James Taranto points out an incongruent position in regards to the New York Times editorial page:
Then:
* “The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.”–New York Times, on the Climategate emails, Nov. 20, 2009
Now:
* “The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. . . . The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match.”–New York Times, on the WikiLeaks documents, Nov. 29, 2010
But of course no surprises here! After all, this is the same revered and respected newspaper read by millions all over the globe who proudly published leaked information damaging to our national security and defended that decision.
To add to Taranto’s case, here’s the NYTimes editorial from January 4, 2006:
Given the Bush administration’s appetite for leak investigations (three are under way), this seems a good moment to try to clear away the fog around this issue.
A democratic society cannot long survive if whistle-blowers are criminally punished for revealing what those in power don’t want the public to know – especially if it’s unethical, illegal or unconstitutional behavior by top officials. Reporters need to be able to protect these sources, regardless of whether the sources are motivated by policy disputes or nagging consciences. This is doubly important with an administration as dedicated as this one is to extreme secrecy.
~~~When the government does not want the public to know what it is doing, it often cites national security as the reason for secrecy. The nation’s safety is obviously a most serious issue, but that very fact has caused this administration and many others to use it as a catchall for any matter it wants to keep secret, even if the underlying reason for the secrecy is to prevent embarrassment to the White House. The White House has yet to show that national security was harmed by the report on electronic spying, which did not reveal the existence of such surveillance – only how it was being done in a way that seems outside the law.
Leak investigations are often designed to distract the public from the real issues by blaming the messenger. Take the third leak inquiry, into a Washington Post report on secret overseas C.I.A. camps where prisoners are tortured or shipped to other countries for torture. The administration said the reporting had damaged America’s image. Actually, the secret detentions and torture did that.
Illegal spying and torture need to be investigated, not whistle-blowers and newspapers.
Yes, the world is a much safer place because we can trust the NYTimes to make the editorial decisions on what classified information is and what is not worthy of being leaked to the general public.
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
And then there was climategate and the silence.
You are overlooking the obvious differences between the “climategate” documents and the wikileaks documents:
1) The climategate documents related to research on an issue; the wikileaks documents relate to the operation of our government.
2) The climategate documents were stolen from individuals; the wikileaks documents were stolen from the US government.
You cannot substitute apples for oranges and make a coherent comparison. The wikileaks documents, therefore, are more similar to the Pentagon papers (stolen from the Nixon administration) or the disclosure of the Bush era torture programs. Climategate, in contrast, is more similar to the hacking of Chiquita Banana’s voicemail system, or the taping of John Boehner’s cell phone call.
Read an article in The Wall Street Journal that stipulates that the stimulus was a complete bust.
Keynesian economics (I call it Kenyan Economics) has been proven counterproductive again. Tax cuts and austerity measures are the way to go. Will this get traction in the New York Times?
I guess that one should send the article to Wikileaks and the article will be front page news. I wonder how their 13% financing with Carlos Slim is working out? Gray Lady Down.
Even the birds are rejecting the (NYT) as absorbent in the bottom of their cages.
The NY TImes sucks.
Brob, that is the worst argument you’ve ever made.
When Congressman Jim McDermott came into possession of an illegal copy of a phone call between Dick Armey (House Majority Leader), John Boehner (Republican Conference Chairman), and Newt Gingrich (Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives) what did he do with it?
He passed it on to the New York Times.
I guess he knew what the NYTimes would do with it FOR him and his party.
The NYTimes only swings one way when it comes to how it stands on privacy issues.
Question: If the Climategate e-mails were simply communications between individuals, why were they subject to the UK Freedom of Information Act?
Answer: Because they were not simply communications between individuals. They were communications between individuals engaged in activities funded by the government, using communications systems funded by the government, and therefore subject to laws covering official government communications.
The Climategate file is believed to have been put together by the University of East Anglia in anticipation of complying with official UK-FOIA requests. The Climategate insiders had stonewalled the requests long enough to evade the absurdly short (6 months, I think) statute of limitations of the law. But regardless of why that file was created, if they had complied with the requests as the law demanded, the e-mails in the file would have been made public.
B-Rob = tool.
dr john —
If the argument is that weak, you would have had a field day picking it apart. But you haven’t because you can’t.
