The BBC Interviews a Reformed Russian Hacker

"Four hours flight east of Moscow, the next generation of those graduates is in training.

In the snow-coated Siberian city of Tomsk, one in every five residents is a student. Information security is what they excel in. But in college corridors here, students talk of hacking with respect, even reverence."---BBC (3-11-10)

The BBC recently travelled to the Siberian university town of Tomsk, Russia, in order to interview young Tomsk hackers. I have written a number of articles suggesting that Tomsk hackers might have been involved in the hacking of the East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit (CRU). After I posted my articles, the British media also began to speculate about this possibility. Perhaps the BBC (3-11-10) is trying to learn more about Tomsk hackers because of the recent "Climategate" hacking scandal.

Some evidence suggests that young hackers based in Tomsk may not have been the culprits. According to technology editor Charles Arthur of the U.K. Guardian (2-5-10):

Analysis by the Guardian and digital forensics experts...suggests the access occurred over a period of days, if not weeks, and was carried out from a computer based on the east coast of north America.

...[S]omeone with clear hacking skills...grabbed the files [and] broke into the RealClimate blog to upload the archive and prepare a draft post; then, when that was thwarted, they uploaded it to a Russian website, and posted links to it on climate sceptics' blogs using web servers located in Saudi Arabia and Turkey. [See the full text of this interesting analysis.]

Hopefully, British investigators will soon track down the hacker.

The BBC (3-11-10) interviewed a former hacker named Yevgeny Kaspersky, whose Wikipedia says that he "graduated from the Institute of Cryptography, Telecommunications and Computer Science, an institute co-sponsored by the Russian Ministry of Defence and the KGB." I don't know where this school is, but FAPSI used to have a school like that in Voronezh. This school is called "the world's largest hacker school," according to Wikipedia. [See Kaspersky's blog.]

The BBC (3-11-10) observes:

Yevgeny Kaspersky describes Russia as a nation of "super hackers" and he should know.

Mr Kaspersky has made his name battling the world's cyber criminals. The computer security guru says hackers in China and Latin America generate the greatest number of cyber-attacks.

The most sophisticated come from his own country.

"Russian attacks look more professional. The malware and design is more complicated and more technical," Mr Kaspersky says.

"I think it's thanks to Russia's technical education. Its graduates are probably the best."

Four hours flight east of Moscow, the next generation of those graduates is in training.

In the snow-coated Siberian city of Tomsk, one in every five residents is a student. Information security is what they excel in. But in college corridors here, students talk of hacking with respect, even reverence.
"Hacking is an art, the art of breaking-in," Alexei says. "A true hacker strives to learn something new. It's the art of constantly achieving new heights of expertise."

The students don't learn this art directly in class. Alexei says his institute only "helps him in the right direction". But there are plenty of opportunities to hone your hacking skills on campus. [Full text.]

According to Russia expert Dr. Paul Goble (5-31-07):

The FSB (state security) and quite possibly elements within the Kremlin itself have been encouraging Russian “hacker-patriots” to launch denial of service attacks on websites that official Moscow does not like, according to a leading Russian investigative reporter who specializes on security issues...

Such arrangements provide the Russian government with plausible deniability while achieving the ends that its officials quite publicly indicate they seek.

In 2002, [Russian journalist Andrei] Soldatov notes, Tomsk students launched a denial of service attack at the “Kavkaz-Tsentr” portal, a site whose reports about Chechnya angered Russian officials. The FSB office in Tomsk put out a special press release saying that what the students had done was a legitimate “expression of their position as citizens, one worthy of respect.”

Over the next several years, Russian hackers attacked a variety of other sites...

Russia’s “hacker-patriots” have not limited themselves to attacks on websites linked to Chechnya or foreign states. They have also attacked extremist groups like the National Bolshevik Party, moderate opposition groups like “the Marc of Those Who Disagree,” and mainstream media outlets like “Kommersant” and “Ekho Moskvy.”

In all these cases, Soldatov suggests, the FSB with its Center for Information Security as well as the National Anti-Terrorist Committee did not have to use their own in-house resources to attack objectionable websites; they could simply point the growing community of “hacker-patriots” in the right direction...

[Soldatov observes] that “it is not excluded” that “certain groups of activists are being guided not by the special services but by the administration of the president”...[See full text.]

Tomsk Hackers and Russia's FSB Part II

On November 28, 2009, I posted an article titled "Did Russian 'Hacker Patriots' Embarrass Proponents of Global Warming at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia?" In this first article, I discussed previous escapades by Tomsk hackers and noted that the FSB is suspected of encouraging Russian hackers to attack targets that get under the Kremlin's thin skin.

A bit more than a week later, some British papers began to speculate that the Russian state security, the FSB, might have been involved in the hacking of the CRU climatologists' e-mails in the days before the global warming conference in Copenhagen.

Unusually, an angry U.N. official, Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (the vice chairman of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change) openly embarrassed the Russian government by accusing the FSB of complicity in the hacking of the CRU server, of posting selected e-mails that appear to discredit scientists and their research when taken out of context, and of wrecking the Copenhagen conference.

The Independent (12-7-09) reported:

The leaked emails, which claimed to provide evidence that the unit's head, Professor Phil Jones, colluded with colleagues to manipulate data and hide "unhelpful" research from critics of climate change science, were originally posted on a server in the Siberian city of Tomsk, at a firm called Tomcity, an internet security business.

The FSB security services, descendants of the KGB, are believed to invest significant resources in hackers, and the Tomsk office has a record of issuing statements congratulating local students on hacks aimed at anti-Russian voices, deeming them "an expression of their position as citizens, and one worthy of respect". The Kremlin has also been accused of running co-ordinated cyber attacks against websites in neighbouring countries such as Estonia, with which the Kremlin has frosty relations, although the allegations were never proved.

"It's very common for hackers in Russia to be paid for their services," Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the vice chairman of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, said in Copenhagen at the weekend. "It's a carefully made selection of emails and documents that's not random. This is 13 years of data, and it's not a job of amateurs."

The leaked emails, Professor van Ypersele said, will fuel scepticism about climate change and may make agreement harder at Copenhagen. So the mutterings have prompted the question: why would Russia have an interest in scuppering the Copenhagen talks?

