I’ve been overwhelmed with the generosity of my readership here in their donations towards new hardware so I can get back on the map in style. A heartfelt thank you to everybody who has donated, left messages of support or just been here. It has helped me through a few dark days and will make a lot more sunny ones ahead.
Now the good folk over at Watts Up With That.com are helping to get a fighting fund together so we can cover legal costs and take the fight forward.
Here is my attorney’s statement:
To:
All those who feel offended and/or threatened by the actions taken against innocent climate enthusiast Roger Tattersall aka ‘Tallbloke’ as a result of the unsought anonymous drop of data from the person or persons known as ‘FOIA’.
That data is clearly in the public interest by virtue of having relevance to the wisdom of certain global policy decisions relating to energy use, energy supply and possibly global rationing of energy sources and the direct or indirect taxation of every individual on the planet for the foreseeable future.
Roger has been publicly libelled and abused across the world to the detriment of his reputation and has suffered distress, inconvenience and damage to property. The worst such offender appears to have been a contributor at ‘Scienceblogs’.
His privacy has been invaded and he and his family have been intimidated.
It is possible that treatment of that nature could be meted out to any persons expressing sceptical views about the so called climate consensus.
A clear signal needs to be sent out that such treatment is an abuse of process and a negation of free speech and democratic freedoms.
It is proposed to investigate all options open to Roger for the obtaining of suitable redress within the law. In the event that legal actions are considered appropriate it will be necessary to appoint suitably experienced Counsel to represent his interests and in this matter Roger’s interests coincide with those of all of who find themselves unable to feebly acquiesce in the pressure that is being applied to prevent them from exercising their hard won freedoms.
To that end, an appeal fund is being launched in order to finance the necessary steps. Contributions can be made via Roger’s Paypal account as displayed on his site (https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/) and all funds received for that purpose are to be transferred to the Client Account of his solicitors Wilde & Company.
Any funds not eventually used for necessary legal expenses will be donated to a selection of climate sceptic organisations. Accounting procedures will be put in place in compliance with the requirements of the UK regulatory system governing the proper use of Client monies held by UK solicitors.
Stephen P R Wilde. LLB (Hons.), Solicitor.
Wilde & Co. Cheshire England
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Tallbloke, may your shadow never grow shorter!
I have added a little to the fund.
What was the advisor’s statement?
Green Sand: Thanks!
Brian: I don’t want to pre-empt the post at WUWT. The statement has been fine tuned since I saw the last draft.
update: There was a lost email which held things up for a while.
Folks are commenting over on the WUWT thread rather than here. This is good, as I can’t keep my eyes open to moderate anyway. I’m shattered after four days of little sleep, living on nervous energy.
I have also added some to your PayPal account. Best of luck. I hate to see things like this happen. I finally read “1984” this summer, and this … no words …
tallbloke, long, long, way to go, whilst pop corn futures may have hit the high all you need to do is take a lead from your mentor “Old Sol”, he thinks sleep is THE only thing that matters.
Where has all the wind gone?
Head down big man, tomorrow is another day!
My Solicitor (Attorney) has added this in comments at WUWT:
“But, what courses of legal action are possible? If you can post more info on that, it would be helpful.”
i) Potential libel claims against Laden and Mann and any others who might be found to have stated, suggested or implied that there was criminality on the part of Tallbloke.
ii) Potential malfeasance by the persons responsible for the obtaining of the Warrant in the form deemed appropriate (but actually wholly inappropriate) and for the heavy handed treatment of Tallbloke who would always have been prepared to assist voluntarily.
iii) Various damages claims under UK law for distress, inconvenience, invasion of privacy and damage to property.
iv) Possible injunctive relief preventing examination, copying, cloning or any unauthorised use of Tallbloke’s private data.
v) Requests for immediate return of Tallbloke’s property and rectification of damage done during the process.
vi) Investigations into the sequence of events that led to this farrago and the identities of the person or persons responsible.
Other possibilities may come to mind in due course.
