on finite oil supplies. That’s beside the point – the point is the Guardian’s (and the left in general) hypocrisy in wanting a dictatorship when it suits their ideology despite being ‘liberal,’ then crying about freedom of speech when they themselves are investigating things which are alleged to be illegal. It’s the same reason they think everyone has a right to tolerance of their often abject, uninformed and prejudiced views on men, the English, etc., but they oppose the electorate’s right to a referendum on the EU. They’re afraid, quite rightly, that they’ll lose, so again it’s liberty when it suits them. Same with the BBC, whose own Andrew Marr once promoted views not dissimilar to those of Beckett and also said the government should not only open the immigration floodgates (this was in 1999, before his wish was granted) but that they should force race mixing on the entire population of the UK. You can read it by clicking on my name, no surprises that it was in the Guardian as well.
The left have always followed the same mantra, “Do as I say and not as I do”, followed by their innate belief that ‘what is mine,s mine but what’s yours is ours.’
The rules they make are for others to obey but never apply to them and when they get anything wrong it is always someone else’s fault.
Am I a climate-change sceptic who denies that the climate changes.
No, but I have lost faith in the Arrhenius method of calculating the Greenhouse effect, due to practical reasons around thermodynamics, but then all my problems have disappeared because I have read the paper “Unified Theory of Climate”. But the thought of the Labour party putting scientists who have read this scientific paper, into jail with Islamic terrorists is very frightening, but won’t change the truth.
The CRU emails are only about temperature measurers trying to diddle the record and showing that they do not like to talk about more relevant and basic climate science outside of their field, a behaviour and attitude where CRU scientist are terrified of being proved wrong shows the CRU to be more ideological than pleased about mistakes being identified.
Outside of the CRU, there are scientists looking for the truth, and therefore, pleased to be proved wrong, because scientists always want to be correct. Not like the CRU, fighting a war against dangerous Climate Sceptics whose scepticism on whatever specific point could be proved correct.
Like Margaret Becket I do not like what Islamic terrorists may possibly say, but unlike her I believe in “Free Speech” for everyone, no matter what they say, even if they say things I do not agree with such as “the Climate never Changes” or “The World is flat” or “I hate you” or even a Racist or Rude word. This is because people usually do not like or agree with what was said, but do not want the nanny state to Censor what was said.
No complaints from the BBC when the govt set the anti-terrorist squad onto climate sceptics after climate gate, but for 24+ hours now, Labour, guardian and BBC have been attacking the govt over Miranda affair and use of anti terror laws.
sarc> But that was a benevolent Labour state sending it’s peace-keeping politically correct police, on unicorns powered by fairy dust, to tackle the terrorist anti-science denialists, who were all white middle class males in the pay of big oil. /sarc.
Yup, I think I covered that one accurately for those insane lefties.
And, Yvette Cooper on bbc news today, condemning Miranda’s detention under terror laws.
Funny tho’ ( hat tip to previous poster) that she didn’t grumble when that OAP was arrested under terror laws at a Liebour Party Conference! And he only shouted ” rubbish”
What a bunch of self serving sanctimonious wankers, growing fat at the public expense.
Are the Tories any better?
Nope, William Vague quick off the mark to condemn some unconfirmed reports of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, by the Syrian Authorities of course. He wouldn’t be so quick to condemn his cuddly rebel friends.
What bloody planet does that moron live on?
Meanwhile The Register smells a rat at the picture of destroyed computers.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/21/guardian_smashed_computers_questioned/
The whole story stinks to be honest. Why did GCHQ trust The Guardian’s word that they’d destroyed the hard drives and that they were the only copies in the country? That’s hardly a ‘thorough’ destruction of the data is it?
I look forward to the security services taking this further… MUCH further. The Guardian’s editor in chief is now implicated in fraudulently destroying a computer with the aim of perverting the cause of justice.
He also admits that they still have copies of the sensitive data. This is in direct violation of orders to hand over or destroy that data.
I do so hope that this leads to the state destroying the Guardian.
OK that may seem like bias, and unlike those lefties, I would not normally want to see an outlet of an opposing political viewpoint shut-down, but the Guardian started this with their attack on the Murdoch press.
Now the Guardian is involved in something potentially far more damaging than hacking a few celebrity’s cellphones.
Murdoch closed the News of the World, when their wrongdoing was exposed. Will the Guardian be as responsible or moral? I very much doubt it.
The Guardian has sunk to an ethical and moral low, much lower than the level of the Murdoch press.
I’m sick of hearing sanctimonious leftie hacks moaning about Miranda’s detention being an attack on a free press. The whinging bastard was suspected of being in possession of stolen state secrets, for God’s sake! He was being used as a mule by his Guardianista boyfriend to ferry the traitor Snowden’s illicit information back to this country.