This time, if it was indeed the FSB behind the leak, it could be part of a ploy to delay negotiations or win further concessions for Moscow. [See full text.]

Even Brian Whitmore at RFE/RL (12-7-09) posted a careful article titled "Climategate: A Russian Connection?" that summarized the accusations and linked up to the most important British articles. Whitmore closed:

Now we at the Power Vertical love a good old cloak-and-dagger-style FSB-conspiracy yarn as much as anybody (actually, probably more than anybody). Our experience also tells us that the FSB is certainly capable of such an operation. And Russia, a major gas and oil exporter, certainly has motive to derail a new global climate pact.

But the evidence presented thus far is a bit thin and circumstantial. But this does merit keeping an eye on and we'll follow up if something more substantial turns up. If any readers come across anything, either supporting or debunking the alleged Russia connection, give us a shout in comments or by e-mail.

The Russian media, which had been reporting on the scandal, quickly reported the British media's allegations about FSB hackers, although one Russian-language article in Novaya (12-7-09) suggested that the Chinese customers of the Tomcity server had a bigger motive than the Russians for hacking the CRU. The article was defensive, provided no forensic evidence, and closed with this admonition:

Так что англичанам, перед тем как обвинять хакеров города Томска, следует обратить внимание на их заказчиков из Пекина.

[And so Englishmen, before you accuse hackers from the city of Tomsk, turn your attention to their customers from Peking.]

Finally, the FSB denied involvement but claimed that they had investigated the hacking and knew who the culprit was. The FSB claimed that they didn't want to tell who the hacker was, but that they would tell if everyone didn't stop blaming them. The British Daily Mail Online (12-13-09) reported:

Russian secret service agents admitted yesterday that the hacked ‘Warmergate’ emails were uploaded on a Siberian internet server, but strenuously denied a clandestine state-sponsored operation to wreck the Copenhagen summit.

The FSB--formerly the KGB--confirmed that thousands of messages to and from scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit were distributed to the world from the city of Tomsk, as revealed by The Mail on Sunday last week.

Now, it has emerged that IT experts specialising in hacking techniques were brought in by the Russian authorities following this newspaper’s exposure of the Tomsk link.

They have gathered evidence about how and where the operation was carried out, although they are not prepared to say at this stage who they think was responsible.

A Russian intelligence source claimed the FSB had new information which could cast light on who was behind the elaborate operation.

‘We are not prepared to release details, but we might if the false claims about the FSB’s involvement do not stop,’ he said. ‘The emails were uploaded to the Tomsk server but we are sure this was done from outside Russia.’

The Kremlin’s top climate change official, Alexander Bedritsky, denied the Russian government was involved in breaking into the CRU’s computer system.

‘You can post information on a computer from any other country. It is nonsense to blame Russia,’ he said.

This article pretty much silenced the Russian media on the topic of FSB complicity in the hacking, and the British Daily Mail On-Line (12-27-09) subsequently published a follow-up investigation--based on FSB sources--that blamed the Chinese. A Russian hacker site xakep.ru (12-28-09) promptly echoed the Daily Mail's claims and carried an English-language article titled "Chinese hackers linked to 'Warmergate' climate change leaked emails controversy":

The investigation into the so-called Warmergate emails - the leaked data from the University of East Anglia’s climate change department - took a new twist last night when The Mail on Sunday tracked the stolen messages to a suspect computer which provides internet access to China.

The address used to post the emails is also on an international ‘black list’ which highlights suspicious behaviour on the internet.

The revelation comes after the Russian security service, the FSB–the former KGB–authorised the release of confidential information that allowed us to retrace the route taken by the email traffic. [See full text.]

For the most part, during this entire scandal the Russian media (and "conservative" Western bloggers) mocked the "dishonest" Western scientists whose "dubious research" had been "exposed" by the "honest" (FSB?!) hackers. The explanations of the victimized scientists (See here, here, here, here, here, and here) and the views of Russian scientists who are proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) were given very little publicity in the Russian media (or by "conservative" Western bloggers) during this scandal. Here is a Rambler.ru "news" search for ФСБ хакеры Томск [FSB (domestic state security) hackers Tomsk]. Here is a Google "news" search for ФСБ хакеры Томск.

On the subject of global warming, the Russian media sounds very much like Western politicians (Senator Inhofe), conservative think tanks (Cato Institute), and bloggers who are skeptics of global warming. They even quote the same Russian experts, such as the Russian scientist Andrei Kapitsa and the economist Andrei Illarionov of the Cato Institute and the Russian Institute for Economic Analysis. Illarionov was formerly closely associated with the Russian politicians Putin, Chernomyrdrin, and GAZPROM. Now he is associated with the CATO Institute, which was started by a man who owns an oil company. Somehow I doubt these are the independent voices of pure science.

The involvement of the Tomcity server must be a big embarrassment, or worse, for the Russian scientist Sergei Kirpotin, pictured in this article in the Daily Mail Online (12-6-09). Dr. Kirpotin, who teaches at Tomsk State University, has done research on the melting of the permafrost, which he believes is caused by AGW. Permafrost covers about 65% of Russia's surface. The permafrost is basically a frozen peat bog; and when it melts, the greenhouse gas methane is released. Kirpotin claims the release of this methane will accelerate global warming. Buildings in Rusia's permafrost regions also are breaking apart and sinking into the thawing soil. The Russian government knows this is happening and does support research on this phenomenon. [Search "Sergei Kirpotin" or "Сергей Кирпотин" ]

Dr. Kirpotin believes that the thawing of the permafrost is the beginning of an ecological catastrophy, but other Russian opinionmakers calculate that warming may have plusses as well as minuses for Russia. It will be easier to extract oil, natural gas, and other minerals if the permafrost thaws. If the infrastructure is damaged, it may be easier to repair if the climate is warmer.

Russia's President Medvedev is the former Chairman of the Board of the powerful natural gas company GAZPROM, which is half owned by the government and helps pay their bills. My impression, from reading the discussion in the Russian media, is that the very powerful oil and gas oligarchs that rule Russia are going to spend money on global warming when and if it becomes a problem for them.

