The Washington Post reports on a ruling in the continuuing and seemingly perpetual UVA/Mann/ATI legal battel.
…at the end of four hours of argument, the judge did not grant ATI’s immediate request for 12,000 withheld e-mails written while Mann was a professor at U.Va., and did not rule that the school had waived its right to withhold the e-mails by providing them to Mann last fall. Instead, Sheridan acknowledged that however he rules, the case is headed to the Virginia Supreme Court to resolve several key FOIA issues the case raises:
and
…
It wasn’t the way either side expected the day to go. They both wanted the judge to rule on ATI’s demand for civil discovery, and ATI’s argument that U.Va. providing the e-mails to Mann made them open to the public. But both sides were satisfied that the judge was handling the case carefully and managing it with an eye toward its ultimate resolution in the state Supreme Court
I know lots of you are rooting for one side or the other to win. Looks like whoever wins, the battle will have to be fought in higher courts.
In addition to the issues presented, the judge probably wants to try to avoid coming up with a standard that requires an individual review of each of the 12,000 emails.
Also, I am not sure what “proprietary” means for purposes of applying the statute cited by UVA. For example, I think presumptive co-authors discussing pre-publication issues and exchanging data can claim that protection but what about after publication or if they decide not to publish? Is the protection forever? Is relevance and materiality also a function of time?
I think somebody’s gonna have to split the baby in at least two pieces. The more granular the decision by the trial judge, the less likely the high court will arrive at a blanket yes or no.
Anyway, Michael Mann and his sure-to-be-partisan-and-snarky email comments about the politics (internal and otherwise) of climate change just seems so five minutes ago, doesn’t it?
The article has a link to the lists of exemptions from FOIA in the VA statute, including this:
Seems as unambiguous as legalese could ever be.
toto-
I see what you mean.
1) The emails were released by UVA. To Mann– who is not an employee of UVA. Therefore, they should no longer be exempt.
2) The hockey stick papers were published. The emails containing said data or discussing said data are therefor not exempt and should be released.
3) The hockey stick and discussions are not remotely proprietary (at least not to UVA) and there for are not exempt. They must be released.
Thanks for pointing out this is as unambiguous as legalese could ever be. Until you pointed this out, I thought maybe the judge honestly believed the case is sufficiently complicated to require review at the Supreme Court. 🙂
Lucia,
I suspect the intent of the legislature with exemption 4 is in the plain words of the clause: to protect proprietary pre-publication, pre-patent, and/or contracted research data from FOI requests (which is absolutely reasonable, of course). What I am sure Mann and UVA will ask for is an interpretation of exemption 4 to mean that any data/communications/records of any kind, which have not been publicly disclosed, to be exempt from FIOA requests in perpetuity, independent of any relevant publication/disclosure that may have taken place. In other words, they want all faculty emails, documents, and other records, which have not shown up in the local newspaper, to be blanket exempted from FOIA. This strikes me as the exact opposite of the law’s original intent; but I am not a lawyer. I imagine a court interpretation exactly opposite the legislature’s intent might invite the legislature to revisit the subject and provide the courts with ‘clarification’ of what the statue actually requires via a revision in the FOIA law.
.
I don’t think it is going to matter much either way. If the emails are released, they will probably show Mann (and the Team) acting like, well, Mann and the Team: lots of political snark, circling of the wagons, efforts to silence/discredit researchers they don’t ‘like’, and sometimes dubious choices for data selection, analysis methods, and presentation. If someone was not surprised (or even shocked) by the content of the UEA emails, they are not going to be influenced by more of the same.
SteveF–
I agree. And with prioprietary meaning something like
“something that is used, produced, or marketed under exclusive legal right of the inventor or maker; specifically : a drug (as a patent medicine) that is protected by secrecy, patent, or copyright against free competition as to name, product, composition, or process of manufacture ”
That is would include only those sorts of things that conceivably could be patented, copyrighted, manufactured and which someone intended to patent, copyright or manufacture and then market the end product.
Hypothetically, Mann’s emails could include drafts of his book. If so, those might be proprietary– but that book is now published. In anycase, I would think the “solution” to protecting that proprietary interetest would be for UVA to go through, identify the things that are proprietary, present that to a judge and hold those specific bits back. I think redactions should be limited to holding back only the bits that are proprietary. (In the case where the manuscript was an attachment, I’d say strip the attachment, send on the rest.)
Of course, I don’t know if this is the way the law is normally interpreted. Maybe Toto can tell us.:)
I don’t know why toto thinks things are “clear”.
Me too. To my eyes, the exception doesn’t say this. It doesn’t say that things that are not published and never will be published because they have no proprietary, scholarly or other value are exempt! I also don’t think the intent was to permit people to collect a “huge” pile of information, publish a snippet in a journal, report etc. and shield the rest on the basis that the non-published stuff is “not published”.
Imagine if someone was working on a drug, published all the “promising” results. Maybe he gets involved in a nasty divorce and his wife knows he also has “adverse effects” results( “bwahahahah!”) So, nasty person wanting to make trouble for him, she FOIA’s them. Then his university lawyers argue non-published results were out of reach of FOIA because he’d chosen not to publish that bit which he’d cordoned off? Her lawyers then argue: but the “results” of the “study” were pubished? I suspect the intent of FOIA is to permit public access of all the data after the “study” is “published”.
But maybe that’s not how the VA law is written– so we’ll see.
Sure. But we may have some interesting additional versions of not very entrancing behavior. Who knows?
lucia (Comment #94385),
“But we may have some interesting additional versions of not very entrancing behavior. Who knows?”
I sure don’t, but my first reaction to the question is: Who really cares? Short of blatant criminal behavior (which IMO is about as likely as 1.5 meters of sea level rise in the next 88 years 😉 ), I don’t think the emails matter very much. Mike Mann is not suddenly going to look like a thoughtful person who is respectful of people he doesn’t agree with; he will continue to be just as in-your-face and obnoxious as he was in the UEA emails. If released, they will surely be embarrassing… but embarrassment doesn’t much matter when you are fighting for a righteous cause. (Think Gleick!) People’s opinions of those involved are not going to be changed either way.
I have read many posts and comments here and thought I would add one thing.
UVa does have a history of promptly providing other facaulty members emails upon FOIA requests. It is only the Mann case they have disputed. Costing taxpayers millions up to this point already.
I am at work at the moment and am unable to look up supporting links at this time if somebody would like to google the FOIA history of UVa.
Have a nice day
Ben–
I can’t pretend to know what UVA usually does. In the case of Pat Michaels, they sent out emails requested by Greenpeace.
Latest internet trooth is that UVA agreed to release Pat Michaels’ emails but that Greenpeace declined to pay the administrative cost associated with the production of the emails.
No source that I can point to, just recalling recent blog comments.
Earle–
Thanks for correcting me. Yes. I think what I read is they agreed to release, but require the requester pay administrative costs. Those were evidently higher than Greenpeace wanted.
I do not have original documents. This is all on read on the intertubes stuff.
“Yes. I think what I read is they agreed to release”
Quite untrue. UVa made no such agreement.
Well Nick speaks, what more truth do we need?
Earle, if you think otherwise, produce some evidence.
Nick,
Are you maintaining a Clintonesque definition of the word ‘agreement’?
Q: Why hasn’t the University produced all of the requested records?
A. The University has consistently stated that it will produce all responsive, non-exempt records that are public documents if those requesting them are willing to pay the reasonable costs of supplying the records to which the University is entitled under FOIA. Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act provides for agencies to recover their costs in “accessing, duplicating, supplying or searching for the requested records.” The law does not require the University to expend considerable time and effort in responding to complex FOIA requests without reimbursement of its costs. Under such circumstances, failure by the University to require such reimbursement would be unfair to the taxpayers of Virginia, who otherwise would have to bear the costs of fulfilling these private requests.