Donation made.
Go to sleep, that is when the mind makes it’s decisions.
If you let it.
Good on ya Rog. A few quid have been sent your way and if you need more we’ll find it.
It has always been assumed that the content of the “copied” emails has been known to the “authorities”, UEA, police, etc. Well they were copied, not stolen, weren’t they?
Now how about CG2 has produced emails that are no longer on the UEA servers? Sort of maybe, might of been “deleted” before CG1 investgation took place?
I wonder what sort of action the authorities might take under such circumstances? Obviously I could not possibly comment.
We live in interesting and very quiet El Sol days.
Have fun
50£ donated from Norway. A small contribution to an important cause.
Thank you!!!
Sunday.
Day of rest. Sleep. Let your dreams sort out the mess.
Relax. Enjoy the company of family and friends. Have a laugh.
My “Christmas turkey” is now in your fighting fund. I’m far from starvation and there’s plenty of turkey to go around so it’s not a huge sacrifice.
Tallbloke-
I haven’t ever commented on your site before. Mostly I lurk at WUWT. But your fight with the authorities is important to all of us. Who knows who could be next in this witch hunt. I have just made my contribution. Bless you from the state of Texas in the U.S.
[…] Tallbloke isn’t either. He is soliciting bids for an attorney to handle his case pro bono. UPDATE: He has a firm representing him. […]
As I’m not into Paypal, if you can tell me how to get some Aussie dollars into the fighting fund I’d be glad to help but in any case I will always provide you moral support as best as I can. Good luck mate.
Tallbloke:
I write to support those advising you to get some sleep.
You and your family have suffered enough. You are not alone and have support from millions around the world. Relax and recover.
Have a very Happy Christmas.
Richard
PS I intend to include all (including you – nb no names) subjected to government harrassment in the intercessions this morning.
God almighty, Roger! I’ve just been over to WUWT again and seen the escalation of this story. I cannot put into words how much good fortune I wish you. I have made a small donation (all I can afford, and only wish the Lottery would play my ball).
You know, when I first read here about what had happened, I had a feeling something really big might be taking shape. I wasn’t wrong. This could well turn out to be one of the biggest defining moments in the history of the AGW hoax.
All power to you and, as others have said: get some rest.
Tallbloke. My contribution to your fighting fund is on it’s way. Go get ’em.
Rest, eat light but well, laugh, love your family and friends. We’ve got your back. Give yourself some recovery time.
Small donation on its way. ATB
Donation on its way. We are all with you on this. My meagre skills in tv production are at your disposal.
Hundreds of donations small and large have been pouring into our fighting fund overnight. I am humbled and grateful for all the help the community is giving to me.
I just want to reiterate Stephen Wilde’s statement and solemnly promise that all these donations will be transferred to my solicitor-attorney’s client account to be used to cover legal fees and related expenses such as travel to offices if necessary. Stephen is kindly providing legal advice to me pro bono, but where he has to get work done by outside law firms such as libel lawyers fees will be paid.
We are already well on the way to being able to cover the costs of initiating the actions Stephen has outlined above. I am keeping the appeal open because ongoing costs add up quickly in the realm of legal actions. As Stephen has already said, any monies left over will go to a selection of organisations which work on behalf of the climate realist community.
Thank you all again. It has been exhausting but today the sun is shining and I’m going to take my lady for a walk over the hills to a nice country pub for a well deserved lunch. She has been through the wringer over this and I want to show her how much I love her.
A few quid quid from Oz for this very important case.
Roger, I’m almost sure you’ll have seen this, about Lord Christopher Monckton pursuing a case against climate fraudsters (it might even have been mentioned elsewhere on your blog, but I’m too tired to look):
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/14156/Fmr-Thatcher-advisor-Lord-Monckton-to-pursue-fraud-charges-against-Climategate-scientists-Will-present-to-police-the-case-for-numerous-specific-instances-of-scientific-or-economic-fraud
Yes, look after your good wife. They have to put up with a lot sometimes supporting their husbands. Best wishes tro you both.