If you do not know the difference between printing papers stolen from a private party versus papers stolen from a governmental entity, then it is a waste of time to try to explain it.
Nan G. —
You say that Jim McDermott passed the intercepted phone conversation on to the NY Times. I looked up the case because I did not recall that part. Here is some background on what went down:
Boehner successfully sued McDermott for distributing the tape, but I cannot see that he ever sued the Times. PROBABLY because of that tricky First Amendment right to report on the misconduct of government officials, in this case Newt Gingrich’s apparent violation of House Ethics Committee rules coming on the heels of their investigation of his other misconduct.
So you are right about the NY Times using the taped conversation then; I wonder if they would use those tapes now, since the Supreme Court clarified what is improper “use” of illegally recorded stuff. The Cincinnati Enquirer learned the hard way in the Chiquita Banana case. But I stand by my larger point: it was wrong to tape Boehner’s private conversation, just as it was wrong to hack the computers in climategate or hack Chiquita’s voicemail system. That distinction, disclosing the operation of government versus disclosing non-governmental operations, explains why you might print one set of leaks and not the other.
If you believe some of the people at East Anglia those ”Climategate” emails were NOT hacked.
There was never any proof that they were ”hacked.”
One professor who was involved in part of the research felt his research was being skewed for the purpose of making the end result fit a pre-determined desired result.
He started keeping all of the emails and simply released them after seeing that his fellow researchers were not above slandering anyone who disagreed with their skewed result, including himself!
He wasn’t about to let that happen so he sent the emails out to the world for all to see.
The guy is a hero but I only remember his life’s work was on tree rings and climate, not his name.
Stating that “the Climategate files were hacked” as an established fact is a falsehood. “Hacked files” is the mitigating cover story used by every establishment drone embarrassed or hindered by what’s in the e-mails. There is no evidence that the e-mails were obtained by improper use of computers. In fact, every indication is that a whistleblower on the inside released the file – someone who knew of its existence, and where it was located, and had system permission to access it.
You like whistleblowers, don’t you B-Rob? You know, when they expose law-breakers?
One thing that is a fact – by their own admission, these jokers had stonewalled legitimate FOIA requests that would have rightfully resulted in release of these e-mails. They resisted complying with the law. They’ve come up with excuses like a harrassing “flurry” of FOIA requests. But, the repeated FOIA requests came from the same people who had filed earlier FOIA requests and gotten nothing. That’s why they filed again.
Wm. T. Sherman —
You added the insult at the end because you are simply not very smart and, therefore, resort to the kind of language most people outgrew in eighth grade.
Are we in the United Kingdom? No. Is the New York Times in the United States? Yes. Which laws would apply to the New York Times? US laws, genius!
Have you ever heard of the Stored Communications Act? Have you? And you are aware, aren’t you, that in the US, EVEN IF documents are public records, you are NOT permitted to hack into a computer and access them? You know that right, genius?
And assuming you are correct (which I won’t), exactly how would the “fact” that documents relate to government funded research mean it was OK to hack a computer to access e-mails about that research? That certainly would land you in federal prison in this country and I doubt the UK is any different.
In short, your retort, which rests on the assumption that e-mails about publicly funded research are, therefore, free game, is not only illogical, it is also IRRELEVANT to how a US newspaper decides what to print and what not to print, what to “use” in its reportage and what not to use. Try again . . . .
Nan G – Dr Keith Briffa was the tree-ring guy. He has been mentioned as the suspected whistle-blower. But he is guilty of malfeasance too – he cherrypicked tree ring data to get the “proper” temperature record.
Given how careless these guys were with their records, and how ruthless they were in suppressing competing views, I think the list of suspects is quite long.
Nan G. and Sherman, my boy —
You claim that climategate was NOT a hack job, yet I note the complete absence of any link to anything indicating that, contrary to what was reported in England at the time, the e-mails were not “hacked.”
Love this hypocrisy:
Alan Colmes is left blathering when O’Reilly points out that he hated the Plame leak but now loves this leak.
@Silly Bob: You first said that it was okay for the Government documents to be hacked because, well because it was the Government. (Your logic, not mine.)
Then later, you imply that it ISN’T okay for folks to take Government documents… (Again, your logic, not mine.)
Flip flop much?
B-Rob, nice to see you getting all heated up. I hope you continue in this vein.
