Bishop Hill The police inquiry
Jul 17, 2010 Climate: CRU One Climategate inquiry we still haven't heard about is the police investigation into the release of information from CRU. It is rather extraordinary that nine months or so into the investigation, there is still no news on what the nature of the offence, if any, actually is.
This being the case, I wrote to Norfolk Constabulary to ask how much money had been expended on the case so far and how many officers were currently involved. Here's the response:
The Norfolk Constabulary’s investigation has been allocated a specific cost code. At the time of receiving your request, the total recorded cost against that cost code stood at £54,691.
The number of officers working on the case fluctuates depending upon workloads at any given time. Currently, one officer is working full time with management being provided on a part-time basis by two senior officers (as required). Other officers and staff will undertake work on the case when required but this is managed in line with the demands of other investigations.
One would hope that having expended £55k they would have worked out the nature of the crime they are investigating.
Reader Comments (34)
It would be my understanding of the police enquiry that they are searching for information on the culprit (for culprit, read HERO) who gathered and released the Climategate emails so don't expect any result based on the Science of the matter.
Is there a reward for whistleblowers I wonder? Maybe an O.B.E in the new Years Honours for him/her and then a knighthood for your holiness.
Could I suggest that the UK based residents who follow this wonderful blog, write to the appropriate body in Whitehall which approves honours and make the appropriate suggestions.
I guess the one full time officer on this case can forget the competence related threshold payment.
Nice to see you back Bish.
Sounds like some lucky copper has a sinecure. £54,691 to not figure out that it was an inside job, done by the programmer at night on the server.
Your tax, hard at work.
Given the fact that so many different parts of the police have been involved (I was questioned by protective services for example) I'm surprised that the cost is so low.
They may have a separate cost code for business development to which they charge their initial
enquiries (uk sp?) while they try to size up the magnitude of the subject of their investigations.
In the architecture business, we found that hiding things in the business development budget was a frequent solution to cost over-runs.
Case closed.
One officer just to delay the reporting of 'nothing found move along now' until the issue becomes a non issue. If the terrorist squad couldn't find an outside lead then there wasn't one. The outcome of the investigation may be revealed in the fullness of time is my guess. Maybe one of the MSM reporters can stir up enough of a stink to force a press release. Moonbat needs a new crusade now that he ihas been neutralized on Amazongate.
As an investigative consultant from the US I have been involved on and off with UK enforcement over the years. This is not to disparage any of the UK investigators but I have found they tend to be very very anal when it comes to conducting investigations and take much longer than those do in other countries. Good or bad that's the way it is. Now my theory on why it is taking so long is not going to be liked by many here. They are involved in an investigation they have very little experience with. Again not a problem, you need to go to where the expertise is at. Where do you think they are going to collect information on the released emails. I know there a lot of "experts" out there but you usually need to find one specific to what is going on here. So, where did they go? likely the alledged victim and or whomever the victim recommends. The next thing the investigators are going to need to do is get up to speed with the whole climate debate and how it relates to the emails. Again where do you think they went to collect this expertise (this is the part you may not like)? I may be prejudice but I am hired to work quite a bit faster and everything they need is in Mr. Monford's book. Time lines, references, names, motives, everything. If I was hired to conduct the investigation Montfords book would be a gift. So why isn't he being consulted with regularly?
As we have not been told the date the cost code was allocated the £54,691 is quite meaningless. Also the code only applies to the Norfolk Constabulary which again is meaningless unless every branch of the force involved has been costed through the same Norfolk code.
Martyn
I would be very surprised if other operating units shouldered the costs for their contributions to a Norfolk investigation. That said, the figure is low if they have used much outside expertise. It might be worth clarifying what the data includes.
PeteK
So why isn't he being consulted with regularly?
Because they know the answers already and they dare not revel them? My guess is that they don't want to say anything and are waiting for it to just go away. Then they can quietly close the file. Lord Beaverbrook is spot on.
