Friday, February 26, 2010

FOI Fight: UEA VS. ICO

...and if you don't know what all the acronyms mean, you shouldn't be here.

Anyway, yesterday we learned more of the circumstances around the tiff between the U.K. Commissioner's office (ICO) and the University of East Anglia (UEA) over e-mails made public by the CRU Hack. Back in January, the ICO issued a statement in which they suggested that that the UEA had been in breach of Section 77 of the U.K. FOIA (Freedom of Information Act). The UEA responded to their statement with a demand for a retraction, and got this letter (though no retraction) from the ICO, which the UEA claims demonstrates that "the evidence the ICO had in mind about whether there was a breach was no more than prima facie." A couple of things:

1) The ICO argues that their original statement "may be read" to suggest that their evidence is merely prima facie, though that term does not appear in the original statement.

2) They blame any misinterpretation of the statement on...wait for it...Jonathon Leake, of Leakegate infamy.

Errors like this are frequently made in press reports and the ICO cannot be expected to correct them, particularly when the ICO has not itself referred to penalties or sanctions in its own statement.

For all the above reasons the ICO will not be issuing a further press statement covering these points. The ICO does not wish to encourage further media reports on the matter, indeed our original press statement was only drafted for one journalist [Jonathon Leake] in response to a specific enquiry.

Although, frankly Mr. Leake may be getting a bum deal in this case; it is not obvious that the ICO statement should be interpreted as the ICO now suggests.

h/t

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

wait for the criminal trails . . . this FOI stuff is just inside the ballpark pre-gamesmanship.

These crooked "scientists" are going down. Although I hate to call anyone who doesn't actually do science, someone who refuses to release data and methodologies so others can repeat their "science".

They are really climate scientologists.


Maybe Mann can share a jail cell with Jones. They can draw hockey stick graphs on the walls of their cell to pass their time.

Ti-Guy said...

You need to be put in a chamber and gassed, Fred.

crf said...

Do you think Canadian Media, including numerous CanWest and Globe columnists and reporters will go back and revisit the claims that UEA researchers did (no 'ifs ands or buts') abuse FOI law, and definitely did engage in a cover up?

Anonymous said...

and now their fellow real scientists, the ones who have their funding and reputations whacked by the CRU gang . . hit back with a kick to the Team's gonads . . .

"1. The Institute is concerned that, unless the disclosed e-mails are proved to be forgeries or adaptations, worrying implications arise for the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method as practised in this context.



2. The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law. The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital. The lack of compliance has been confirmed by the findings of the Information Commissioner. This extends well beyond the CRU itself - most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC's conclusions on climate change. "

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/climatedata/uc3902.htm


This really is going to be fun to watch these science crooks get their richly deserved comeuppance.

Bye-bye AGW, the fraudsters that invented the scam are being exposed.

Holly Stick said...

Hey Fred, lies are being called lies:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/02/climategate_distortions/

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/the_economist_calls_a_lie_a_li.php

Ti-Guy said...

Clickable links for the URL's in Holly's comment above:

Here.
And here..

Fred, your reputation as a loony cyber-stalker/harasser/denier has been well-established. You really are wasting your time on this particular blog.

Does Exxon-Mobil use prison labour programs to run its disinformation campaigns?

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

The fact that Fred is spamming off-topic talking points shows one thing: Fred is scared of talking about ICO's latest statement of not finding conclusive evidence of wrongdoing by CRU.

-- bi

Anonymous said...

oh oh . . . now even the BeeB is turning on you AGW hysterics.

What next Dr. Fruit Fly coming clean and the CBC admitting they have been shilling for the ponzi scheme since whenever?

"Against all expectations, the report gratuitously volunteered the information that this phenomenon had no connection with global warming. It correctly described how, on February 12, the huge iceberg B9B collided with the Mertz Glacier Tongue, dislodging part of it to become a second large iceberg. It may seem like zero coming up in roulette, but British state television refrained from telling a global-warmist porkie on this one."

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100027663/bbc-tells-the-truth-shock-horror-iceberg-not-caused-by-global-warming/


Last one for today kiddies . . . this is just too easy a game to play with you lot . . . not enough challenge.

Hank Roberts said...

A plea to BigCityLib:

killfile is available.

Script Summary:
Provides a killfile for certain blogs. Covers livejournal, haloscan comments, most typepad blogs, most blogspot blogs, scienceblogs.com, and more as I add them. Trolls can be killfiled with a single click.

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/4107
http://userscripts.org/scripts/review/4107
Please set it up here.

Unknown said...

Holly,
The meaning of Jones' statements have already been explained at length for Fred. But Fred(I assume he's also Marxistwhatever) is as dumb as dirt, even by denidiot standards, and his perpetual vein-popping rage coupled with this stupidity makes communication with him immpossible.

bigcitylib said...

Alright, Hank, I'm on it. I emailed the guy behind it to see if it works with blogger, but got no response. I will play around with it this weekend after I set up my new desktop. I assume I inject the script somewhere in my template or some damn thing.
As for now, Frank's long cut and paste jobs will be deleted.

Ti-Guy said...

If it's the same "killfile" implementation that I'm familiar with, it's not intended for the blog site, but for the reader. And only for those who use FireFox *and* have the Greasemonkey script plug-in installed.

I found it less than satisfactory, especially for Blogger. It only blocked users in the post view and not the "leave comment" view (this view here) and you could still see the troll's pseudonym, which is irritating enough.

Frankly, BCL, if you just deleted the trolls comments more often, people would stop responding to them, a trade-off made easier by the satisfaction of seeing the assholes getting zapped.

Jay Currie said...

"Meanwhile, the ICO has been alerted by the complainant and by information already in the public domain via the media, to a potential offence under section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act. The prima facie evidence from the published emails indicate an attempt to defeat disclosure by deleting information. It is hard to imagine more cogent prima facie evidence. Given that this was in the public domain and has been discussed in the media and on various websites over a number of weeks, the ICO’s view, as I indicated when we spoke yesterday, is that the University must have understood that the question whether an offence under section 77 had been committed would be looked at. In the event, the matter cannot be taken forward because of the statutory time limit."Letter from Information Commissioner's Office

Keep spinning BCL. Keep Hope Alive!

Unknown said...

Credulous Currie,

Always going that extra mile to maintain the title, eh Currie? Credulous Currie doesn't need a shred of evidence or analysis, just a press release that tells him what he wants to hear.

bi -- International Journal of Inactivism said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Frank said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Ti-Guy said...

Credulous Currie...

I saw "Flapjackal" (courtesy of PSA) while lurking at Dawg's Blawg this morning, which I found rather droll, as it melds both of Jay's dominant psychopathies: his macabre joy over the death of Rachel Corrie and his obsession with Warren Kinsella.

I like "Fail at Everything" Currie, although "asshole" works well too. I'd tell him myself, but he censors my comments at his blog. And then lies about it.

Unknown said...

"Flapjackal" is perfect, but I'm trying to be nice.
The alternative to Currie's being a credulous rube is that he's a serial liar.