Tallbloke, do you have enough in your personal tip fund to replace your computer? Forensics can take months.
Glad to be of help Roger £50 in the fund. I wish you and your family a great Christmas and happy new year.
Very best of luck with this Roger. Your treatment is a disgrace. You stand for us all.
Have a good Christmas and a victorious New Year.
PS Your bike is just beautiful!
I wish you all the best in your fight against those who slander you. Like many other lurkers, I suspect, this has turned me into a commenter and a contributor to your tip jar.
I sincerely hope the University won’t take any action against you or make your life difficult (I worked in a UK University for many years and our computer managers were very skilled and unfailingly helpful to the academic staff in Computer Science – a well-known joke of theirs was that `this is so simple even the professors understand it’).
Donation made. I have been outraged by this. Regardless of where you are in the climate debate, it is a debate. Any closure of debate is a step towards a dictorial world order. Greg Laden is an extremist, a fundamentalist and he should be made fully accountable for his accusations, as should the Police and DoJ for their actions.
£50.00 Donated. Merry Christmas.
Tallbloke, you deserve all the help and donations because, by attacking you, both ‘The Law’ and a certain blogger attacked all of us.
And this help also shows a huge two fingers to the apparatchiks in the NGOs who think they can have it their way: had those fabulous huge cheques from Big Oil really been coming your way as the watermelons keep claiming, you’d not have needed our help.
I hope you had a great day out with your lady wife, and I hope she is as heartened by the amazing support shown you from across the globe as I personally have been.
[…] fighting fund has been set up and people are generously donating whatever they can afford. This post at his place gives the current situation and how you can contribute to it. You don’t have to […]
Hope the lunch went well. Feet up for the evening now!
Pointman
I was shocked to hear that agents of the state have been dispatched to your home to close down any dissent regarding the massive fraud being perpetrated by the the cabal of crooks masquerading as scientists.
I am now convinced that I no longer live in a free England. That cannot stand.
Donation made. Thank you for your commitment.
Tallbloke…
These people in the climate cabal are very sinister, but fundamentally incompetent, the more I read my own personal copy of the 2.0 release the more blatant is the effort they put into manipulating and re-describing the evidence to match their own world view. I used to just believe the global warming story and fretted about what I could do to make a difference, not little things, but major CO2 capture and storage projects, with climategate 1.0 I got interested in the subject and the more I read the more flimsy the whole basis of the climate panic seemed.
Climategate 2.0 confirms that the climate cause is more important to Mann, Jones et al than good science or reality. It’s appalling to me the diversion of energy and resources to mitigate CO2 emissions when if a fraction of that money had been spent on clean water we could have improved and extended the lives of millions.
Anyway that is just a little rant to say you will have my support (just after christmas)…
All the very best
Steve
GBP 1,000 is available. If it makes a difference. Just shout. Maybe more – depends.
Small donation made, and merry christmas!
Best regards,
Bjørn – Norway
[…] pour une action en justice. Ceux et celles qui en ont les moyens sont invités à faire un don sur son blogue, via […]
Rog,
Do get some sleep, rest and regroup with a clear mind. Whatever your course of action, you have time on your side. Consider carefully. It is disquieting to read the words ‘raid’ and ‘ransacked’ on other blogs and it is tempting to believe the conspiracy theories; you were there.
Whatever you do decide, do what is right for you even if it is less than others are suggesting.
Go for fights you can win not just ones others press you into; the tide is turning and the better part of valour is discretion.
Wisdom and peace be yours.
Richard
Another one has turned up, take a copy now and Rog, pass to you legal chap.
(I can’t take a decent copy, site misrenders)
“planetsave.com/2011/12/16/criminal-who-manufactured-climategate-caught/”
Bloody hell! Here’s a bit more from down under. Sing out if you need any more $$. As a long suffering wife – please give your missus my very best regards. You are fighting the good fight and we all need to stick together.