Martyn
As we have not been told the date the cost code was allocated the £54,691 is quite meaningless.
Even if we knew the date, it would be meaningless for the many reasons given. Still to admit £54,691 was spent over nine months and have nothing to show for it is embarrassing, or at least should be.
Bish
The wording of the letter seems a little odd to me, “The Norfolk Constabulary’s investigation has been allocated a specific cost code” Which reads to me the code was allocated from outside Norfolk. Maybe I’m reading into it more than I need too, but if it was allocated from say the Met Police who else has been allocated cost codes for this case and how much have they spent.
[BH adds: This is pretty much standard terminology in accounting. It just means that a separate code has been created for the investigation. By applying the code to each transaction they can then extract an analysis of spend for the investigation. I do slightly wonder why they feel it necessary to tell me this, but there's nothing odd in the terminology itself.]
and who is paying the total bill
I have wondered exactly where this 'investigation' might lead...
My imagination goes wild at times but I had almost figured that the probe had died because it was found it was an insider and to release the name of same just might be worse than the release of the climategate emails were in the first place.
As a computer person I had it figured, as many in my field think, it certainly had to be an 'inside job'...
Cheers
Vince
Don Pablo... You may be right but that is not what I commonly observe with UK law enforcement. Again, I think they are just worried about being right and applying the right laws. Now what you described is common in Japan as they will wait a long time then quietly close the case and kick out anybody they had waiting in jail. The UK officers are worried they are going to look like they don't know what they are doing but the problem is they first used the CRU for help and insight and may have been told to not trust people like Mr. Montford or Steve McIntyre. You have to look at this from the outside and from their perspective and basic knowledge. They think this is a highly charged subject involving two factions and anything they say in their findings is going to cause the kind of S... storm they don't want any part of.
Any reader who is familiar with the "Inspector Gadget" blog must surely know by now that £55K over nine months just about covers the doughnut and tea bill...
Don't expect any revelations. :-)
Charge out rates for the police are around £60-70/hour so £55k is around 800-900 man-hours, or 20-25 man-weeks at 37 hours per week, or 5-6 man-months.
In other words, it's one copper, full-time, since The Great Event happened.
And I expect most of that is writing up the paperwork, filling in forms, holding progress meetings, liaison with community stakeholders, answering emailed demands from UEA as to why they haven't caught and shot the traitor yet, etc.
Submit another request in a few months, and see if the sum has gone up.
I anticipate the insider has a second tranche of emails/data which he will release on the anniversary. There must be those at CRU who are very very afraid that even more damning emails are going to be released in due course.
"The Norfolk Constabulary’s investigation has been allocated a specific cost code. At the time of receiving your request, the total recorded cost against that cost code stood at £54,691." What an exemplary response; they must have learnt from Prof Jones how not to respond to a request for information.
I think one problem with UK law enforcement is some parts are better funded/resourced than others. A lot of forensics have also been outsourced and for IT related crimes, created very long backlogs.
He's still in his first year at college, imbibing his profound on the job climate science on a cost code.
Even if there isn't a second tranche, the threat of such a release has to weigh heavily on the minds of senior UEA management. And the local police are very unlikely to prosecute an insider without their say so. The only way to be sure that a second tranche is not out there is to thoroughly research the corpus of unreleased emails. But if UEA has done this, it has done so in total secrecy. And that's rather implausible given how much expert external insight it would have required. Of course, we have to assume that plod has been trawling through the residual corpus but, as PeteK points out above, plod doesn't have any of the relevant expertise and there is, again, no evidence to suggest that they have sought any outside UEA. At best, they might spot a couple of additional FOIA shenanigans. But they aren't going to recognize deliberate data suppression, misuse of statistics, IPCC conspiracies, or the kind of scientific fraud that Douglas Keenan is so good at detecting and documenting. Even if they could recognize such things, that's not what they are being paid to look for. Briffa and Jones may well know whether there are monsters lurking in the unreleased corpus but they are very unlikely to reveal such further indiscretions to UEA management. On the other hand, if those two have assured UEA management that there are no such monsters, why would a rational being believe them?