Q: Did U.Va. give Michaels’ emails to Greenpeace?
A. No. After a series of emails and narrowing of the group’s request to reduce its costs, and a letter confirming what the amount of those costs would be, U.Va. heard nothing more from Greenpeace.
http://www.virginia.edu/foia/climatechange/
Nick,
Maybe you should as well, after accusing someone of speaking untruth. For shame.
Would love to enjoy Nick’s response, but have to head off into meatspace.
Cheers!
Earle
Nick:
They did. You should admit it when you are mistaken.
Carrick,
Evidence?
The fact is that the requests from Greenpeace and ATI followed the same course – some negotiations to define the scope of the request, and then a quote of the initial cost. ATI paid, Greenpeace bowed out. As with ATI, the cost did not imply an agreement that UVA would not claim exemptions.
Earle,
What you have cited there is just UVa’s statement of the law. They are obliged to produce all responsive non-exempt documents that they hold, and to recover their costs. And of course they agree to do so. But they reserve the right to claim exemption, as they have with ATI.
Here is the actual email UVa sent to Greenpeace. Note this extract:
As we discussed, the proposed amendments will not reduce substantially the costs Greenpeace will incur, because we still will have to review individually a large volume of e-mail to determine whether: 1) the e-mail is responsive to your request; and 2) the e-mail is subject to an exemption under FOIA or otherwise; and 3) the University is prohibited from disclosing the e-mail by state or federal law. Please understand that the University will not release records that are protected from disclosure by law or for which a FOIA or other lawful exemption applies.
Is that what you are saying is an agreement to release?
Nick–
It looks like they give the appearance of agreeing. Because Greenpeace bowed out we can’t know what they would have done had Greenpeace paid. With ATI we know that once ATI agreed to pay, UVA came up with lots of reasons to hold back.
Lucia,
Greenpeace presumably bowed out because they did not like their chances. If I had received that letter, I would have been discouraged too. I see no appearance of agreement.
Nick–
You don’t see an appearance of agreement? Interesting.
Lucia, Where do you see that appearance?
Interesting? Well, maybe. Ya just gotta love the parsing; the tortured twisting of the simple meaning of words. In that spirit, let’s all just say Mike Mann never did anything questionable in his entire scientific career. He’s a fine chap too: friendly, sympathetic, generous, respectful of others, magnanimous in victory, and gracious in defeat; always trustworthy and above board, a real straight shooter.
Nick:
Seriously.
Nick,
“And of course they agree to do so.”
“I see no appearance of agreement.”
I repeat my earlier question, are you maintaining a Clintonesque definition of the word ‘agreement’?
I’m not arguing whatever fairytale argument is occuring only in your skull. As fun as it is to watch you spin into Nick Stokes Esq., I have no clue what minutia it is you are claiming. If you are arguing a presumption that I did not state, please say so before you make yourself look like more of an ass than you are currently achieving.
Wow Nick you can’t see in the email you link to that UVa is ready to proceed with the FOIA request. The email clearly lays out the route by which the process will move forward.
I wonder if the problem was that Kert Davies didn’t have the authority to write a cheque for $4000 for such speculative snooping. It’s hard to believe Greenpeace couldn’t afford it.
The UVa.-Michaels sidebar is interesting as a contrast to the present ATI case, but I’m not sure it’s relevant otherwise. Perhaps a better analog is another Virginia school, George Mason U., which turned over Wegman’s private stash of correspondence to USA Today in no time.
Earle,
You’re doing some careful editing yourself there. The contents of the extract that you quoted from the UVa site was:
“Q: Why did the University say it didn’t have any Mann emails and then say it did?
A. After the original request from Del. Bob Marshall in November 2009, engineers did a thorough search of the University’s central e-mail system. None of Mann’s e-mails were located during that search. In the course of researching records potentially responsive to the CIDs, which were broader than previous records requests, the University discovered a previously unknown surplus computer stored in the environmental sciences department. That computer retained electronic documents relating to Mann.
Q: Why hasn’t the University produced all of the requested records?
A. The University has consistently stated that it will produce all responsive, non-exempt records that are public documents if those requesting them are willing to pay the reasonable costs of supplying the records to which the University is entitled under FOIA. Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act provides for agencies to recover their costs in “accessing, duplicating, supplying or searching for the requested records.” ….”
They are talking about Mann’s emails, not Michaels’. And no, they aren’t agreeing to release them either.
And HR, yes of course UVa is outlining a way to proceed. They are required to. Greenpeace pays the $4000 (or more) and UVa will decide what’s non-exempt. Exactly as they did with ATI. But Greenpeace didn’t like the sound of it.
And Carrick, where’s that agreement?
HR, here is a corresponding letter from UVa to ATI, showing “readiness to proceed” in very similar terms.
Nick, you haven’t made any argument that Greenpeace could not or would not have received what ever stuff was subject to/of their FOI request.
Stop making things up, ie your imaginary argument that the Greenpeace FOI is the equivalent of the ATI FOI.
Arguments of equivalence are the dross of the blogs. Tit for tat; you do it too, so does your mother…
And they are meaningless.
Nothing in Nick’s stuff has anything to do with the issue of public interests and the FOIA. It is only the tactic of ‘muddying the waters’.
Nothing in it, at all; ink from the octopus…
Jim, specific claims were made. First that UVa had given Michaels’ emails to Greenpeace, then that they agreed to do so. Neither is true.
“The University has consistently stated that it will produce all responsive, non-exempt records” clearly means that since the set of “all responsive, non-exempt records” may be empty, then they haven’t actually agreed to release anything.
So obviously Nick is correct, if you assume that this is the precise meaning of the words from UVa and not the more obvious meaning that the rest of the world would read from these words.
Science, meh. FOIA requests to support lunatic conspiracy theories, slavering from the mouth.
Steveta #94416,
The claim here is that UVa agreed to release Michaels’ emails. The inference being that they gave Greenpeace preferential treatment. But the words you have quoted are a statement of general policy, made with reference to Mann’s emails. Whatever meaning you want to try to read into those words, there is no way they can be said to be an agreement with Greenpeace.
Nick
I don’t think they were given preferential treatment. I think what they were asking for was much less that ATI is asking for (which as far as I see, includes the Chancellor’s kitchen sink), and it’s reasonable to expect a reasonable request would have received a different treatment than an unreasonable one.
That doesn’t imply preferentially.
bugs:
It wouldn’t support their theories, it would undercut them.
And while it wouldn’t paint Mann in the brightest light (I think we all know how he carries on), I think it would also contain useful back-and-forths on how the science was carried out.
I think it’s because Mann doesn’t want them released that UVa is fighting their release. I think they see it as a bad signal to current employees if they are perceived to allow a former employee’s rights to get run over by a bulldozer like this. And going through FOIA opens up a legal can of worms (hey, lawyers need money too).
You can write me and ask for my emails on a given paper. If there wasn’t “official use only” stamped on it or something like that, I would likely voluntarily give you all of the emails I could dig up that related to the topic. I routinely share code that I used to produce results, and the data associated with it, along with instructions on how to replicate my results.
I guess the point is me doing that on a case by case business doesn’t mean that I’ve given up all rights to privacy on any topic. If doing what you requested cost enough of my time, I would probably ask for a recovery fee for time. You would go into a contract with the University, and my time would be recovered, including the 1.3 multiplier for my benefits and the 1.5 multiplier for overhead….and this would include any incidental costs if they were substantive (e.g. printing costs).
I’m not making any of this up, I have done exactly this action in the past year, more than once.