Since when has it been legitimate for a newspaper to publicise stolen data that’s subject to the Official Secrets Act? How do these idiots at he Guardian think the government and Security Services would have behaved if Greenwald had published illicit information given him by Kim Philby? Does Greenwald believe it would have been O.K. to tell the world about Bletchley Park’s Enigma decryptions if he had been around in World War 2?
The Guardian has shown itself to a risk to this country’s security, caring little for the safety of this country’s citizens in its pursuit of agenda driven stories. Rusbridger himself should be lifted by Plod and charged with being an accessory to offences under the Official Secrets Act. It’s not as if they don’t know what they are doing. They know too well but don’t care as long as it embarrasses both U.K. and U.S. governments.
Because the Guardian’s got so much muck on which Scotland Yard officers it’s bribed over the years, to find out which Sun hacks would be fingered next, that the spooks were told to take it easy.
It’s a clear double standard at the BBC on how they treat government use (or abuse) of the powers of detention and intimidation. This is a classic example of Peter Sisson’s complaint: “I lost count of the number of times I asked a producer for a brief on a story, only to be handed a copy of The Guardian and told ‘it’s all in there’.”
Quite literally these days.
I am not a piece of Edwardian furniture, I am a free man.
Please credit the image and link to http://cartoonsbyjosh.com
Thanks
oxbridge educated posh boys and posh girls down at the guardian really dont live in the real world do they.
Just as the the subversive Muslim Brotherhood has its covert transitional political programme to Islamise the world, so too the political left (inc BBC and ‘Guardian), have their similar Marxist (Gramscian) political programme in action too.
just heard that jeremy bowen has packed his bags in egypt and is heading down syria way to join the rebel lines in the spreading of more lies and mistruths about this staged made up chemical attack by the syrian army against the al qaeda rebels
“That airport arrest troubles me. But the Guardian’s in murky waters where those who love their country should not venture”
By STEPHEN GLOVER.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2398470/The-Guardians-murky-waters-love-country-venture-says-STEPHEN-GLOVER.html
the story includes the line ” This is the implication of the Guardian’s reporting of these events, which have dominated the airwaves for two days.” That is – the BBC has been led by the nose by the Guardian.
Plus ca change,….
Miranda gave up his passwords when they threatened him. When they tried that on me, I pointed out they had a warrant to search the inside of my house, not the inside of my head. Granted though, the powers under the two terror laws used are different.
Anyone finding themselves in a situation where passwords are being demanded should shut up until their lawyer arrives. In this situation, Miranda was told he didn’t have the right to have his own lawyer. At that point I’d have given them the finger and taken the three months on the chin.
Nr Tallbloke
First – a big salute to you for what you went through in ClimateGate.
On Miranda – he claimed in the first report, (probably written by Greenwald) that he was not allowed a lawyer nor water to drink – but the police say he was told he could have a lawyer – and water. Miranda has since changed his story. He was told he could have a lawyer present during the questioning.
but he wanted to use his own lawyer – who did not arrive for 8 hours.
The Guardian dissembling, as usual.
Tallbloke, your situation isn’t all that similar to this one. You didn’t have the documents in question in your possession, and never did. At the time of your incident, nobody had confessed to stealing or illegally acquiring the CRU emails, even though the BBC and the CRU were stating uncategorically that they had been stolen. You did not invite anyone to post a link to them on your blog.
Miranda, on the other hand, was voluntarily transporting for distribution illegally acquired material. St. Edward had already admitted to breaking the law to get that material, and it was well known that Miranda did this kind of work for Greenwald. The two situations aren’t all that similar.
The abuse of anti-terrorism laws in Miranda’s case – if there indeed has been one – isn’t anywhere near as grievous as what was done to you. In both cases, though, it seems that the UK authorities were doing this at the behest of the US President.
Under UK law, ignorance of the law is not a valid defence. However, I think you may have the right to know what the potential penalties are for refusing to comply. So although Miranda was told he didn’t have the right to his own lawyer, and that he didn’t have the right to silence, he did perhaps have the right to ask what the price of non-compliance was.
In his situation I would have asked that, and on being told it was three months in prison, I’d have told them to get on with it. The way to deal with bullies is to call their bluff. They’d have then had to prosecute for refusing to divulge passwords under section 7 of their terror law in court, where Miranda’s lawyer could have scored some nice points on the fact that the police knew Miranda isn’t a terrorist before they detained him. Misapplication of terror laws against us is a creeping authoritarian tactic. They need to be resisted before such behaviour becomes entrenched as normal procedure.
“The Guardian didn’t care when Murdoch’s journalists were arrested. So why the hysteria now?”
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-week/leading-article/9000981/freedom-and-security/
“Editor says Guardian was forced to destroy Snowden material”
(6 min video interview with John Bolton)
http://video.foxnews.com/v/2618736622001/editor-says-guardian-was-forced-to-destroy-snowden-material/?intcmp=obnetwork