Climategate: Obama's boot boys strike back

When I first read this morning that the police had paid a nocturnal visit to the blogger Tallbloke to confiscate his computers I thought at first it was a non-story. Jolly annoying and inconvenient for Tallbloke, obviously, but nothing too sinister. Tallbloke was one of the first people contacted when mystery whistleblower FOIA 2011 leaked the Climategate 2.0 files onto the internet; the ongoing investigation by Norfolk police into the identity of the Climategate leaker has been singularly unsuccessful; so it seemed sadly inevitable that in their flailing desperation to be seen to be doing something, anything, to get their man, the Norfolk plod would resort to tactics like this. (H/T Sir Gawain Towler)

(To give you an idea of the spirit in which Tallbloke is taking it, here's what he says at Climateaudit: "The detective- insprctor and his colleagues were polite, well mannered and did not over-react when I declined to give them my wordpress password. I politely explained that they had a warrant to search my house, not my head.")

But no: it seems the true instigator of this vexatious abuse of power by arbitrary authority may be none other than President Obama.

Here's Chris Horner with the lowdown in the Washington Examiner:

I have seen apparent proof that the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), Criminal Division, is working with United Kingdom police to pursue the leaker of the 2009 and 2011 “Climategate” emails.

I have learned that last week DOJ sent a search-and-seizure letter to the host of three climate-change "skeptic" blogs. Last night, UK police raided a blogger’s home and removed computers and equipment.

On December 9, DOJ sent a preservation letter under 18 U.S.C 2703(f) to the publication platform (website host) WordPress. This authority authorizes the government to request an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to preserve all records of a specific account for 90 days while the feds work on a warrant.

Norfolk PD affirmed to the subject of at least one of their raids that this international law enforcement hunt is for the leaker, meaning not for those whose acts the leaker exposed by making public emails containing admissions in their own words.

That last paragraph of Horner's addresses a conundrum which has been puzzling quite a few of us, viz: why are all these public resources being wasted on the pursuit of somebody who, even if the police catch him, has no case whatsoever to answer. If a whistleblower leaks information in the public interest – as Climategate and Climategate 2.0 clearly are – then he is pretty much immune from prosecution. (Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998)

Sure if you listen to the spivs at the University of Easy Access, the sphincter-burstingly angry propagandists at comedy websites like RealClimate, or to lavishly paid palaeopiezometrists like the Bob Ward, then, yes, the Climategate and Climategate 2.0 emails were "stolen." But no serious person really believes that. The "stolen" meme was just a shoddy ruse – first promoted by the Warmists' amen corner the BBC – designed to distract attention from the only genuinely criminal acts of this whole affair: the flagrant and deliberate breach of FOI regulations by sundry Climategate "scientists"; the potentially fraudulent use of millions of pounds and dollars of public money for political ends.

Why this is the sledgehammer being used to crack a nut?

We can but feverishly speculate. My personal favourite theory so far – lent credence by several of the wise comments at Watts Up With That – is that it concerns all those encrypted emails that FOIA 2011 claimed to have in his possession when he unleashed Climategate 2.0. In other words, there may be more juicy stuff – much, much more juicy stuff – to come. It may also be that the names incriminated are not merely those of low-rent types like Phil Jones and Michael Mann, but senior politicians and businessmen with much more to lose if they're ever found out.

So let's hope they are, eh?

PS Memo to Norfolk police: if you do pop round this evening to confiscate my computer, that massive porn archive has nothing to do with me. It's the kids'. Or the cat's. Something like that.

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