The only sources for the utterly unsubstantiated claim of hacking are the very people who would be embarassed. And the embarassment is great – for this goes much further than just a few academics. There are literally trillions of dollars in play. There is increased government control of our daily lives in play.
The circumstantial evidence all supports an inside job, while no evidence at all has been brought forward to support a claim of espionage or security intrusion.
But never mind that, because most importantly – you originally founded your claim of impropriety in Climategate but not Wilileaks thusly:
I have explained why the Climategate e-mails were not merely private communications between individuals – why they qualify as government e-mails. And you have indicated that you have no problem with violating the law to release government e-mails to the public for a good cause.
I have also explained why witholding the Climategate e-mails actually violated the law. So, don’t bother me with your squeaking about the letter of the law. You want to apply a double standard based on which ox is being gored – as does the New York TImes.
@B-Rob: LOL, I won’t even say anything. Please speak for us:
Not at all resorting to eighth grade tactics are we? As expected, the liberal takes the intellectual high ground and avoids any jabs back.
🙄
And seriously, I can’t believe anyone would defend wiki leaks. Lets just use your own logic here:
So if someone leaks classified information (that puts many people at risk – I hardly doubt any scientists life was at risk) – your same logic doesn’t hold true? Or wait since it is a government, all those rules go out the window if it supports a left-wing cause (pretty much anything anti-american is my assumption).
Seriously, arguing with people like you is a waste of time. The koolaid has run out, because this country (and people like b-rob) have drank enough to drown the world in Oh-Yeah-Commie-Red-Krazie flavor.
I could be wrong, but is there a possibility that the orchestrated leak was a way to neutralise Clinton of running against Obama in 2012?
BROB the liar and maker of excuses for all things despicable by the left. Go figure that BROB the liar can’t see the similarities. Just another blind leftist.
my boy Sherman —
You still have not substantiated, in any way whatsoever, your claim that the documents were NOT hacked. I can point to contemporaneous reporting that the suspicion is that they WERE hacked. We even have some speculation as to who hacked them and why. And your support for the “they were not hacked” proposition? Nothing . . . .
auntie’s rocks —
Just because research is funded by the government does not mean the actual research results, nonetheless e-mails relating to the research, are property of the government. It does not work that way in the US and I am 99.997% sure it would not work that way in the UK, either. In other words, if Ohio State is doing federally funded research on a disease, you, aunties’s rocks, do not have any authority to hack into the OSU’s computers to get access to the e-mails just because they related to a federally funded activity. Indeed, since the e-mails would be generated by a state agency (the university) and not a federal agency, the federal Freedom of Information Act would not even apply; rather, you would do a “public records act” request under state law. Even then, the e-mails may not be “public records” if there is anything of a proprietary nature contained in them, or of a non-governmental nature (e.g., personal info, opinion, gossip, etc.) that does not document the functioning of government, or anything relating to legal advice or attorney work product. In that sense, you are simply starting from an entirely false premise — that e-mails on a public university server are “public” records and free for the taking if they related to publicly funded activities. That is just not true.
The latest wikileaks docs are entirely different. Assuming the Bradley kid is behind them, you have someone who had proper legal ACCESS to what is assuredly GOVERNMENT documents, documenting the function of government, but which are then improperly distributed outside the government to a foreign non-profit, not even within the jurisdiction of the US. Since the documents were NOT classified as top secret, I am not even sure that the Espionage Act would apply, nonetheless apply to someone who has never been, to my knowledge, within the reach of US law. Under that ridiculously expansive reading, Assange could be prosecuted for espionage if he published non-public info concerning orange crop projections.
Could he be convicted of theft or receiving stolen property? Probably. Could they extradite Assange after the Swedish police are done with him on the rape charges? You betcha . . . he probably has already been indicted, would be my guess.
inge —
The “get Hillary” conspiracy theory makes no sense at all: jeopardizing the US relationship with Saudi Arabia, Afghnistan and Yemen to “neutralize” someone who you already beat then coopted by bringing them into your government? Someone who could not ever beat you even if she wanted to would merit this kind of risk? Makes no sense at all. Besides . . . I am betting she will be Obama’s vice presidential running mate in 2012, with Biden going to State.