So, my conclusion is that UEA currently has no way of knowing whether there is a second tranche out there. And that, in turn, means that no action will be taken against the mole.
A final point. If, as people have surmised, the released corpus was compiled on the basis of string search for a set of terms, then there are almost certainly at least some monsters left in the residual corpus regardless of the mole's intentions. That's just because string search, no matter how carefully designed, will always fail to discover everything you want it to -- thanks to typos, spelling mistakes, synonyms you forgot to include, and so forth.
I'm possibly missing something here (happens often with me) but wouldn't an investigation into unauthorised transfer of electronic information be a technological task rather than an investigation into climate science?
Surely, for the money expended, the police IT wing would firstly be able to find out whether it's a leak or a hack (and let the public know what their finding is on that) and move on from there.
Hanrahan. You would think all you need to do is concentrate on the IT part but it needs to go a little deeper then that. For example, I investigated fraud in a chain of Vet hospitals being conducted electronically. You would think I would only need to know some basic accounting but I also had to hit the books on Vet procedures so I could determine where the money was going. No I didn't need to go as far as to how to conduct them (I refuse to learn how to anal express) but I still needed to know how Vets operate or I couldn't correllate the fund transfers. The UK police would and should school themselves on the debate or how else are they going to attach motive. You need motive to really help prove the crime along with ability and a lousy alibi. I would love to be hired to help them out as it involves a complex system of managing independant experts along with a some technical experts and mostly good old footwork, my favorite kind of case. I know I said this twice but the owner of this blog has literally done most of that and that is why I enjoyed the book so much, he wrote it like a professional detective right along with my other favorite tool good involvement flow charts. From what I have read here and other similar sites it really looks like an inside job. Not so sure if the motive is to clear a conscious though. I would look strongly at the ability and access. Some of the techs who made postings indicated it wasn't necessarily a high tech job but more of an archive copy of the texts. Anyway things will get very clear when the motive is established or emerges, if ever. For you budding detectives out there the biggest clue is who the emails were first offerred to. I know the person who runs that blog denies any involvement and this may be true but this is without a doubt the most important connection or clue if you will.
I wonder if the cost code includes the wages of the police. We know they have had to get in outside help (the anti-terrorism group or some such name) --- and that it is likely that they have needed assistance with the computing. I would read this as the cash outlays -- not including the the wages which would have been paid anyway.
I could however be wrong -- and it would be interesting to know.
PeteK
I accept that Scotland Yard will always get their man, much as the Peelers of yesteryear did. But this is a political issue, and more likely in the hands of others.
They think this is a highly charged subject involving two factions and anything they say in their findings is going to cause the kind of S... storm they don't want any part of.
Exactly my point, but better said.
Phillip Bratby
I anticipate the insider has a second tranche of emails/data which he will release on the anniversary.
So, it was really you all along!
Thank you Jane Coles for that analysis. I'm intrigued by one point and that is that the leaker made an attempt to obey the law about releasing personal information. That tells me that the leaker expects to be identified at some point.
It is my hope that the leaker gets to choose that time.
================
Don: I protest my innocence in this matter (The lady doth protest too much, methinks), otherwise I would be stepping forward to collect my honours.
The continuing police investigation meant it was out of bounds to the Muir Russell enquiry. How very convenient that they were unable to put the e-mails that were released into a wider context. Somehow I think this enquiry will last for a few years at the very least. That way they will remain out of sight and beyond scrutiny by anyone else.
I feel sorry for the poor copper.
I think six months wearing a blindfold is inhumane!
"One would hope that having expended £55k they would have worked out the nature of the crime they are investigating."
Dont be silly. Dont you know how many pints £55k would buy at the local pub? The more the £s the blurrier the crime becomes.
Anyone thats dealt with the UK police will not be shocked in anyway by this.