Just a suggestion about donations. at the end of this process, if there are any funds left, don’t disburse them but keep them in the solicitor account for other “realist” legal defense/action.
I hope this appalling episode will encourage others to use the force of law against the lies and libelous distortions that plague the main stream media and the internet. The Bishop has started legal proceedings so you are not alone. Indeed, from the comments, it seems there are many people who are with you in spirit and sentiment. Verity Jones’ advice is great, ultimately this is about you and your family. It’s the other guys who have a “Cause” and they have already sacrificed their integrity, honesty and credibility fighting for it. The rest of us, who live in the real world, have mouths to feed and lives to live. If you have to fight, keep it short and mean, just like my old Dad taught me, then get on with your life.
Good luck and best wishes for Christmas to you and your family.
Thank you Roger, these actions against you and the blogasphere support you are getting is a christmas present. These wayward people have covered their bums for to long and court is the only action to air the truth.
The judiciary in many cases has been stacked by government for their own purpose, but the law is the law and justice is meant to be the outcome.
Your actions are the start of the beginning of the end of AGW
Following on from tchannon at 2:39am, it’s also on the guy’s facebook page –
https://www.facebook.com/psave (I searched for planetsave). Maybe he’s changed it from the original post (has anybody got it on the wayback machine?) but to me it looks far less offensive than Laden’s effort. On the 80/20 rule is this relatively insignificant fleabite worth worrying about?
[…] the assistance of Anthony at WUWT, and James Delingpole, now has some legal representation and the Fighting Fund is all systems go! Pop over there and take a look at the statement made by his solicitor and maybe you’ll […]
Bad Andrew has left a small but hopefully helpful Merry Christmas too.
Bad Andrew
Lettre traduite et postée sur deux autres sites francophones.
Un fonds de soutien est créé pour permettre à Tallbloke d’agir en justice.
http://www.skyfall.fr/?p=763&cp=36#comment-74614
repris ici pour que ça soit vu par le plus grand nombre:
http://www.contrepoints.org/20…..sceptiques
I second Nick in Vancouver’s recommendation that you hold any left-over funds in reserve for the next legal dust up involving the climate realist community.
HM Government has just re-iterated that private emails are subject to FOIA: report here at The Register;
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/19/civil_servants_private_public_email/
Which means of course, that each and every one of the exposed CG2 emails was *AND IS* available to a properly phrased FOIA request.
Like the ‘show us the privacy agreement’ requests, maybe it is time to make targeted FOIA requests for exactly (and exactly all) of these emails through UEA.
You may wish to not post this. I will understand.
Losing all of your main operating hardware to these idiots must be maddening. I would be outraged to have my laptop or desktop or other machines snatched *for no good reason*,
If the assholes had the slightest clue, they could have determined whether what they were looking for was actually *on* your machine, in a few minutes. And at a minimum could have determined the size of your drive, cloned your drive and left the clone, so that you would not be inconvenienced (and they would have the original drive, for chain of evidence purposes. However, like cops who stop a car on the travelled portion of the road, they do not give a damn about how anything they do affects the public.
I keep expecting to read reports about the use of tar and feathers against some of these officers…Or a late night incident involving a cricket bat in a dark alley….
Anyway, to avoid the lose of my data, I have been thinking about backup scenarios. USB keys are possible backups, but may be found and removed by a zealous searcher. Similarly, USB based external drives are generally left lying about, as they must be used in closeproximity to a computer.
\
But I read a review recently of the SIlverstone DC01 NAS unit. It is a single 2.5″ hard drive NAS, running a stripped variant of Fedora, in a small box, about 5×5″ and 1.25 ” deep. It is powered by a wall wart, uses only 6 watts in idle and 9 at full bore. It has 2 USB and one eSATA plug for external storage and talks to the world by Cat5. (see http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=silverstone_dc01&num=1)
The neat thing being that it is so small and needs only a power point and a network cable that it can be easily parked in a hidden space, well away from the rest of the hardware, yet is instantly available for backup…and can be cron’d.