During the entire scandal, the famous Dr. Sergei Kirpotin was only quoted in the Russian media by the small independent organization Russian Greenpeace (12-9-09), although some Russian media did mention concerns about the melting permafrost. Kirpotin was very angry about the provocation against the CRU scientists. Russian Greenpeace reports:

Сергей Кирпотин, доктор биологических наук, проректор по международным связям Томского Государственного Университета, Россия: «Во-первых, информация, полученная таким путём, не может заслуживать доверия. Совершенно очевидно, что имел место заказ, поскольку не просто была взломана личная переписка, но и сделана подборка совершенно определённой направленности, никакой хакер просто ради развлечения этого бы делать не стал.

Во-вторых, это нормальное явление, что в личной переписке учёные могут подвергать сомнению ту или иную гипотезу. Если вырвать из контекста отдельные фразы учёных, создававших в XVIII-XIX веках нашу современную науку, можно прийти к выводам, что все мы сегодня в школе изучаем совершенный бред, не имеющий под собой абсолютно никаких оснований.

И, наконец, вброс подобной информации (особенно перед самым началом конференции в Копенгагене) носит деструктивный характер для общества, особенно в России, где слабо сформированы социальные институты, и подобные провокации только укрепляют преобладающий в общественном мнении скептицизм на тему проблемы изменения климата». [See full text.]

You can get a pretty good idea what he said from using the translation feature on your Google toolbar. He said that the hacking of CRU was a "provocation" and that "it is clear that there was an order."

The Russian government officially claims that the hacking was carried out by the Chinese government. This will stop the Russian media from admiring the hackers, because Russians are pretty xenophobic about the Chinese. Still, the the Chinese seem like unlikely culprits because they have not made any secret about their contempt for global warmists. According to Hong Kong's English-language South China Morning Post (12-8-09), Chinese scientists have correlated eras of warming with China's most successful historical eras. See the SCMP article titled "China gives history lesson on warming: While world weighs how to fight climate change, Chinese recall past glories when mercury rose."

I think it is very probable that Russian hackers with connections to the FSB, the Kremlin, or an energy company such as GAZPROM are behind the kompromat of the CRU scientists. It seems to me that "conservative" Western bloggers are probably being manipulated by the oligarchy's active measures. Al Gore may be mocked as an annoying bore, but he may be right about one thing: AGW may be an inconvenient truth. From what I can see, the Russian and Chinese governments believe in global warming; they just don't want to do anything about it.

Most bloggers who are skeptics of global warming claim that an honest insider posted the "compromising" CRU e-mails. Some bloggers have even congratulated the FSB for their active measures. They say it doesn't matter who leaked the supposedly compromising e-mails. Some bloggers have very strange bedfellows indeed! Of course, the Russian FSB say they have investigated and discovered the gloved hand of Peking. The FSB didn't blame any honest CRU insiders.

I think these bloggers should read what scientists say these e-mails mean. If these bloggers would read the Russian media, they would realize that Russia is researching global warming. They have to know what is going to happen to 65% of their land.

I suspect the Russian oligarchs just aren't on-board with plans to curb their greenhouse gasses because it is very expensive and would slow down their economic development. Warming may be seen as having some plusses for Russia. I think that the government, the industrialists, and the ordinary Russians pretty much agree about this.

The Russian media seemed kind of proud of what the "Tomsk hackers" did to the CRU "falsifiers," although the Russian media, which is owned by these oil/gas oligarchs, has now shut up about the whole subject. Perhaps they were told to; perhaps they aren't going to gloat about what the Chinese hackers did, or perhaps the FSB's active measures campaign has served its purpose--the conference blew up in the face of the Western scientists--not their fault!

Still, the Russian government may have felt a bit embarrassed to be called on the carpet in the U.N. before the world's scientists--and their own scientists. The FSB's active measures probably embarrassed and and alienated Russia's best scientists. Perhaps the regime does not want to be seen before the whole world as--once again--falsifiers of science and persecutors of scientists, when the findings of science are at odds with the regime's goals. In the past, however, the rulers only persecuted scientists in the Soviet Union. Perhaps, with the "help" of "conservative" Western bloggers, that is changing.

Climategate: Russian Climate Skeptics Can't Decide if British Scientists Made the Porridge Too Hot or Too Cold!

"[T]he 'hacker-patriot' community which Russian security agencies are encouraging if not controlling might ultimately threaten precisely those who are currently cheering it on."--Paul Goble, Window on Eurasia: FSB Encourages, Guides Russia’s ‘Hacker-Patriots’

According to the British media, Tomsk "hacker patriots," encouraged by the FSB (Russian state security), may have hacked into the server of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and stolen e-mails and other documents. The documents were subsequently posted on a server in the Siberian city of Tomsk that is reportedly owned by a Russian "security business" and used by Tomsk State University.

Here is a search under Российские хакеры Томск (Russian hackers Tomsk). Here is a Rambler.ru "news" search for Фил Джонс (Phil Jones, the scientist at the center of the CRU controversy). Here is a Rambler.ru "news" search for ФСБ хакеры Томск [FSB (domestic state security) hackers Tomsk]. Here is a Rambler.ru search for Климатгейт [Climategate].

High UN officials have publically accused Russian hackers and even the Russian FSB of complicity in the theft of the CRU documents. The U.N. officials have charged that the Russians hoped to derail the Copenhagen climate talks. The Independent (12-7-09) reports:

The computer hack, said a senior member of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, was not an amateur job, but a highly sophisticated, politically motivated operation. And others went further. The guiding hand behind the leaks, the allegation went, was that of the Russian secret services.

..."It's very common for hackers in Russia to be paid for their services," Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the vice chairman of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, said in Copenhagen at the weekend. "It's a carefully made selection of emails and documents that's not random. This is 13 years of data, and it's not a job of amateurs.

On May 31, 2007, Russia expert Paul Goble wrote about the FSB encouragement of Tomsk hackers and predicted that the actions of Russian "hacker patriots" might eventually backfire on the FSB. I remember how the Soviet propaganda campaign to blame AIDS on the crafty plots of American scientists backfired spectacularly on the KGB. Russian scientists publically distanced themselves from the KGB-sponsored propaganda, and eventually KGB chief Primakov admitted to an audience of university students that the KGB had spread the lie that American Army scientists invented AIDS to kill black people. His admission was published in Izvestia (3-19-92):

[KGB Chief Primakov] mentioned the well known articles printed a few years ago in our central newspapers about AIDS supposedly originating from secret Pentagon laboratories. According to Yevgeni Primakov, the articles exposing US scientists' 'crafty' plots were fabricated in KGB offices.

