Replies

From the comments ...link to a blog:

****************************EXCERPT****************************

UPDATE: Real Climate explains that it is in fact much ado about nothing.

So by now everyone is aware of the emails leaked/hacked/TBD from CRU. While the significnace of these emails has yet to be determined, it seems that they are indeed real, based on these comments from Phil Jones of UEA, who is involved in many of the emails. Here is an interview just published by TGIF (PDF):

The internet is on fire this morning with confirmation computers at one of the world’s leading climate research centres were hacked, and the information released on the internet. A 62 megabyte zip file, containing around 160 megabytes of emails, pdfs and other documents, has been confirmed as genuine by the head of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, Dr Phil Jones.

In an exclusive interview with Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition, Jones confirms his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to have come from his organisation. “It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.”

“Have you alerted police?”

“Not yet. We were not aware of what had been taken.”

Jones says he was first tipped off to the security breach by colleagues at the website RealClimate.
“Real Climate were given information, but took it down off their site and told me they would send it across to me. They didn’t do that. I only found out it had been released five minutes ago.” The files were first released from a Russian fileserver site by an anonymous tipster calling him or herself “FOIA”, in an apparent reference to the US Freedom of Information Act. The zip file contains more than a thousand documents sitting in a “FOIA” directory, and it prompted speculation that the information may have been in the process of being compiled for consideration of an information act request.

Jones, however, says the files were not contained in a “FOIA” directory at the Climate Research Unit. “No. Whoever is responsible has done that themselves.” “I’m not sure what we’re going to do. I’ll have to talk to other people here. In fact, we were changing all our passwords overnight and I can’t get to my email, as I’ve just changed my password. I’ve gone into the Climate Audit website because I can’t get into my own email. “It’s completely illegal for somebody to hack into our system.”

While the significance of the emails has yet to be determined, there are some questions already being asked: