(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.