Certainly Climategate seems to have embarrassed the FSB: the Russian state security is currently claiming that their specialists have evidence suggesting that Chinese hackers are the culprits. (The FSB aren't blaming disgruntled CRU insiders.)

At first, the Russians didn't name the Chinese. The British Daily Mail Online (12-13-09) reported:

Russian secret service agents admitted yesterday that the hacked ‘Warmergate’ emails were uploaded on a Siberian internet server, but strenuously denied a clandestine state-sponsored operation to wreck the Copenhagen summit.

..."We are not prepared to release details, but we might if the false claims about the FSB’s involvement do not stop," [a Russian intelligence source] said. ‘The emails were uploaded to the Tomsk server but we are sure this was done from outside Russia.’

Russian print media, on the other hand, has reported that the FSB may be complicit in the hacking. Sometimes, the Russian media has claimed that disgruntled CRU insiders were the culprits. The Russian media has barely reported the FSB claim that the Chinese are the hackers, although one Russian-language article in Novaya (12-7-09) suggested that the Chinese customers of the Tomcity server had a bigger motive than the Russians for hacking the CRU. The article was defensive, provided no forensic evidence, and closed with this admonition:

And so Englishmen, before you accuse hackers from the city of Tomsk, turn your attention to their customers from Peking.

The British Daily Mail On-Line (12-27-09) subsequently published a story--reportedly based on FSB sources--that blamed the Chinese. A Russian hacker site xakep.ru (12-28-09) promptly echoed the Daily Mail's claims and carried an English-language article titled "Chinese hackers linked to 'Warmergate' climate change leaked emails controversy." Except for Novaya (12-7-09) and xakep.ru (12-28-09), the Russian print and Internet media do not appear to be reporting the FSB claim that the Chinese may have hacked into the CRU server.

Some western skeptics claim that it doesn't matter who stole the e-mails because they "speak for themselves." However, Russian climate change sceptics are leveling contradictory charges of fraud against British climate scientists. Some Russian skeptics allege that the hacked e-mails prove that the CRU scientists hid evidence that the climate is really cooling. Other Russian climate skeptics, such as Andrei Illarionov's Institute for Economic Analysis (IEA), claim that British scientists are exaggerating the extent of global warming. [Illarionov is also associated with the Libertarian Cato Institute.]

An English-language analysis of Illarionov's views appears in Bloomberg (12-16-09). Maria Kolesnikova writes from Moscow:

The Moscow institute founded by a former adviser to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the U.K. government manipulated Russian climate data to make a bolder case for global warming than warranted.
Researchers at the Hadley Centre, the climate change research arm of the Met Office, Britain’s national weather service, “purposefully rejected temperature data for 40 percent of our country’s territory,” or about one-eighth of the world’s landmass, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis said in a report posted on its Web site yesterday.

“The systemic selection of data” by British researchers has exaggerated warming in Russia by 0.64 degree Centigrade, the institute said. Analyzing data for the whole world in the same way could lead to a “significant” overestimation of global warming during the 20th century, the Russian research group said in the report.

The report was edited by Andrei Illarionov...a senior fellow at the Washington-based Cato Institute [and] the Kremlin’s senior economic adviser during Putin’s first term as president. A vocal opponent of the Kyoto protocol, Illarionov quit in 2005 to protest what he said was the state’s increasing role in the economy.

...Illarionov’s institute said its conclusions were based on data made public by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia in Norwich to quell growing criticism over leaked e-mails that appeared to show that some British researchers tweaked or suppressed statistics to silence detractors. In the e-mails, researchers exchanged comments about withholding data from critics seeking to discredit their work.

The Met Office refuted the Russian criticism, saying it would be “impossible” to manipulate the data.

“It’s the World Meteorological Organization that chooses the stations for use in climate monitoring,” Met Office spokesman John Hammond said by phone from Devon, England. “Locations are evenly distributed around the globe. The Met Office doesn’t chose the observation points, and therefore it’s impossible for us to tamper with the data.”

It is ironic that athough Russian climate skeptics accuse the British climate scientists of being "fabricators," the Russian skeptics don't seem to agree with each other about what the climate scientists fabricated! Did allegedly dishonest British climate scientists hide the fact that the climate is cooling or did the British scientists exaggerate the extent of global warming? The "dishonest" British scientists probably haven't done both.

The various Russian climate skeptics sound like Goldilocks tasting the Three Bears' porridge: They complain that the British climate scientists are suppressing evidence that the climate is getting both colder and only a little warmer.

For example, the Russian InfoCentre (11-24-09), citing Science and Technology (11-23-09), credits Russian hackers for the crime and claims that the CRU scientists hid the fact that the earth is cooling:

Russian hackers have cracked the server of the University of East Anglia, which dealt with climate change and global warming problems, and found that research resuts [ie results]were forged.

Hackers have stolen the correspondence between University staff members and made it public on the Internet. Researchers have been discussing the ways to forge data in order to correspond with the idea of global warming.The real data surprisingly shows the decrease of Earth’s average annual temperatures. The University of East Anglia confirms the theft, but refuses to give any comments on the correspondence.

Even before the Climategate scandal, some Russian media had reported that the world is in for an ice age. RIA NOVOSTI (1-22-08) claimed:

Temperatures on Earth have stabilized in the past decade, and the planet should brace itself for a new Ice Age rather than global warming, a Russian scientist said in an interview with RIA Novosti Tuesday.

"Russian and foreign research data confirm that global temperatures in 2007 were practically similar to those in 2006, and, in general, identical to 1998-2006 temperatures, which, basically, means that the Earth passed the peak of global warming in 1998-2005," said Khabibullo Abdusamatov, head of a space research lab at the Pulkovo observatory in St. Petersburg.

In an article titled "Climate Scandal: new evidence of dubious research" (Russia Today (12-18-09/edited 1-2-10), the author claims that the theft of the CRU e-mails and documents was an "inside job" and claims that "conspiracy theorists point to Russian hackers." [This was published before the FSB pointed to Chinese hackers, as reported by the Daily Mail (12-27-09).]

