Bishop Hill Any excuse
Dec 17, 2009 Climate Snaffled from the comments at WUWT (where I seem to get a lot of my material these days!) this from someone who has been trying to get more information on the "trick". Commenter "Informant" asked for any emails related to the WMO document in question and received a refusal on the following grounds:
i) information not held.
the only location that this information was held on was on a backup server as the original information had been ‘deleted’ some years ago. Only a technical measure resulted in the information being held on the server and, following Department of Justice guidance on this point, we feel that this information was not ‘held’ by this institution at the time of the request.
This is possibly the most bizarre attempt to avoid FoI requests I've ever come across. The idea that Department of Justice guidance allows FoI requests to be refused on the grounds that the data was on a server due to a "technical measure" is monstrous. There is simply nothing in the FoI legislation that allows information to be refused on these grounds.
Perhaps anticipating this reaction, UEA has another excuse up its sleeve.
ii) material subject to police investigation
pursuant to an investigation carried out by the Norfolk Constabulary, the server upon which the requested information resided was taken from the University grounds and now resides with the police forces conducting an investigation into a possible criminal offence. We no longer have access to either the server or any of the material on it.
This is interesting because of the light it shines on possible sources of the leak - a backup server would presumably not have been accessible to just anyone. It can only be a reason for a delay rather than an outright refusal. I'm also rather bemused that UEA doesn't have a backup of the data on the server.
Either way, this does rather give the impression that UEA will give any excuse to withhold information. They just don't appear to be an organisation that is keen on openness.
Reader Comments (15)
As an IT consultant these reasons are very worrying. Tax dollars are being paid for incompetent data retention policies.
The data only being on a Backup server and out of scope? Well if is was the UEA that was being investigated and the Police issued a warrant for the data, would that excuse hold? Of course not.
The data only being with the Police? So you have extremely important data for which this is only ONE copy on non-relaible media (hard-disk). You give this only data copy out to a third party? That is just pure irresponsibility.
In my industry both these events would be sackable offences. Security escort to empty your desk and an escort from the building.
And trillions of dollars are riding on these people?
Tully amazing.
As an IT consultant who has worked on as an expert witness on legal cases the story from UAE regarding the "material subject to police investigation" appears a piece of fiction. Gathering of electronic forensic evidence follows a defined process and given that this case does not involve offensive (sexual) images or a threat of terrorism it would be unusual for the police to simply remove the server from University premises and not allow them to retain a working copy of the stored data.
Normal practice would be to use specialist imaging software to capture forensic images of the servers media - at least two copies would be taken one for the police investigation and another to be retained by the University or their lawyers. This copying process is essential to maintain the chain of evidence required to mount a prosecution. As the server is likely to hold data for a number of parties within the University, its complete removal could disrupt the work of other academic or administrative units. One would therefore expect the University's IT department to have installed a replacement server carrying a copy of the original data.
It's what politicians do when caught - kick the can down the road. This is what the UEA seems to be doing. Then, some time later, when asked about it, the response will be "oh, that's old news that's been answered".
Hiding behind an investigation is an all too often ploy of bureaucrats.
That response from UEA is not only 'monstrous', as you say, but it also indicates that the university has learned nothing from the Climategate scandal. It seems that they are prepared too continue digging themselves into an even deeper hole so far as handling FOIA requests is concerned. I hope that 'Informant' will follow this up.
I have an FOI request at the moment which requests, among other things, copies of 21 emails. I expect a response in a week or so.
Has the good Bishop considered writing to Sir Muir Russell drawing his attention to the above (inter alia) and asking for him to consider it as part of his investigation?
Would be interested in how he handles such questions at least?
Wonder how Sir Muir's "scoping" is coming along and what progrees he has made in appointing advisors. Hard to see how he can report in the spring 2010 at this rate?
Other dates for 2010 are the possible May election of course and Copenhagen round 2 ,which seems to be Mexico City brought forward to June 2010.
So much for transparency!
Are we sure this is genuine? Who is this "Department of Justice"? There's one in the US, but not in the UK. We have a Ministry of Justice, but it would be bizarre for any British spokesperson to refer to a "Department of Justice".
And in any case the point of reference would be the Office of the Information Commissioner. I'd imagine Informant could check very easily if this really is their policy.
I find it almost impossible to believe that data such as this only existed on a "back up" server. The original data for your life work so easily stored and yet carelessly tossed aside. That is what yoy do with data that is not important... oh hang on I think I just go it.
The ICO is investigating UEA and they are probably more likely to take these things seriously than Sir Muir. I'll bring this to the attention of someone I know who may be able to put it in front of him though.
Here's another take:
http://cruelmistress.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/access-to-data/
"Much data remains under lock and key. It is tied up in confidentiality agreements with the governments that provided it. The Met Office and the UK government say they are now seeking permission to publish it. What they have not yet publicly revealed is that under a confidentiality agreement between the Met Office and the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council, a portion of the UK’s own temperature measurements is only made available to “bona fide academic researchers working on agreed NERC-endorsed scientific programmes”. Why? So that the data can be sold privately. “We have to offset our costs for the benefit of the taxpayer, so we balance that against freedom of access,” says David Britton, a spokesman for the Met Office."
Oops, I see you covered this in your next post!
"This is possibly the most bizarre attempt"
Seen it before. It reeks of lawyer. Not his or her fault, but done upon orders of the client to make up some kind of objection. It is a message to a future judge presiding over a motion to compel. Message: "Judge, don't sanction me the lawyer! This is the best I can do. Does it not sound plausibly soundly legalistic enough to not sanction me but only my client?"
1: It's the Ministry of Justice, not Department of Justice.
2: "(2) For the purposes of these Regulations, environmental information is held by a public authority if the information - (a) is in the authority's possession and has been produced or received by the authority; or (b) is held by another person on behalf of the authority." - Environmental Information Regulations 2004
The information was subject to the control of the authority, this control was exercised, and is admitted in the reported response.
Bishop, I hope this reference isn't too American, but how different is the UEA situation from George's (Seinfeld sitcom) attempt to save his data?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-FbktgqCqY