Don Bly —
Trying to get an intelligent comment out of you is like performing a Pap smear on a bull: failure is imminent because off a fundamental lack of necessary equipment . . . .
B-Rob, why were the Climategate e-mails subject to a Freedom of Information request?
Re: Whistleblower vs. hacker: http://washingtonexaminer.com/node/143591
I’m not on board with the “get Hillary” theory.
The man who had his Illinois state senate opponent’s divorce records leaked could come up with something a lot closer to home. It’s the Clintons we’re talking about here. Loose sh*t everywhere.
O and his regime are just massively incompetent, and utterly indifferent to the ultimate fate of this nation. “Preserve, protect, and defend.” What a joke it is to them. That’s much better – right?
my boy Sherman —
Did you even read what you posted? That opinion column says NOTHING AT ALL supporting the headline that a “whistleblower”, and not a hacker, released the info. It does not even explain why a “whistleblower” in England would route his taking of the e-mails through a server in Siberia. It does not even make any sense to route e-mails anywhere, as opposed to the whistleblower just printing the stuff out and handing it over to whomever he wanted to give it to.
In addition, the opinion column says NOTHING about the documents being subject to a Freedom of Information request. Where did you get THAT from?
In addition, you still do not seem to acknowledge the obvious: just because something is a public record DOES NOT mean it can be hacked with impunity. For example, you may have a file with the FBI that is subject to FOIA. But if you hack into their computer to get at that public information, you are in for a world of hurt.
And back to the US analogy: even if I have a government grant to do research at my state university, that does not mean my e-mails about that research or about anything else, are “public records” subject to a Freedom of Information request, nonetheless subject to hacking with impunity.
You again fail to acknowledge the difference between (a) unlawful access to information [climategate, the Chiquita Banana case] versus (b) authorized access to information that is then misused [wikileaks] by the person who had authorized access. These differences require different treatment by the NYT, as a matter of US law, because different statutes would be at play.
Then there is the ultimate irony — you are attacking the NYT for printing stuff that embarrasses the Obama administration, even though they also printed stuff that embarrassed the Bush administration. If anything, you should give them credit for being consistent regardless of the administration in control. Because if they did NOT report on wikileaks after reporting on the Bush electronic snooping efforts, you would then be accusing them of being partisan. So, in essence, from a GOPer con perspective, the New York Times simply cannot win.
my boy Sherman —
You wrote
I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. Obama did not “leak” anything related to Ryan’s tawdry divorce. The Chicago media sued in California to have the sealed divorce record opened. THAT is how we found out that Mr. “Family values” liked to take his wife to sex clubs: a California court unsealed what Jack Ryan and Seven of Nine both wanted sealed and hidden. How is Obama responsible for that? It had nothing to do with Obama and everything to do with another opponent of his self-destructing. Alice Palmer did it by submitting forged ballot access petitions; his Dem Senate opponents did it by living tawdry lives; then Ryan and his sexual perversion; then the GOP ran certifiably insane Alan Keyes against Obama; then Hillary hired incompetent people to run her campaign (people who did not understand how delegates were awarded); then McCain, instead of selecting Kay Bailey Hutchinson as his veep, selected a half term governor from a small state who was entirely unprepared for a national campaign.
R-bob, this is somewhat over my head and may be over yours as well, but Network Analyst author Lance Levesen explains to experts on computers why the emails were probably not obtained through hacking but were more likely leaked.
Lance Levsen’s own conclusion follows:
Conclusion
I suggest that it isn’t feasible for the emails in their tightly ordered format to have been kept at the departmental level or on the workstations of the parties. I suggest that the contents of ./documents didn’t originate from a single monolithic share, but from a compendium of various sources.
For the hacker to have collected all of this information s/he would have required extraordinary capabilities. The hacker would have to crack an Administrative file server to get to the emails and crack numerous workstations, desktops, and servers to get the documents. The hacker would have to map the complete UEA network to find out who was at what station and what services that station offered. S/he would have had to develop or implement exploits for each machine and operating system without knowing beforehand whether there was anything good on the machine worth collecting.
The only reasonable explanation for the archive being in this state is that the FOI Officer at the University was practising due diligence. The UEA was collecting data that couldn’t be sheltered and they created FOIA2009.zip.