The Russia Today author conceeds that there is global warming, but claims that British scientists are exaggerating the extent of the warming:

Russia is becoming a focal point in the battle of ideas over climate change. Russian weather data appears to have been tinkered with by UK climate researchers to overstate the scale of global warming. [This is not the same as saying that the UK researchers are frauds because they tinkered with climate data to hide cooling.]

After leaked data from the University of East Anglia’s climate change unit were posted on a server in Tomsk, conspiracy theorists pointed to Russian hackers.

Yet how would a hacker have known the University of East Anglia had manipulated climate data? Or about the climate researchers’ decade-long history of using the peer review system to silence those who disagreed with the global warming hypothesis? And where to get the emails to prove it? It was an inside job.

Now Russia is back in the spotlight. Research released through Moscow’s Institute of Economic Analysis suggests the Hadley Climate Research Unit [the U.K. Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Change is not the East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU)]...was selective and forgetful with data from Russian weather stations, and exaggerated the scale of global warming in Russia.

...The IEA [Moscow's Institute for Economic Analysis headed by Andrei Illarionov] concedes that temperatures may have increased, but much less than 2 degrees Celsius. It asks: if global warming is overstated in Russia, what errors are hiding in the data on other countries? [See also the Daily Mail, "Met Office 'manipulated climate change figures' says Russian think tank linked to President Putin," (12-17-09).]

It's curious that the Russian skeptics can't seem to decide if the allegedly dishonest British climate scientists made the porridge too cold or a little too hot. All the Russian skeptics agree on is that the British scientists fabricated their research. Some Russian skeptics say the British scientists fabricated their research in order to hide cooling. Others, such as Andrei Illarionov's Institute for Economic Analysis (IEA), say the British scientists fabricated their research in order to exaggerate global warming.

Of course, not everyone in Russia is a climate change skeptic. There are Russian scientists, such as Dr. Sergei Kirpotin of Tomsk, who believe that global warming is happening and that thawing permafrost is going to be a big problem for Russia.

Dr. Kirpotin is very angry about the CRU hacking. According to Russian Greenpeace (12-9-09), Dr. Kirpotin views Climategate as a "provocation" to damage the credibility of the Climatic Research unit (CRU) scientists and their research right before the December 2009 Copenhagen meeting on climate change.

Dr. Kirpotin says that it is clear that an "order" was given to steal selected e-mails from the CRU server, post them on the Tomsk server used by TSU, and spread the e-mails on the Internet in order to increase skepticism about global warming. As far as I have been able to determine, except for Russian Greenpeace, no Russian media has reported Sergei Kirpotin's views about the hacking. For some reason, I had problems accessing the Russian Greenpeace (12-9-09) today, so readers can also see what they wrote here. Read more about Sergei Kirpotin's research in English by searching "Sergei Kirpotin" or in Russian by searching "Сергей Кирпотин." ]

Discover Magazine (1-30-06) has published an article about Dr. Kirpotin's research titled "Siberian Thaw Releases Methane And Accelerates Global Warming." Discover Magazine reports:

The Siberian permafrost is melting, but that has been happening since the end of the last ice age about 10,000 years ago. What's new, researchers reported in August, is that the thaw appears to be speeding up. As it does, it could release tons of additional methane gas, which has 20 times the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide, possibly increasing the rate of global warming.

Dr. Kirpotin seems to have an interest in spiritual issues, too. He has even published an article in the journal Science and Religion. During the communist era, this publication used to promote an atheist outlook. Science and Religion provides a nice photo of Dr. Kirpotin and a link to his article.

Did Russian "Hacker Patriots" Embarrass Proponents of Global Warming at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia?

Global Temperature Record according to the Climatic Research Institute (CRU)

"When four years ago, then President Vladimir Putin was weighing his options on the Kyoto Protocol the Russian Academy of Sciences strongly advised him to reject it as having 'no scientific foundation.' He ignored the advice and sent the Kyoto pact to Parliament for purely political reasons."--The Hindu (7-10-08) [Note: the Russian Academy of Sciences is a signatory to the Joint science academies’ statement on growth and responsibility: sustainability, energy efficiency and climate protection.]

The media and the blogs are debating the significance of a scandal called "Climategate."

According to the blog Atlas Shrugs (11-20-09), an "unknown alleged Russian entity" hacked into the server of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia and briefly posted a file with embarrassing e-mails and documents on a Tomsk (Томск) server called TomCity. The file soon disappeared, but not before the information had been downloaded by climate change skeptics in the West. The Russian InfoCentre (11-24-09), citing Science and Technology (11-23-09), posted this article in English:

Russian hackers have cracked the server of the University of East Anglia, which dealt with climate change and global warming problems, and found that research resuts [ie results]were forged.

Hackers have stolen the correspondence between University staff members and made it public on the Internet. Researchers have been discussing the ways to forge data in order to correspond with the idea of global warming.

The real data surprisingly shows the decrease of Earth’s average annual temperatures. The University of East Anglia confirms the theft, but refuses to give any comments on the correspondence.

To read Russian-language media reports about this scandal use the Google translation toolbar and read these articles in the "news" on Rambler.ru Here is a search under Российские хакеры Томск (Russian hackers Tomsk). Here is a Rambler.ru "news" search for Фил Джонс (Phil Jones, the scientist at the center of the CRU controversy). Here is a Rambler.ru "news" search for ФСБ хакеры Томск [FSB (domestic state security) hackers Tomsk].

Gazeta.ru (11-23-09) has a long discussion of the scandal and reports:

Предположительно, взлом серверов университета был совершенхакерами из России, так как архив был выложен на один из ftp-серверов города Томска. Сейчас этот адрес закрыт, но материалы уже распространились по другим веб-сайтам, в основном англоязычным.

[Presumably, the hacking of the servers of the University was committed by hackers from Russia; in addition, the archive was posted on one of the ftp-servers in the city of Tomsk. Now this address is closed, but the materials have already spread to other websites, mainly English-speaking.]

The Guardian (11-27-09) also reports on the hackers and claims:

Computer hackers who broke into the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) server at the University of East Anglia had access to its systems for more than a month.

The full data – covering 1,000 emails and 3,000 documents in which the most recent document and email is dated 12 November – came to wider notice when a copy was posted on a web server in Russia on 19 November.

But a month earlier a BBC weatherman who had expressed doubts about climate change on his blog was sent a sample of the email exchanges, suggesting the hackers already had access to the private system...

The university declined to answer questions about the setup and security of the computers used by CRU scientists, but security experts say there are only three tenable explanations for how the server was hacked: a determined break-in by an external hacker; that one of the CRU or university systems was accidentally "compromised" by a computer virus or other "malware"; or it was an "inside job" by a disaffected member of university staff. The latter is viewed as the least likely.

Climate change deniers have seized on the disclosures, claiming they proved that the scientists had colluded to manipulate climate data and that they called into question the evidence for human-driven global warming.

Leading scientific bodies and governments have dismissed the charges, insisting there is clear evidence that humans are to blame for global warming.

The first leak occurred after 9 October, when one of the BBC's regional weathermen, Paul Hudson, wrote an article arguing that for the last 11 years there had not been an increase in global temperatures. On 12 October he was forwarded a "chain of emails", including some which subsequently appeared in the hacked documents. Last night the BBC confirmed Hudson had been forwarded emails written by two of the scientists, but refused to disclose the source.

"Paul spotted that these few e-mails were among thousands published on the internet following the alleged hacking of the UEA computer system," said a BBC spokesman.

After sending Hudson the sample, nothing more emerged from the hackers for a month. Then early on 17 November someone hacked into the RealClimate website, used by climate scientists to explain their work. Using a computer in Turkey, they uploaded a zip file containing all 4,000 emails and documents. But within a couple of minutes Gavin Schmidt, the website's co-founder, realised something was wrong and shut down the site. The file had been online for 25 minutes but had not been picked up.

On 19 November the hackers used a computer in Saudi Arabia to post a link on The Air Vent – a website popular with climate change sceptics – pointing to a fresh copy of the zip file, this time stored on a Russian web server. At that point it was finally picked up by blogs and news organisations around the world. [See full text.]

The purloined e-mails seem to suggest that the scientists were manipulating the data on global warming, but the scientists claim that the hackers were "cherry-picking" the e-mails.

We may know what the truth is soon because the Telegraph (11-28-09) reports:

Leading British scientists at the University of East Anglia, who were accused of manipulating climate change data - dubbed Climategate - have agreed to publish their figures in full...

The U-turn by the university follows a week of controversy after the emergence of hundreds of leaked emails, "stolen" by hackers and published online, triggered claims that the academics had massaged statistics.

The publication will be carried out in collaboration with the Met Office Hadley Centre. The full data, when disclosed, is certain to be scrutinised by both sides in the fierce debate.

But what were the motives of the "Russian hackers" who posted the embarrasing kompromat (compromising information) on the Internet? According to an article in the New York Times (10-21-07) Russian hackers tend to have ties to organized crime outfits. Sometimes criminals operate Internet service providers (ISP's) in Russia.

For example, E-Week Europe (10-21-09) reports that the infamous criminal Internet service provider Russian Business Network (RBN) was hosting child pornography:

RBN's systems were used to host child pornography and at its peak, according to SOCA, the organisation hosted around one third of all the "pay-per-view" child pornography in the world. The rest of the illegal network was devoted to malware including systems to control botnets.

"What we are tallking about is a purpose-built criminal ISP - built for and used by criminals...

Russia expert Dr. Paul Goble has written an article about Russian hackers titled Window on Eurasia: FSB Encourages, Guides Russia’s ‘Hacker-Patriots’ (5-31-07).

According to Dr. Goble, the state security and Kremlin also commit cyber-crimes:

The FSB (state security) and quite possibly elements within the Kremlin itself have been encouraging Russian “hacker-patriots” to launch denial of service attacks on websites that official Moscow does not like, according to a leading Russian investigative reporter who specializes on security issues...

Such arrangements provide the Russian government with plausible deniability while achieving the ends that its officials quite publicly indicate they seek. In 2002, [Russian journalist Andrei] Soldatov notes, Tomsk students launched a denial of service attack at the “Kavkaz-Tsentr” portal, a site whose reports about Chechnya angered Russian officials. The FSB office in Tomsk put out a special press release saying that what the students had done was a legitimate “expression of their position as citizens, one worthy of respect.”

Over the next several years, Russian hackers attacked a variety of other sites...

Russia’s “hacker-patriots” have not limited themselves to attacks on websites linked to Chechnya or foreign states. They have also attacked extremist groups like the National Bolshevik Party, moderate opposition groups like “the Marc of Those Who Disagree,” and mainstream media outlets like “Kommersant” and “Ekho Moskvy.”

In all these cases, Soldatov suggests, the FSB with its Center for Information Security as well as the National Anti-Terrorist Committee did not have to use their own in-house resources to attack objectionable websites; they could simply point the growing community of “hacker-patriots” in the right direction...

[Soldatov observes] that “it is not excluded” that “certain groups of activists are being guided not by the special services but by the administration of the president”...[See full text.]

Some Russian scientists, such as the Russian geologist and member of the Academy of Sciences Andrei Kapitsa, have spoken out against the Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming.

The Hindu (7-10-2008) observes:

Russian critics of the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for cuts in CO2 emissions, say that the theory underlying the pact lacks scientific basis. Under the Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, it is human-generated greenhouse gases, and mainly CO2, that cause climate change. “The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse,” says renowned Russian geographer Andrei Kapitsa. “It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round.”...

The hypothesis of anthropogenic greenhouse gases was born out of computer modelling of climate changes. Russian scientists say climate models are inaccurate since scientific understanding of many natural climate factors is still poor and cannot be properly modelled. Oleg Sorokhtin of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Ocean Studies, and many other Russian scientists maintain that global climate depends predominantly on natural factors, such as solar activity, precession (wobbling) of the Earth’s axis, changes in ocean currents, fluctuations in saltiness of ocean surface water, and some other factors, whereas industrial emissions do not play any significant role. Moreover, greater concentrations of CO2 are good for life on Earth, Dr. Sorokhtin argues, as they make for higher crop yields and faster regeneration of forests...