It uses a Realtek network chipset which can be set up for Wake on Lan with a security code.
I have just ordered one for the office and intend to park it in the ceiling space. Since it can be set to be completely invisible to the network (without some very good snooping line-test hardware) and will not expose itself unless one knows the MAC address to create a magic packet, it should be a good ‘safe’ for my data and completely hidden. I can easily obfuscate the use of a network cable running up to the ceiling tiles, and there is power available up there, if you know where to look.
At home, I would consider stuffing one into the basement ceiling space or screwed to the joist inside a heating duct, or cold air return, putting an actually unused network socket in a bedroom and label the cable, at the router, as ‘BedRoom’. It would take a determined snoop to find it, as the only clue would be the cable which would be purposefully lead to not be easily traceable.
On second thought, not a cron job. That would show up in the crontab and the script would be a dead giveaway. Of course, a template script for a full backup, addressed to back up to a USB drive would be a good cover.. especially if the script were commented as if it had been downloaded from a computer magazine….”Insert the USB drive. If your computer does not automatically mount the drive, run ‘sfdisk -l;’ to determine its mount point, then ‘mount -t (vfat |ext4 etc) /dev/sdx1 /mnt/USBKEY’……etc.
Hope this helps your thinking, as your situation has helped me understand some steps I should take to help mine.
Geoff.
Good idea, we’ll discuss that.
In the meantime, the appeal has had an extra boost from the redoubtable and vociferous James Delingpole at the Telegraph, and the floodgates are creaking. I’ve never seen so many zeros on the end of a bank account balance! Not mine anyway. 8)
Well tallbloke, since you are interested in cloud albedo effects on earth’s climate, there are some very nice climate science learjets available, for further study of cirrus cloud crystal size and structure. I hope you were planning on getting one of those, instead of using it for a lot of nasty court appearances.
Just trying to help as always.
Zeke
What about that electron microscope you’ve been needing for climate research.
Grumble grumble I don’t see why tallbloke has to be the first climate scientist to ever see the inside of a court room.
Traditionally climate funding is used for travel and research.
Great ideas Zeke. Once matters are resolved I hope we’ll have a topped up fighting fund for future use plus enough to lear-jet us all to a tropical destination for a two week climate conference, IPCC stylee. 8)
J Bowers might like a little context for all of this merriment about climate funds being spent on seasonal ski passes and learjets.
Tallbloke:
I hope you and your good lady are rested, recovered and buoyed by the support you are getting.
This post is a bit OT, but I write in hope that it helps assuage your worries.
It seems to be generally assumed that the reason for the raid was part of a search for evidence of the identity of FOIA. But the timing of the raid and its target do not suggest this reason is likely.
I suggest the raid may have had a purpose which is less threatening to you.
I think the most likely reason for the raid was to determine – with minimum effort and maximum accuracy – what Climategate information is already in the public domain and what is probably in the encrypted file.
One can reasonably assume the police have all the information of Climategate 1 & 2 as well as everything in the encrypted file. All of that would be on the UEA back-up server which the police must have examined as part of their previous investigation which indicated UEA had breached FOI legislation (UEA could not be prosecuted for this because of the length of time since the breach).
However, UK authorities may want a clear indication of which parts of the information on the UEA back-up server are now in the public domain. And your computers contain a clear, collated compilation of that information which is already in the public domain. So, a copy of your files would isolate the already ‘public’ Climategate information with no possibility of error.
If that was the true purpose of the raid then you have no real threat from that purpose.
But, of course, the libels of you are a different matter.
Richard
Roger, if you have a moment could you please clarify the time at which the police descended upon your residence? There have been suggestions that it was midnight, but have you actually said so?
Hi Donna and welcome to the talkshop. I’m hoping someone has bought me copy of your book for christmmas. Well, the various blogs saying the raid was at midnight should have taken a look at the thread splashing the news. The first comment on it is at 11.43pm.