It is most likely that the FOI Officer at the University put it on an anonymous ftp server or that it resided on a shared folder that many people had access to and some curious individual looked at it.
If as some say, this was a targeted crack, then the cracker would have had to have back-doors and access to every machine at UEA and not just the CRU. It simply isn’t reasonable for the FOI Officer to have kept the collection on a CRU system where CRU people had access, but rather used a UEA system.
Occam’s razor concludes that “the simplest explanation or strategy tends to be the best one”. The simplest explanation in this case is that someone at UEA found it and released it to the wild and the release of FOIA2009.zip wasn’t because of some hacker, but because of a leak from UEA by a person with scruples.
Just to shed some light on this. Anyone possessing a clearance with the U.S. Government would have had to sign an SF 312, a Non-Disclosure Agreement. It outlines the penalties for divulging classified material which in the case of the leaker would be up to 10 years in jail and a $10,000 fine. If you Google the form it has all the provisions and penalties in there. So whoever leaked this to Wiki needs to go bye bye.
Although the get Hillary angle is an interesting angle, I think this is just a bad case of complacency and gross negligence as opposed to a conspiracy to get someone. The sad part is that it was allowed to happen a second time. You’d think the powers to be would have learned from the first leak and tried to stop this guy or at least found out what allowed it to happen and then fix it. It’ll be intersting to see if he follows through with his threats against the Russians. If they are able to shut down his operation, then we surely could have done the same after the first set of leaks. It’s just a matter of how serious the adminstration takes this. Sorry to say, this isn’t the first time classified material has been leaked and it probably won’t be the last time. One thing is for certain, if it is not dealt with in a severe manner, it will only encourage more of this type of behavior.
@Silly Rob: You said:
Really? Please share the link that shows he has been diagnosed as insane by a Medical Doctor.
As for the Climategate scandal, it is apparent that a disgruntled scientist leaked the documents to shed light on the activities that showed AGW is a hoax, the data is manipulated, pro-AGW scientists lie and work in collusion to prevent challenges to their theories.
BTW, thanks again for the nickname! aunties rocks is MUCH better than the nick names you have been given here at FA.
B-Rob:
1. Obama did not have to dirty his own hands. His people saw to it that what needed to be done, was done.
2. Where did you get the idea that I am a fan of Ryan? I am no more on his side than I am on Hillary Clinton’s. I am simply commenting on the Obama MO.
3. I mentioned circumstantial evidence regarding an inside job on Climategate. The editorial I linked summarizes that. Remember — according to you, there is no source whatsoever to support the idea of a whistleblower vs. a hacker.
B-Rob,
You state that the material, gained by improper access, is ok. And that at least the documents weren’t marked top secret. Well, that’s what you have been shown, right? What about the documents marked NOFORN? As in, no foreign nationals. Would Wikileaks constitute a foreign national?
How about the hacking of Sarah Palin’s email account? Is that acceptable?
Or, you mention, Climategate being different. Is this research being used (or trying to influence) public policy? If that’s the case, why the secrecy behind the research?
In fact, in your want for openness of our government, you are being quite contrarian in your principles here. You don’t mind that someone stole information from our government which offers unflattering views of our allies and adversaries but the fact that someone did the same to climate research bothers you?
It doesn’t matter how someone gained access, the fact is it was made public. You are simply splitting hairs to justify your position.
You talk about whistleblowing. What whistle is being blown by the government cables being put in the public domain? It’s not like some employee at a company is trying to blow the whistle on his company for dumping toxic chemicals.
In this case, whoever leaked the information to Wikileaks broke the law by providing confidential, if not classified, information. Do you not see the difference?
@Wm T Sherman:
Here’s what Andrew Revkin of the NY times had to say about the climate gate e-mails in light of criticism leveled at them regarding their Wikileaks coverage:
But this wasn’t just a recent change of heart resulting from Wikileaks backlash.
Here’s what Revkin had to say back in July:
Seems that Mr. Revkin and the NY Times are consistently inconsistent just like some who comment here, eh?
The New York Times also reported that we were tracking Osama by the cell phone he was using, then the phone went dead. I still would like to know why somebody wasn’t charged with treason.
A democratic society…
The USA is a republic. The propaganda media calls it a democracy to remind us of republicans. If hey called it the republic that it is you would think of republicans, and they don’t want that.