When four years ago, then President Vladimir Putin was weighing his options on the Kyoto Protocol the Russian Academy of Sciences strongly advised him to reject it as having “no scientific foundation.” He ignored the advice and sent the Kyoto pact to Parliament for purely political reasons: Moscow traded its approval of the Kyoto Protocol for the European Union’s support for Russia’s bid to join the World Trade Organisation. Russian endorsement was critical, as without it the Kyoto Protocol would have fallen through due to a shortage of signatories. It did not cost much for Russia to join the Kyoto Protocol since its emission target was set at the level of 1990, that is, before the Russian economy crashed following the break-up of the Soviet Union. According to some projections, Russia will not exceed its target before 2017. Notwithstanding this, the Russian scientific community is vocal in its opposition to the Kyoto process.

“The Kyoto Protocol is a huge waste of money,” says Dr. Sorokhtin. “The Earth’s atmosphere has built-in regulatory mechanisms that moderate climate changes. When temperatures rise, ocean water evaporation increases, denser clouds stop solar rays and surface temperatures decline.”

Academician Kapitsa denounced the Kyoto Protocol as “the biggest ever scientific fraud.” The pact was lobbied by European politicians and industrialists, critics say, in order to improve the competitiveness of European products and slow down economic growth in emerging economies. “The European Union pushed through the Kyoto Protocol in order to reduce the competitive edge of the U.S. and other countries where ecological standards are less stringent than in Europe,” says ecologist Sergei Golubchikov.

Russian scientists deny that the Kyoto Protocol reflects a consensus view of the world scientific community. Academician Kapitsa complains that opponents of the man-caused global warming are routinely denied the floor at international climate forums.

“A large number of critical documents submitted at the 1995 U.N. conference in Madrid vanished without a trace,” the scientist says. “As a result, the discussion was one-sided and heavily biased, and the U.N. declared global warming to be a scientific fact.”

Critics concede that the thrust of the Kyoto Protocol is towards promoting energy-saving technologies, but then, they argue, it should have been just that — a protocol on energy efficiency and energy conservation. The problem with the Kyoto process, critics say, is that it shifts the emphasis away from genuine ecological problems, such as industrial, air and water pollution, to the wasteful fight against harmless gases.

“Ecological treaties should seek to curb emissions of sulpher dioxide, nitrogen oxides, heavy metals and other highly-toxic pollutants instead of targeting carbon dioxide, which is a non-toxic gas whose impact on global warming has not been proved,” says Dr. Golubchikov...

[Russian scientists] cite U.S. global weather reports as indicating that global temperatures have stopped rising since the turn of the century. “The global warming in 1970-1998 was merely a phase in the 60-year cycles of natural warming and cooling,” Dr. Bashkirtsev says.

Russian climate researchers working in Antarctica confirm that temperatures on the sixth continent have been declining in recent years. According to geographer Nikolai Osokin, the ice cover in Antarctica, which accounts for 90 per cent of the global ice stock, has overall been growing.

This year global temperatures have been showing a distinct downward trend, and according to the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, in May “the globe was cooler than at any time since January 2000.” [See full text.]

Academician Kapitsa has longstanding disagreements with English scientists. According to the Times Higher Education (10-16-98):

Kapitsa doubts that man's activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, can greatly affect global temperature or ozone levels. "Global warming as a result of man's activities does not exist," he told a London conference earlier this year. "People who say it does have predicted temperatures would get higher for the past 20 years, but globally this has not happened."...

"I gave a lecture in Cambridge a couple of years ago on the myths of global warming and of the ozone hole, but not one of my opponents would come and discuss the issue with me," he says. "It is disappointing, but the facts are against them. I am for discussion not dictatorship in the academic world."...

Andrei Kapitsa is adamant that man's activities can have only a negligible effect on the earth's temperature, which is governed almost entirely, he believes, by solar and volcanic activity. His views differ from those of many scientists, who see an inextricable link between global warming and the carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels.

Kapitsa is not alone. After the Kyoto agreement on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, thousands of United States scientists signed a petition saying there was "no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing I catastrophic heating of the earth's atmosphere and disruption of the earth's climate".

Kapitsa believes it is time for more open academic debate on the subject. He argues that 90 per cent of the world's carbon is dissolved in the oceans. A 0.50 C rise in global temperature would warm the water, causing it to release dissolved carbon dioxide.

The historic climatic record, Kapitsa says, does link higher temperatures with a rise in carbon dioxide. But he says that it is the rise in temperature that releases the carbon, not the other way round. Despite an 80 per cent increase in the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the past 40 years, global temperatures have been stable, he says.

In fact, Kapitsa believes that more carbon, and therefore more photosynthesis and plant growth, could be a good thing: "If you are using less carbon fuel, you will have less harvest, and people could starve in the third world.

Russia's President Medvedev has appointed Russia's chief meteorologist, Alexander Bedritsky (Александр Бедрицкий), his new adviser on climate. Bedritsky serves as the president of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Bedritsky believes that global warming is a fact but that the effect is unpredictable. Russia in the World profiled Bedritsky's views on global warming in a recent article. Use the translation feature on the Google toolbar to read about Bedritsky's views.

I am not qualified to discuss the science of global warming, but I do think it is important to be skeptical not only of the motives of the CRU scientists -- who seem to be fudging their figures, suppressing evidence, and bullying their opposition -- but of the sponsors and motives of the unknown Tomsk hackers. The Russian media seems quite proud of these Tomsk hackers. The hackers described themselves as "honest men," but we don't even know who they are. VESTI.KZ predicted that we might be hearing again from the hackers. I am going to reserve judgement until all of the data from the CRU becomes available to scientists because this scandal seems like a clasic case of kompromat.

Wikipedia's "Climategate" entry catalogues the dismissive reactions of many scientific organizations and individual scientists to this scandal. For example:

The American Meteorological Society stated that the incident did not affect the society's position on climate change. They pointed to the breadth of evidence for human influence on climate, stating "For climate change research, the body of research in the literature is very large and the dependence on any one set of research results to the comprehensive understanding of the climate system is very, very small. Even if some of the charges of improper behavior in this particular case turn out to be true — which is not yet clearly the case — the impact on the science of climate change would be very limited."