As I recall they finally left our home around 10.15pm. Time telescopes in those situations but I estimate it all took around three and a half hours. That would put their arrival sometime after 6.30pm and before 7pm.
Many thanks. If you don’t find my book under your tree please let me know and I’ll send you a personally inscribed copy. Warmest wishes to you & your family. Enjoy the holidays. You aren’t alone.
[…] Tallbloke is to sue for libel, but lawyers cost cash, so he’s formed a legal fund. […]
Oh dear. I thought it was midnight and have been saying so. Will have to correct that.
[Reply] Oops. Where did you pick that up from?
The most significant thing to come out of this and I imagine totally underestimated by the UEA etc. Is for the first time they have managed to mobilise the Sceptical community. Until now we were just isolated on the internet with an interest in fairly arcane matters .
Some voices of course were louder than others, the new reality is they pushed the wrong buttons this time and have done what no single Blogger or comentator could have done, they brought us all together in a united cohesion in support of tallbloke.
Whatever the outcome of the legal action is, the world will never be the same for these guys. We have shown we can come together very rapidly when required and place significant resources at the disposal of the “cause”
Obama placed his victory at the feet of the internet, well guess what? the same effect just made its presence felt in the sceptical community.
To those thinking of intimidating climate realists by singling them out for “treatment” be advised what we did here as insignificant individuals, unknown to each other, can be replicated again if needed.
Everyone who stood up to be counted in support of Tallbloke should be justifiably proud, you all may just have changed the paradigm for ever!
Having had, ten years ago, a copper and two gorillas arrive on my doorstep with a search warrant, I can well imagine how disturbing your unpleasant experience must have been for you as it was certainly far worse than mine – which I found disturbing enough.
(In my case, they left with their tails between their legs – I had already been assured by the TV licence people that they would not harass me any more over my collection of non-functioning 405 line TV’s. I phoned their HQ before admitting them, who told me it was a mistake and asked to speak to the head gorilla. Evidently they were told to go away leave me alone. I complained at the intrusion into my privacy and embarrassment at having a copper on the doorstep for ½ hr. I subsequently received a cheque for £200 which they said was not compensation as they do not pay compensation.)
Is there any sort of after-the-event appeal against the issuing of a search warrant?
I think a lot of people are looking forward hopefully towards the possibility that the search warrant will eventually shown to have been wrongfully issued.
– It seems doubtful that a crime (hacking into a system) has occurred. If someone with an authorised logon as superuser or whose job involved backing up entire servers made an illicit copy, then no offence occurred. CRU has a track record of unintentionally leaving stuff open to external access.
– Tallbloke apparently cooperated with previous questioning, so there was no obvious reason to believe that cooperation would be withheld or that evidence would be destroyed.
– It mayt be difficult to prove malice (necessary to confirm the tort of malicious procurement of a search warrant). But it seems clear to me that there was an element of intimidation – it’s hard to imagine that the Guardian’s computers would have been seized if FOIA had posted on “Comment is Free”.
[…] Last week the gent who writes the Tallbloke’s Talkshop climate skeptic blog in the UK was raided by police. In some places the incident has been described as a ‘midnight raid.’ But when I double-checked that point, Tallbloke said that although his first blog post on the matter appeared just before midnight, in fact the police showed up somewhere between 6:30 and 7 in the evening. They then stayed for more than three hours. (See the comment dated Dec. 20th at 7:22 am here.) […]
Tallbloke,
If you want to give your solicitors a Christmas bonus, they should look at http://climatecrocks.com/2011/12/20/guest-post-bring-uea-email-criminals-to-justice/ which appears to be a copy of http://blog.ucsusa.org/who-is-behind-the-hacked-climate-emails-and-when-will-the-criminals-be-brought-to-justice
I left a comment on the former, which was accepted, but the page hasn’t been corrected. Nor has the “source” article.
Copies of both preserved in several locations.
[Reply] Thanks Bernd, I’ll pass the links to my solicitor. – Rog