Climategate: Curiouser and Curiouser!

The server used by the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in England was recently hacked; e-mails and other documents were stolen, posted on a server in Tomsk, Russia, and circulated on the Internet in late November. The scandal that resulted has been dubbed "Climategate," or климатгейт in Russian.

Because "patriotic" Tomsk hackers in Russia have had a reputation for hacking into sites that get under the Kremlin's skin, the British media and U.N. officials have speculated that the culprits might have been "Tomsk hackers" encouraged or financed by the Russian state security, the FSB. The speculation about the possible involvement of the FSB was even covered by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (12-7-09).

According to the Daily Mail (12-27-09), the embarrassed Russian FSB claims that they have investigated the incident and have provided the Daily Mail with evidence that the Chinese were the culprits:

The investigation into the so-called Warmergate emails - the leaked data from the University of East Anglia’s climate change department - took a new twist last night when The Mail on Sunday tracked the stolen messages to a suspect computer which provides internet access to China.
The address used to post the emails is also on an international ‘black list’ which highlights suspicious behaviour on the internet.

The revelation comes after the Russian security service, the FSB – the former KGB – authorised the release of confidential information that allowed us to retrace the route taken by the email traffic.

A computer company in Siberia was ultimately used to post the controversial messages - which cast doubt on the reliability of scientists’ global warming claims - on the internet.

The revelation led to claims that the Russians were behind the release of the information.

But, anxious to distance themselves from the leak, the FSB revealed how the data had been sent to Siberia from a computer in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The evidence passed to The Mail on Sunday now raises questions about whether Chinese hackers, backed by the communist regime, are the source of the emails.

Supported by their government and its security and intelligence services, Chinese hackers have been at the centre of huge number of ‘cyber attacks’ in recent years, including attempted computer ‘break-ins’ at the House of Commons and Whitehall departments, including the Foreign Office...

Scotland Yard and Norfolk Police are leading the investigation into the email theft at the University of East Anglia. [See the full text and more background about the claims and counter claims at my earlier post here.]

In some of the e-mail correspondance, the CRU scientists complained about British freedom of information laws that reportedly require climate data to be shared with critics of anthropogenic global warming.

This morning, I noticed that East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) had posted this update:

Statement from Professor Edward Acton, Vice-Chancellor, University of East Anglia

Thu, 28 Jan 2010

The University of East Anglia has released the following statement from the Vice-Chancellor Professor Edward Acton.

"The University learnt yesterday that the Information Commissioner's Office (the ICO) had made a statement to the media regarding the University's handling of requests under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act (FOI). We have not received any further information from the ICO although we are urgently trying to contact them. The ICO's opinion that we had breached the terms of Section 77 is a source of grave concern to the University as we would always seek to comply with the terms of the Act. During this case we have sought the advice of the ICO and responded fully to any requests for information.

"Sir Muir Russell is currently conducting an Independent Review of the issues surrounding what has become known as ‘Climategate’ and we very deliberately made our handling of FOI requests part of the terms of reference. I look forward to receiving his report and as I have said before it will be published and I will act accordingly if he finds there is indeed substance in these allegations."

I decided to check out the site of the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) to see what their press release said. The ICO site states:

The Information Commissioner’s Office is the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.

Oddly, the ICO is only linking to an article from the Telegraph (1-28-10), although the ICO claims:

The ICO usually publicises the enforcement action it takes. Copies of press releases can be found by clicking here.

The ICO press releases do not say anything about the CRU case. It is strange that the ICO evidently only told the media that the "Information Commissioner's office ruled that UEA was in breach of the Freedom of Information Act" (The Telegraph, 1-28-10). How could the ICO have ruled on this case when it is supposedly too late to prosecute the UEA?

An article from The Telegraph (1-28-10) is linked on the ICO homepage in the "News and Views" section, and this would appear to be a kind of confirmation; but it seems strange that the ICO would not post their own statement on their site saying that they "ruled that UEA was in breach of the Freedom of Information Act....But...was unable to prosecute the people involved because the complaint was made too late."

It is also odd that the Telegraph article claims the ICO "was unable to prosecute the people involved," because I don't think individuals would be prosecuted. I think the East Anglia University would be fined.

According to the article in The Telegraph (1-28-10) titled "University scientists in climategate row hid data":

The university embroiled in the 'climategate' scandal refused to make its scientific data available to the public in breach of freedom of information laws, it has emerged.

The University of East Anglia rejected requests for information relating to claims by academic staff that global warming was being caused by man-made emissions.

The Information Commissioner's office ruled that UEA was in breach of the Freedom of Information Act – an offence which is punishable by an unlimited fine.

But it said it was unable to prosecute the people involved because the complaint was made too late.

The ICO wants the law changed so that complaints made more than six months after a breach of the act can still result in prosecutions, it was reported.

Stolen emails revealed how the university's Climatic Research Unit tried to block requests for raw data and other figures, and implied that senior university staff had played a role in the refusal of the requests.

Professor Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit, stood down while official inquiries were made.

In an email, Prof Jones requested that a colleague delete correspondence regarding a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 2007.

He also told a co-worker he had convinced university authorities not to answer freedom of information requests from people with connections to a website operated by climate change sceptics.

The news that UEA broke the law came after John Beddington, chief scientific adviser to the government, said more honesty about the unreliability of certain predictions was desperately needed...

An ICO spokesman told The Times: "The legislation prevents us from taking any action but from looking at the emails it's clear to us a breach has occurred." [See the Times (1-28-10) article.]

The complaint about the university's conduct was registered by David Holland, a retired engineer from Northampton who had asked for data to back up his view that the university broke the IPCC's regulations in order to discredit climate change sceptics.

Mr Holland was quoted as saying: "There is an apparent catch-22 here. The prosecution has to be identified within six months but you have to exhaust the university's complaints procedure before the commission will look at your complaint. That process can take longer than six months."

Graham Smith, Deputy Commissioner at the ICO, said in a statement: "The emails reveal that Mr Holland's requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation." [See full text]

This story is being repeated on the Internet by the international media and bloggers, but I can't find a press release on the ICO site to corroborate what the ICO Deputy Commissioner Graham Smith reportedly told the media.