This appears to be the wording of the response to Greenpeace:
I think it reads like an agreement to release records. The fee for Greenpeace appears to be required to “accessing, duplicating, supplying, or searching for requested records”. At least in this letter there are no words stipulating that some records might be withheld.
We now some must be withheld by law. But the fact is, the wording of the letter seems rather to encourage the idea that UVa is agreeing to find records and the end result will be to release the records requested by Greenpeace. Given Greenpeace’s overall budget, the fee would appear to be modest.
If Nick doesn’t see this as appearing to agree… welll… okey-dokey. But I think one has to twist themselves into a pretzel to not read this as appearing to agree.
I suspect Greenpeace didn’t read this letter as UVa disagreeing. I think they merely decided that they weren’t likely to get $3500 worth of embarrassment for Singer or Michaels out of the emails and use the money to spend on gasoline to power some boat used to harrass sea going vessels or something like that. Or maybe spent it on ads.
Lucia:
Where did you see that? From the email that Nick linked to:
The fee is not a payment for the cost of releasing the emails. It is a payment for the cost of checking whether the emails can be released, and then, maybe releasing them. They are telling Greenpace to pay up front, with no guarantee that they will get anything in return.
.
I have words for that, but “favoritism” isn’t one of them! 🙂
I see wording that appears to agreement to release in in the text of the January 15, 2010 6:32 PM letter to Greenpeace posted above.
I haven’t said there was favoritism. I’m only saying the wording suggests UVa intended the to release emails to Greenpeace. The letter I posted predates your letter and the way I read it, in January 2010 UVa wrote a letter that appeared to agree to supply emails.
The letter Nick is quoting is written 6 months later. More importantly, it was written after people began trying to get Mann’s emails. (Cucci began trying to get them in April, 2010.)
So, it may be that UVa’s stated reasons evolved as events unfolded. But the reasons stated in January give the impression UVa is willing to give documents and the costs are for locating, photocopying and so on.
I would even go so far as to suggest that’s the impression the Greenpeace people got reading the document written in January, 2010 (before people began asking for Mann’s documents). I would further suggest that acting under that impression, Greenpeace personnel thought asking for fewer documents would result in a lower cost– after all, it costs less to photocopy fewer documents. But, in June (coincidentally after Cucci started asking for Mann documents), the justification for the cost on no longer just copying etc.
But even in June, it seems to me that UVa was willing to provide documents– provided Greenpeace spent to recover. The communications trajectory is different from the one involving Mann in which, at first, UVa denied documents existed and so on.
Nick Stokes (Comment #94415)
April 18th, 2012 at 12:49 am
Nick,”specific claims” were sort-of made, and have nothing to do with the matter at hand; that the ATI and people who believe in the idea of public interest FOIA are being denied by the UVA. It’s not Greenpeace who are suing the UVA!
Mann, when employed by UVA was subject to FOIA, the e-mails exist (existed?) on a server subject to FOIA. UVA has denied the FOIA release with extreme prejudice, extreme to the point of appellate court.
All you are doing, “specific claims”-wise, is changing the subject.
IE, you are right, they are wrong, but it has nothing to do with the issue. And you are changing the subject.
I see it the very clearly in the Jan 2010 letter I posted. That letter predates the June 2010 you posted. Between Jan and June, Cucci started requesting Mann’s letters.
A time line that tries to show UVA’s response to the Michaels request omitting their initial responses to Greenpeace (made before they began refusing requests for Mann’s letters) and showing only those letters they wrote after the began refusing Mann’s letter seems rather inappropriate.
I’m not claiming favoritism. But if you want to compare the requests, you need to compare start to finish, and you need to show both timelines. It is true that after UVA got requests for Mann’s emails, their letters to Greenpeace became less inviting. But letters written to Greenpeace before they began fighting the requests for Mann’s stuff read like agreement to release Michaels’s stuff
Maybe in the end, UVa wouldn’t have given Greenpeace Michael’s email either– but we don’t know.
Also, when comparing, you also have to compare the actual initial responses to Cuccy/ATI. Initially, UVA is said to have claimed Mann’s email did not exist. This is rather more discouraging than “give us $4K to cover the expenses of hunting it down and photocopying whatever we find.”
Near as I can tell, Nick’s heartburn arises from my comment #94390 which reads:
Latest internet trooth is that UVA agreed to release Pat Michaels’ emails but that Greenpeace declined to pay the administrative cost associated with the production of the emails.
Apparently the communication from UVA inidicating that they would provide responsive emails that are not exempt does not constitute “agreement” to provide emails, because I did not include the caveat of emails that are non-responsive or exempt from FOIA in my statement above.
My original point being: contrary to internet rumor, Greenpeace was apparently not ever provided any of the Michaels emails they originally requested.
Thanks to Nick working himself into a lawyer-like froth, I have satisfied myself that the blog comments were true, and that Greenpeace never received any emails. I have also convinced myself that the apparent reason is due to the cost of searching for responsive documents and screening for exemptions to FOIA. I am further satisfied that communications from UVA can be summarised as suggesting that UVA would provide documents that are responsive to the request and are not exempt do fall into the general concept of “agreement” to provide documents.
Lucia,
For sure, Greenpeace bailed out after people starting trying to get Mann’s emails. Seems to me that they bailed out because either
1) they figured it was unwise to set a precedent of third parties receiving former UVA professors’ emails via FOIA,
2) they figured that with UVA resisting Cuccinelli, UVA would never give Greenpeace any embarrassing emails from Micheals or Singer anyway, or
3) both the above.
$4,000 wouldn’t stop Greenpeace from doing anything; heck, they spend three or four times that much for diesel fuel each day that they spend harassing Japanese whaling boats.
“Please let me know how you wish to proceed.”
Sounds pretty agreeable to me.
Andrew
Lucia:
.
Can you point out which passage of “your” email suggests that they are agreeing to release any email at all? The way I read it, they are merely accepting to take in Greenpeace’s money.
.
“Nick’s” email explains that the payment is solely for UVa to look at the emails and then decide whether it can/must release them. Your email is entirely compatible with this. Maybe you have access to other evidence that suggests otherwise (like the rest of the correspondence), but I can’t see it in the email you quoted.
.
Earle:
.
OK with me, but by that standard they also “agreed” to release Mann’s emails – that is, those emails which they thought did not fall under exemption.
I think this was certainly implicit, assuming there were any such emails to begin with.
Toto-
And spend that money to cover costs “costs incurred in accessing, duplicating, supplying, or searching for requested records”.
All those are consistent with supplying the requested records. The wording is not consistent with refusing the records nor examining with the possibility the request will not be granted.
Nick’s letter is dated after Cuccinnelli had been refused stuff. I don’t know why Greenpeace waited 6 months between January to suggest a method to reduce costs — in fact, for all I know they were negotiating non stop from January until June. But the result is that we have these things on the timeline:
1) A letter saying Greenpeace asked for Michaels documents in Dec. , which is followed by a Jan 2910 which indicates that UVA needs money to cover costs “costs incurred in accessing, duplicating, supplying, or searching for requested records””. Nothing in this letter suggests any impediment to actually supplying the records. Not one.
2) We know Cucci started trying to get Mann documents, and UVA began to provide a series of reasons why they couldnot obtain them.
Then after (2), Greenpeace seems to have gotten back in touch with UVA with a counter proposal to reduce cost that might be involved in “in accessing, duplicating, supplying, or searching for requested records”, (the reasons UVA stated as driving the costs) and now UVA mentions reasons they might not be able to provide documents at all. But they still seem willing to supply whatever they can under the law if Greenpeace covers costs.
So, based on things I read it, in January UVA appears to have been entirely willing to send Michaels without mentioning any major restrictions. In June, after Cucci tries to get Mann’s stuff, they may or may not have been willing, but their letters mention the restrictions they are presenting Cucci and anyone who wants Mann’s stuff.
toto
If you pretend the only UVA communication about Greenpeace request is the June communication written after they refused Michael’s emails and ignore the communications written in january, then you can pretend that the June letter is evidence they applied the same standard to Greenpeace’s December request which they later applied to requests for Mann’s stuff.
But really, that’s silly. In June UVA was already fighting requests to release Mann records and for some mystery reason, Greenpeace seems to have decided to re-open communication on their December request. Unless you have other emails, right now it looks like UVA was going to search for, duplicate and send emails in January provided Greenpeace send money to cover those costs. Greenpeace didn’t send money. Why they wrote later, who knows?
Lucia,
Here is what UVa said to Greenpeace on 27 January 2010, well before Cucci etc.
Unfortunately, we cannot give you “unfiltered†records – i.e., records that have not been individually reviewed. In accordance with the law, we need to examine every potentially responsive document to determine whether it is responsive, whether it may be exempt from disclosure under FOIA, and whether we may be prohibited from disclosing it pursuant to some other state or federal law (e.g., FERPA). This process not only will take a substantial amount of time, but given the broad scope of documents you have requested in subsections (b) and (c), will have a direct impact on the costs associated with your request.
And Greenpeace clearly understood that there was an exemption issue. From their response to the letter you quote:
If it’s easier/cheaper to give us non-filtered information (e.g. giving us all non-exempt emails from Dr. Patrick Michaels, rather than sorting through them thematically), that is fine.
Nick–
The January 27 document sounds like UVA was communicating exemptions– but just as in June, the do sound willing to send documents. But this document (unlike the June one) does date the restriction to pre-cucci.
I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. I didn’t say that Greenpeace would be clueless that exemptions apply. My point is the Jan 10 letter is worded to indicate the money requested is not money required to do the work to see if exemptions apply, but to search for, copy and supply documents. Reading that document, one would expect that both parties anticipate that substantial numbers of documents will be sent.
It’s worth noting UVA did send along Michaels CV and “a list of grants in support of research, which we can provide free of charge.”
It’s also worth noting that Greenpeace seems to be negotiating over the money, not the principle that they should get documents. The communications appear to be between parties both of whom agree that Michaels stuff will be sent– but UVA wants Greenpeace to pay and Greenpeace does not. So, it reads a lot like UVA is willing to send Michaels stuff out as long as UVA doesn’t have to spend it’s own money to send it. But Greenpeace doesn’t want to pay.
Lucia,
UVa has also agreed to release Mann’s non-exempt emails. And has done so, and I believe there is a substantial volume of them (1200, IIRC). But I haven’t heard anyone describe this in terms of “UVa has agreed to release Mann’s emails”.
Yes, Greenpeace is negotiating over money. They have already accepted that they are talking about non-exempt emails. They obviously decided that whatever would be included in that class wasn’t worth $4000.
Yes, UVa gave Greenpeace Michaels’ CV and a list of grants. Mann’s CV is on the web (or was until recently), and details of his grants are readily available. These are not private documents.
Nick–
Well… when court orders are involved….
Also, I find the ratio of claimed exempt to non-exempt implausible. So, unless I get to see the non-exempt ones personally, I would not call what UVa did “agreed to release Mann’s emails”.
But at this point, it’s up to the courts to decide. That said, if UVa ultimately releases as a result of a court order, I will not call that “agreed to released”. I would call that “released after being ordered to do so by the courts”.
Nick the FOIA is a formal legal process and if you go to the Greenpeace USA website (http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/) and search for ‘FOIA’ you’ll see it’s something Greenpeace aren’t unfamiliar with. It seems strange that a rule that is inherent in every FOIA request would suddenly stump them this time.
If you follow the FOIA process at UVa (http://www.virginia.edu/foia/climatechange/timeline.html) you can see the big issue with Greenpeace is not the level of disclosure that may come from the FOIA but the cost. The Greenpeace initial request even contains some special pleading to get the docs for free. Nick you can speculate about what is not written in the email exchange but it seems more reasonable to gain understanding from what is written.
BTW I think the way Greenpeace announced to the world about it’s FOIA blitz is quite enlightening.
http://www.polluterwatch.org/node/33
The scatter gun approach seemed to succ
The ratio is 12,000/1800
Nick–
Re:
Herw are more specifics: :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-state-of-nova/post/prince-william-climate-case-already-anticipating-the-appeal/2012/04/17/gIQAfE1BNT_blog.html
People don’t describe this release as UVa “agreeing” because people very, very rarely describe actions that someone resisted but was required to do by court order as having been “agreed” to.
So? What’s private/public got to do with it? UVA is communicating willingness to deal with Greenpeace. Taking extra steps– they could just say those are on the web.
Under these circunstances, it’s hardly surprising people don’t way U-Va “agreed” to release them. When someone is forced to do something, people rarely consider the verb “agreed” to apply.
lucia (Comment #94445) April 18th, 2012 at 5:05 pm
“The ratio is 12,000/1800”
Indeed. So when UVa indicated they would produce Michaels’ non-exempt emails (as they must), this is not a general offer to release his emails.
And HR, I don’t know what your point is there. There is no indication that Greenpeace was stumped. Both ATI and Greenpeace seem to understand the rules there. You apply, establish Va residency, pay money, and then UVa looks and decides what is exempt and what not. Greenpeace (and ATI) haggled about the money, then Greenpeace decided the deal wasn’t worth it.
Lucia,
“Under these circunstances, it’s hardly surprising people don’t way U-Va “agreed†to release them.”
I can’t see where you are going with this. It was your argument that UVa was appearing to agree to release Michaels’ emails by, well, something.
The deal was understood by Greenpeace and ATI in the same way, and offerred in the same way. You apply, pay money, which UVa uses to find the documents and decide which can be released. They release the non-exempt ones. They weren’t forced to do that by a court order. They already had people sorting them on ATI funding. What do you think they were going to do with the non-exempt pile? Say to ATI, there’s 1800 that are non-exempt, and thanks for the money, but you can’t have them?
Uhmm… I did say. the wording of the Jan 10 email makes it appear UVA was appearing to release Michaels. It does.
You complained people don’t say they agreed to release Manns. But they didn’t agree to release Mann’s. I responded to your grousing. It’s natural that people don’t say that because the didn’t do it.
I’m not sure why you are wondering where I am “going” when responding to your grouse.
I don’t know why you are making this claim. The information we have suggests otherwise that offers were worded in different ways at different times. IF the entire fact pattern is put together, the willingness to interpret different ways seemed to be communicated differently and parties appeared to see them differently. But the reality is: how each party saw things is a matter of speculation. You are speculating– as am I.
What about “Fitch entered a court order” do you think implies “not forced to do that by a court order”.
I have no idea what point your rhetorical questions are supposed to make. Under court order, UVA released them.
You are complaining that people don’t refer to what UVA did as agreeing to release. My point is people don’t say that because people almost never use the verb “agree” to describe what UVA did.
Lucia
“What about “Fitch entered a court order†do you think implies “not forced to do that by a court orderâ€.”
It doesn’t imply it, but is consistent with it. Finch’s order required that the process be completed within 90 days, not that it be commenced (which it had). UVa did not oppose that. Here is UVa’s summary on the day of the hearing:
” In accordance with the resulting agreement that had developed from the professional cooperation of counsel for both sides, the University began review of the records and recently provided counsel for the requesters with the first responsive records. That delivery was made, pursuant to the working agreement with counsel for the requestors, notwithstanding their having filed suit.
Judge Gaylord Finch took all of the substantive issues under advisement and said he would issue a ruling by June 15. He commented from the bench on how impressed he was at how much progress had been made on the request.”
Nick it seemed to me that your argument was Greenpeace dropped the FOIA request because the UVa email mentioned exemptions and the exemptions would make the released docs less appealing. My point is all FOIA requests would contain exemption clauses so why should this be a reason for Greenpeace to drop this particular request.
HR,
Lucia’s argument is that UVa “appeared” to be offerring to release the emails, in their letter of 10 Jan. But Greenpeace, in their response five days later, clearly showed that they understood that UVa was talking about the release of non-exempt emails. And they probably had an inkling of the unfavorable ratio that Lucia cited.
My guess is that Greenpeace weighted this against the cost, which they had hoped to reduce, and withdrew. Not that they suddenly found out about exemptions. Why do you think they withdrew?
Nick
It appears you’ve changed your guess and have come around to my view. Previously, you wrote
I already said why I think they withdrew:
I don’t think they had any theory whatsoever about the ratio UVA would claim was exempt. In fact, I can’t imagine anyone would have imagined in their wildest dreams the exempt/nonexempt ratio would exceed .5; but UVA’s ratio is 10!
I just think Greenpeace likely thought even if they got 100% of what they requested, there was not $3500 worth of value in the contents of those emails. Possibly, their main motive was to get PR by asking, and use that PR to get donations. But they knew there would be very little in the emails so didn’t continue. So, spend the money on gas for their hobbies instead. But who knows?
I currently suspect the exempt/nonexempt ratio in UVA’s response is likely UVA’s being buttheads and decreeing things that ought not to be exempt as exempt. As I have not read the 12,000 refused emails, I can’t really know. We may (or may not) learn more as this suit percolates up to the VA Supreme Court.
if I pay you 1000 dollars, you sign your car over to me.
That’s an agreement. if you pay me the 1000 and I refuse to give you the car, i’ve broken the agreement.
uva agreed to release the mails. There are conditions on the agreement. ALL agreements have conditions.
That said. Uva has agreed to release both mann’s mail and michaels mail, subject to certain conditions. Still an agreement.
If greenpeace had paid the money and Uva refused to release non exempt mails they would have broken the agreement.
its not that hard.
Nick–
Huh?
Court cases are already underway. Orders are being set out. UVa is not actually defying court orders. Their behavior after the order is not making the judge angry.
So, they are doing what they were forced to do, but promptly. I don’t see why you doing it promptly and not pissing off the judge fails to make the actions not forced. Even when the actions are worded in by UVA’s PR people, the behavior is still what one would constitute to be “forced”.
Ugh, you guys can argue over this for ages, but there is zero evidence that UVa treated Greenpeace any different from ATI.
More interesting is the claim that since UVa gave the emails to Mann, the emails are subject to FOIA.
On one hand, that’s kind of absurd, since Mann wrote many of the emails and has a direct interest in the case. He should be able to look at them and make an argument for exemption if need be.
However, can Mann release the emails? If there is nothing stopping him from releasing them, then are they public? I’m guessing, no, but it does complicate things.
Lucia,
I can’t see the relevance of this court order thing to your argument about an agreement to release Michaels’ emails, or to anything really. Any response to FOIA is forced – it’s the law. But in fact. FWIW, the process was well underway before ATI got the court involved. Here is UVa, April 6, just 5 weeks after ATI paid its first installment (apparently finding $8500 in one go wasa problem for them), and no court case in progress:
“To date we have reviewed approximately 1,000 of the roughly 8,000 documents potentially responsive to your request. I anticipate that a first group of responsive, non-exempt documents which may be lawfully disclosed will be released to you shortly.”
There is no argument about the release of non-exempt docs.
And Boris, I can’t see your argument there (the last bit). There’s nothing stopping you releasing your own emails. That doesn’t make them public. Mann probably had copies anyway, and could have released them without getting copies from UVa. He didn’t need the emails for something interesting to read; he just needed to know which ones were in contention. How else could he participate in the court case?
Boris–
Sure there is evidence of differential treatment. It’s just that you don’t consider the differences in available response to show differential treatment.
I have no idea what the law actually says on this; that’s going to make sense in court. But I do have notions about what might make sense in terms of policy.
Oddly, I’m not sure I would accept “he wrote them in the first place” nor even “direct interest” as a reason why UVA should be able to send him the emails while they were being refused to others. In some sense, the whole point of FOIA is to permit people who are not “inside” to get a hold of this stuff.
In my opinion, as matter of policy and as he had them and lost or destroyed them them, his right to duplicates from UVa should be the same as other peoples. Share with one, share with all.
I can see this hypothetically.
In terms of policy, I think it might hypothetically be justifiable for UVA to say that, in order for UVA to figure out which emails contained something proprietary and so subject to exemption, they needed to show the emails to someone who could recognize which things were proprietary. Not many people are qualified to do that– but presumably Mann is qualified at least in some instances. (In others he’s not. Just because someone wrote something doesn’t necessarily mean they know what’s exempt or not).
But out of curiosity, was Mann sent all 12,000 emails ATI was refused? If Mann was sent emails to assist UVA with the justification that they needed help identifying which were exempt, he should have been sent only a subset of the 12,000. UVA should have excluded all emails they could either a) prove exempt without consulting Mann or b) knew where not exempt without Mann . So, for example: (a) emails discussing student records, raises etc. (b) emails announcing a faculty meeting Friday at 2 pm. They don’t need Mann to tell them the former are exempt and don’t need him to tell the latter are not exempt (and also utterly boring.)
It seems to me that Mann should only have gotten those that required his particular “expertise” to determine whether they were exempt or not. For these, UVA could have included a specific question eliciting information they needed to determine if the contents were exempt. (Example “Q: Is the quoted text a paragraph from your yet to be published text book?” Q: Is the attached manuscript for a paper that is yet to be published? They could ask more open ended questions. But really, the exemptions are pretty narrow. )
In release do you include “share with his buddies” as opposed to “share with the news media”? I think there would be hell to pay if the judge discovered he did either!
Intriguingly…. imagine if someone hacks into Mann’s account now. This is potentially a big problem since ATI can only look at things under the agreement to keep them entirely confidential. UVa and Mann better have been dang careful storing, printing, viewing and handling these things. Because there are people “out there” who are going to want to hack into that stuff.
Nick–
Of course the court order isn’t relevant to Michaels emails It’ s about Mann’s.
There is nevertheless a difference between someone fulfilling their obligations under FOIA through the ordinary process of receiving a request and filling it and someone filling it only after a court orders them to do so. If you don’t see this difference, I doubt I’ll be able to get your blinders off.
Thank you for providing a link to one of the documents that shows UVA getting their PR department to write up responses that justify dragging their heels.
In other words: None had been released yet.
Reading the letter UVA wrote, UVA is perfectly content with having spent the $8,500 of ATI money, released zero documents, saying “we will undertake no further review unless you wish to pay another installment on our original estimate of $8,500 (or wish to pay the remaining amount of that estimate).” asking for more moneym, explaining why review would take more time ( i.e, “[students] will be able to work only the next two weeks, however, because of academic commitments.”) and requesting more funds (“(“It would therefore be to your advantage, if you wish to pursue this request further, to send me the further reimbursement of cost by overnight mail.”) while communicating that UVA would release some documents at some unspecified time in the future. The UVA chose to use the rather ambiguous word “shortly”, but no release date is suggested.
While you may consider this “no argument”, it’s also clear that UVA
1)does not offer to release any documents from already “reviewed approximately 1,000 … documents” .
2) gives no indication what how many of the 1,000 documents already reviewed were found to be not-exempt and
3) threatens to stop operations entirely unless they get more money.
4) and explains why the process will continue to be deathly slow.
Lucia,
“UVA is perfectly content with having spent the $8,500 of ATI money, released zero documents,”
Not so. They had spent the initial installment of $2000. Trickling the funds in this way is not a recipe for fast action.
On the contrary. When working with contractors, tricking in money is often advised as a method to get faxt action. Moreover, in the event that people are trying to block access by inflating costs, insisting on not overpaying is necessary.
But you are right, UVA was content to spend only $2000 of ATI’s money, provide no documents, make excuses for why things take a longtime and not fulfill conditions sent when the check was sent.
Thanks once again for providing a document that shows how UVA was pretty grudging. They are reluctant to list the names of responsive documents found to be exempt or to explain why any responsive document was found to be exempt.
There is an argument about the University inflating costs and time tables inordinately– more evidence of foot dragging and — when it comes down to brass tacks, unwillingness to release documents.
There is an argument about the University requiring ATI to pay for costs that the UVA is not allowed to charge for.
Note there Schnare’s letter requests a production schedule. Yet, the later response from the UVA not only provides no documents, but gives no schedule beyond the vague “shortly”.
This is yet another document that shows why people do not characterize UVA’s behavior as “agreeing” to release documents.
Lucia,
“Thanks once again for providing a document that shows how UVA was pretty grudging. They are reluctant to list the names of responsive documents found to be exempt or to explain why any responsive document was found to be exempt.”
Well, they couldn’t. The money was to fund the examination of documents to determine that, and at that stage ATI hadn’t paid any.
You might note that in his usual charming way Schnare is threatening civil action even as he makes the first payment.
OK.
Maybe in their wildest dreams Greenpeace would have received damaging emails from Michaels and/or Singer. Didn’t happen. The details are confused.
.
Mann’s emails, as an employee of the State of Virginia, are (by plain reading of the FOIA statute) clearly subject to FOIA. Will they ever see the light of day? Nobody knows, by my personal best guess is absolutely not: too embarrassing, even or the judiciary in VA . OK, so Mann dodges a bullet. Still. The point here is that people funded by the public ought not be hiding information from the (paying) public.
.
My considered opinion is that no mater how this turns out, Mike Mann is greatly diminished as a promoter of extreme climate change. Nothing else matters much.
Nick–
Uhmmm… they didn’t want to provide it even after making the determination. Read:
On this:
Given the prior history, I should think ATI pointing out they were willing to pursue civil action was wise on ATI’s part.
After all, ATI had requested these once before and UVA’s had earlier claimed the documents did not exist. After ATI discovered they did indeed exist and was requesting them again, UVA appeared to be dragging their feet, coming up with very high estimates for doing anything at all and appears to generally be dragging it’s feet. So, whether you find threatening civil action charming or not, I don’t see how it would be more charming to never mention the possibility and then suddenly file suit with no warning.
Moreover, I think the courts prefer one emphasizes what they expect and indicate willingness to file suit rather than being vague, having unstated expectations and then blindsiding someone with a suit out of the blue.
“After all, ATI had requested these once before and UVA’s had earlier claimed the documents did not exist. After ATI discovered they did indeed exist and was requesting them again, UVA appeared to be dragging their feet, coming up with very high estimates for doing anything at all and appears to generally be dragging it’s feet.”
Yet again, not true. This was ATI’s first application.
Nick…
Sigh..
http://www.atinstitute.org/american-tradition-institute-va-taxpayers-request-records-from-university-of-virginia-on-climate-scientist-michael-mann/
I guess maybe ATI didn’t make the previous request. I guess given the construction of the sentence I can’t tell who made the request. Other than your weird need to think UVA was rapidly, expiditiously and willingly providing materials and that nothing they ever, ever, ever did could be viewed any other way, I don’t think who asked is important. I’ll leave it up to you to find out precisely who UVA gave inaccurate delayer/denier type information to.
As far as I’m concerned whose FOI they turned down by claiming material that perfectly well did exist did not exist is is immaterial to the question of whether UVA might be viewed as unwilling to release material. In response to a previous request, UVA said the stuff did not exist. Only after it was found during the course of Cuccinelli;s fishing expedition was this inaccuracy discovered.
So, ATI was requesting material UVA avoided disseminating when requested under FOI and they avoided dissemination by claiming the information did not exist. Given this, I think it is perfectly reasonable for ATI who wants to get the data to percieve their high fees and implausible reasons for delay as trying to avoid providing the requested information and to mention the possibility of a civil suit.
This is true even if you find mentioning civil suits less than charming.
SteveF:
Yep. That’s pretty much it. The damage is done by UVa and Mann’s refusal to be open and forthright.
The only people who are going to view this favorably are people disposed to shill for Mann from the start.
Carrick,
If your University had received a demand for things like:
“Any and all computer algorithms, programs, source code or the like created or edited by Dr. Carrick, in the time period from January 1, 1999, to the present that are in your possession, including but not limited to, those stored on any of the specified or referenced (see FN 1, supra) computers, hard drives, floppy drives, tape drives,optical drives, desktops, laptops, file servers, database servers, email servers or any other systems, and all backup copies used for archive, continuity or disaster recovery purposes, where data was transmitted or stored on purpose, or captured as a result of transient use of a system or application in the course of day to day research or to produce any work product or result. Include messages that may have been kept by individuals who interacted on the Grants.”
with helpful additions like
“As used herein, the words “record”, “records”, “document” or “documents” mean the original and any copies of any written, printed, typed, electronic, or graphic matter of any kind or nature, however produced or reproduced, any book, pamphlet, brochure, periodical, newspaper, letter, correspondence, memoranda, notice, facsimile, e-mail, manual, press release, telegram, report, study, handwritten note, working paper, chart, paper, graph, index, tape, data sheet, data processing card, or any other written, recorded, transcribed, punched, taped, filmed or graphic matter now in your possession, custody or control.”
would you helpfully openly and forthrightly look through all your handwritten notes, graphic matters etc?
Or would you ask, does the law really require us to do this?
That’s what UVa is asking. Seems reasonable to me.
Lest people forget. I believe those fighting keenans FOIA argued it would take longer than it actually did. And CRU denied my FOIA arguing it would take longer than 18 hours. behind the scenes, of course, they had a different excuse.
If I were ATI I would ask for an audit of that money spent.
I’d read all 12000 for free.
Re: Nick Stokes (Comment #94482)
Fair’s fair. I have to agree with Nick on this one.
(On this post only, mind you. I haven’t read, and therefore have no opinion on, most of the previous 81.)
Are there only possible responses to ask one question or the other? Is there some point to your false dichotomy- rhetorical question attempt at a one two punch? Because if there is a point, I’d like to know what it’s supposed to be.
But in the mean time, tell me if you really think the only possible responses to the request or to ask one or the other of your rhetorical questions. Because I’m pretty darn sure there are a zillion other possible choices.
(And anyway, I can’t even begin to image what point you think you are trying to make. )
ATI’s demand looks pretty onerous. Actually it not that hard. I’ve been deposed a few times on corporate matters and had to do that. years of stuff. didnt take that long. The cost of fighting discovery is always an option was never engaged. But Uva seems to be spending a lot of money to avoid a less costly job.. a job were they can actually pass on the costs. Are they really trying to protect valuable proprietary stuff? no. if it was valuable they would know exactly were it was and they would be working to monetize it.
I know where i keep my valuables. If they had decent record keeping on exit the employee would be instructed to go through his material and put it in good order. When I let employees go we always had that as part of the final exit proceedure.
I get the office keys. I go through their project folders, CDs,
The mail gets a going over. Standard. That way if there is something valuable we dont lose it.
The lack of care taken at Manns exit from his place of employment is prima facia evidence that what he left behind was of no value. Now of course they will try to inflate the proprietary nature of it. But their action at the time of his depature will probably tell a different story.
BTW Nick: If UVA thought the law did not require them to do what the letter asked, they should not have requested money to cover the costs begin supplying the information. They should simply state that the law does not require them to provide the information requested. If the law did not require them to fulfill the request, the response would not be difficult to word. And the court case would be short.
” would you helpfully openly and forthrightly look through all your handwritten notes, graphic matters etc?
Or would you ask, does the law really require us to do this?”
1. yes I would look through all my stuff. I have.
Not a big deal. goes with the territory.
2. Would I ask if the law required us to do that.
Of course. And the answer would be ‘ Steve, we can fight ANYTHING the law requires us to do. We can fight that black is white and that white is black.
“Not a big deal. goes with the territory.”
It’s not Carrick’s territory. Nor Mann’s. This is not a civil suit – it’s just a demand that anyone could face when someone doesn’t like their scientific results, or politics or anything. And UVa is, thankfully, resisting. That’s not a failure of openness and forthrightness. It’s standing up to harassment.
I am with Nicky and his crew on this one. ATI and Greenpeace were treated equally. UVA wanted to immediately put the kibosh on Greenpeace’s request for info on the denier professors, but they did not think up that story about the information not existing until ATI wanted to snoop into team business. It would have worked too, if that denier Attorney General had not got involved. Damn him!
Out of curiosity, Steven, have you ever handed over computer code in response to such a demand?
Lucia
“They should simply state that the law does not require them to provide the information requested. If the law did not require them to fulfill the request, the response would not be difficult to word. And the court case would be short.”
They did. They provided a limited subset, as they said they would. And the court case is still going on.
Nick:
Mann isn’t a UVa employee so the legalese shouldn’t matter. He’s got ethical obligations to the public since he is funded by public money.
It’s as simple as that. Things I do on my own time that aren’t part of my job belong to me. Things that are funded by the public, belong to the public, not me.
There are of course limits to what I can share, legally. Some information is owned by the University (technically the funding agency gets first grabs), such as technologies that we develop in our lab that they can (and do) receive income from.
I don’t see product that Mann has developed that anybody would pay for. Nor anything that is For Official Use Only.
You don’t get to decide “that guy is an a$$hole, I won’t share my data with him.” Whether you like him or his tactics plays no role in your ethical obligations.
The civil suit only came up well after the stonewalling started.
But grasp at what straws you have left, Nick, if you feel the need.
Nick:
Speaking for myself, I hand out computer code all of the time, upon request.
I gave the full data set that I had collected over several years, plus the programs that I used to analyze it, plus instructions on how to run them to somebody who then used that as part of their own study. Not a big deal.
I’ve even, as I’ve mentioned before, shared with a history of science writer all of my correspondences on a particular topic (some of them ended up getting published in a book).
Really, it’s not a big deal. Wasn’t even painful (I run an HTML server on one of my computers, and place things like this in a non-discoverable location, and give them the URL to download it.)
I’ve shared data with people I thought were nice, people who were a$$holes, people who I was sure were bat$hit crazy and even people who were openly hostile towards me.
This is why all of this histronics Mann and you and others are engaged in don’t play well with the public, or even other scientists for that matter.
Go for it Nick, I’m sure you can find something wrong with how I conduct business, in the middle of all of your hagiographic admiration for Mann’s and UVa’s behavior. If I ain’t fer ya, I must be aga’nst ya.
Carrick,
Are you being fair to Nicky? Isn’t he taking a stand here purely based on principle? Didn’t he defend the privacy rights of Michaels and Singer, when Greenpeace went after their “proprietary” stuff?
Nick,
Unless you wish to be perceived as speaking untruth, perhaps you should qualify this statement?
Ya know, in the sense that for a statement to be true it must always be true, not just in certain circumstances. Now, you and I know that you’re just using hyperbole here, but some poor innocent could wander in and think that you really mean that any person in the state of Virgina could be hit with a FOIA demand. Is that really what you mean?
I ask, because your comments in this thread suggest that you apply a very literal and razor-thin parsing of language to differentiate truth from untruth. If you aren’t careful, someone might get the impression that you are less than consistent in your standards.
Or was the ‘anyone’ above an implicit ‘anyone who works for a publicly funded entity that is subject to a freedom of information law’? In which case, it is something that comes with the territory. Or are you going to argue the validity of FOI laws too?
Carrick,
I hand out computer code too. It’s mine. But in my former employment, that would have been a big issue. That’s why I’m curious about whether Steven has done it.
But my question to you was how you would respond to a demand like that of ATI. Every bit of code, ever – not just that which you choose to communicate.
Earle,
You tend to cut the lead off things. I said
“It’s not Carrick’s territory. Nor Mann’s. This is not a civil suit – it’s just a demand that anyone could face…”
The territory of Carrick and Mann is public universities. And yes, perhaps I should have spelt out – anyone in that territory.
I’m not arguing with the validity of FOI laws. I think UVa is justified in arguing that they do not authorize the kinds of demands that ATI are making. And despite SteveF assuring us that the law is plain, the hearing has been going on for nearly a year. We’ll see.
If only that UVA janitor had not stumbled over that backup server, in that broom closet, this unpleasant discussion would have been unnecessary. And Nicky might have preserved what was left of his dignity.
Nick:
If it were a request to me, I would have been as obliging as I could be. As I said, I don’t see the data or the software as belong to me, unless they’re developed by me in my spare time and don’t relate directly to my job.
(Of course they can’t have information that is proprietary or FOUO, but that’s maybe 2% of my complete archive of data, not 99.9% like UVa sickeningly claims. Some parts would require the sponsor’s approval, which I would have no trouble getting… just a letter of request, and some part like the NOAA stuff I’m required to share it.)
I don’t spend much time worrying about the motives of the person requesting the data, for reasons I don’t have time or interest to go into here.
And as I pointed out, Mann is no longer a UVa employee, he can make as many of those emails and other files public as he feels like. (And I think he should.)
I would have responded to ATI’s demands, just as UVA did. Can’t find it. Ain’t seen it lately. Wish we could help you. Will call, if anything turns up.
Nick,
Thanks for acknowledging that you indulge in imprecision in your writing at times. You’d no doubt catch a lot less grief if you’d recognize that in others as well, rather than jumping to claims of untruth.
As to my economy of quoting, I confess to not including what was extraneious to my point. Now let’s be thorough here, you actually said:
I don’t see how adding in the prior two sentence fragments makes your statement any less nonsensical. Carrick and Mann work (or worked) for publicly funded institutions subject to FOIA. These universities have an organizational infrastrucure to receive and process FOIA requests. These units presumably communicate to the employees their responsibilities under the law. That snipped off lead you complain of just makes your point seem even more irrational.
Earle,
“Carrick and Mann work (or worked) for publicly funded institutions subject to FOIA.”
and you said
“In which case, it is something that comes with the territory.”
But it’s not. I’m not aware of any academic, or even any public servant, who has been required by FOI to produce a decade of code. In the US or elsewhere. Or all their emails. Or even anything like it. Have you?
It’s unprecedented, and rightly resisted. Maybe it will be upheld. I don’t think we’ll like the world it leads us in to.
Nick:
No idea why you think information that was payed for by the public and rightly belongs to them shouldn’t be shared with them, or why we “wouldn’t like the world” that leads us to.
Part of that European-mind-set “surely we’re gods” scientific mentality, I guess.
Carrick,
That is a fantasy world. This is harassment. ATI is not seeking knowledge from Mann’s computer code. And if we open up this way to get at people, there will be lots more of it.
Nicky is right. FOIA doesn’t really mean what it says. Nobody should take it seriously. We must struggle mightily to keep our secrets from the hoi polloi. What happens if they find out what we have been doing on their dime? We don’t need any more discontent. Tea Party maniacs. They don’t have this FOIA crap in China or North Korea.
Nick,
Your lack of awareness isn’t really a strong point upon which to base an argument.
Were you aware of the Southeastern Legal Foundation FOIA request to the National Science Foundation for
Apparently not. Or the request in also in 2010 to NSF for
Hmm, I’m going to guess no. And that’s from one document from one Google search.
You are aware of this one FOIA request because parties on both sides are playing up the drama. And useful idiots on both sides are taking the bait. Congratulations Nick, you’ve been trolled.
Nick
If your view is the request was fulfilled, why do you think it was unreasonalbe in the first place? Or do you? I’m still mystified by what point you are trying to make with those two false-dichotomy rhetorical questions.
Nick
I’m not sure what your complaint is. Clearly, a civil suit is taking place. Also, FOI is intended to permit “anyone” to get documents created by public agencies and their employees without having to justify their reasons. So, yes “anyone” can get documents from public agencies covered under FOI and their motives could be they just don’t like your scientific results, politics or anything. And “anything” means “anything that is not specifically exempt”. An alienated spouse in a divorce action could request documents they think prove their spouse committed hanky panky– or took bribes or whatever. The public agency can request certain costs of seeking things be covered.
Of course no one likes the boring task of looking for these things. Many people don’t like someone sifting through all their stuff. But that doesn’t mean the person making the request doesn’t have a perfect legal right to make the request.
You can perfectly well roll your eyes at ATI, but UVA has to comply. My take based on reading the various letters, seeing the ration of “exempt/non-exempt” they claim, observing they previously responded to requests by declaring data did not exist is s that UVA has likely been dragging their heels, trying to stretch the meaning of exempt and so on. But I can’t know for sure because I haven’t read the exempt records.
During the civil action– which –even if you deem non-existent– a judge will determine whether UVA is fully complying, partly complying or so on.
I think more people asking for material that interests them and getting it would be a good thing.
I will give Nick at least part of his argument: the FOIA request for Mann’s emails is indeed politically motivated, and for sure could be considered “harassment”. But I would suggest that Mike Mann fairly well begs for this sort of thing with his endless political advocacy. Read the stuff he writes in his editorial screeds demanding changes in public policy, and attacking both the motivations and the honesty of anyone who disagrees with those policy changes.
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When a public employee chooses to enter the political area as an advocate, and regularly attacks all who disagree, that redefines the “territory” that employee operates in. FOIA is essentially a means for the public to protect its interests against improper behavior of public employees…. Especially politicians. Perhaps the Va FOIA law will be interpreted as exempting most documents produced by professors at public universities. Perhaps it won’t. But one has to twist the language of the statute into a pretzel to find such an exemption.
Nick:
Who cares? It would take like a maximum 30 minutes of my time to fill the request give them a multiple TB tarball like they requested, and go on with life. (The beauty of tree-structured directories is it makes it really simple to organize massive amounts of information in a way that lets you select out a subset for distribution.) And watch with wry amusement as these clueless dweebs try to figure out what anything is.
Then if somebody else wanted it, “here are the detailed download instructions for the information you requested”. And if that got repetitive, I’d have a canned “Dear ____, here are the detailed download instructions” document. I can imagine sh*t bombing these guys with terabytes of technical data, documents, programs and tex files… hey, if they ask for documentation, it’s online via published refs!
Or I could let this consume the next year of my life and take pretenses of martyrdom, like people who are that poor of scientists so they need something else to prop them up do.
I doubt Carrick and others would so happily provide code and all emails if they had been harassed for a decade over a 14 year old paper.
What do you guys think will come of this? You think there’s actually something that’s going to prove Mann is the fraud you already know him to be? My prediction is that there will be a few emails where Mann calls a jerk a jerk and thousands of emails that McIntyre can pretend prove his point that somethingsomething.
Tactics like this are the last resort of folks who lost the scientific arguments ages ago. Good luck I guess.
Lucia:
Kind of my point too. If ATI is willing to disseminate my work for me , why get in the way?
Boris:
Again who cares what their motive is? You have an ethical obligation as a scientist, unless you’re trying to argue that Mann isn’t a scientist.
As far as the “decade of harassment” goes, Mann has always been this arrogant and prickly.
SteveF:
I guess my point is that FOIA rules aside, those of us who accept public funding have certain ethical obligations that go with that, and these supersede our interpretation of the motives of the person requesting the data and even the legalese embedded in the, should never have been necessary, FOIA rules.
I think it’s perfectly rational to care about motive. If some random person goes through my garbage, I don’t care. If a guy who has filed lawsuits against me and dragged me before congress starts going through my garbage, I’m not going to let him.
There is no ethical obligation to share your work related emails with people bent on destroying you.
There must be something special about the code and emails academics write.
Contrasted this with the private sector where any code or email you write is instantly the property of the company employing you to do with as they wish.
I wrote lots of code over a decade ago. I wrote lots of emails over a decade ago. I had no rights to either the instant they were written. The code was subject to informal reviews and formal aggressive audits. The emails were often contested and could at any time be referenced and used “against” me.
Somehow that world works just fine, unsurprisingly it leads to better code quality and reasonable email discussions.
Earke #94508
No I wasn’t aware of those requests, though they don’t seem to involve emails or code. But did they get what they asked for?
Carrick,
Who cares? It would take like a maximum 30 minutes of my time to fill the request give them a multiple TB tarball like they requested, and go on with life.
Well done. But perhaps you’ve deleted some code over the years? Or some emails? Then you get to question 2:
2. If any responsive document requested was, but is no longer in the University’s possession, subject to the University’s control, or in existence, state for each such document:
(a) the type of document;
(b) whether it is missing, lost, has been destroyed, or has been transferred to the possession, custody, or control of other persons;
(c) the circumstances surrounding, and the authorization for, the disposition described in (b) above;
(d) the date or approximate date of the disposition described in (b) above;
(e) the identity of all persons having knowledge of the circumstances described in (c) above; and
(f) the identity of all persons having knowledge of the document’s contents.
As it often happens, I was too naive and did not realize right away how misleading Nick’s analogy (comment #94482) actually was. The image it conjures up of a lone hard-working scientist being hit with an unreasonable and incredibly disruptive request has nothing to do with reality.
In reality, Mann does not work at the University of Virginia anymore and the University is just being asked to turn over some stuff he left behind. This probably amounts to just a bunch of files in a backup server. No mountains of scrap paper and lab notebooks to go through: just put an IT person on it and you can have the whole package in less than a day and be reimbursed for the employee’s work besides.
That said, the legalese on that request was out of this world. (“Words in the singular will be understood to be in the plural,” for example.)
Boris,
“I think it’s perfectly rational to care about motive.”
.
Well, that knife has two blades. People are perfectly rational to care about Mike Mann’s motives as well (not to mention those of many of the ‘leading lights’ of climate science’). After reading many of the UEA emails, my conclusion is that politics pervades climate science, at least as practiced by the “Team”, like water pervades a sponge. IMO, it is perfectly rational to want to know if policy goals or a ‘politically desired result’ tilt the technical analysis and/or presentation. I think a case can be made that at least sometimes it has.
.
Mixing political advocacy with climate science is what leads to a mess like this one. If climate scientists want to avoid politically motivated confrontation, they need only stop behaving like policy advocates. Or not take public money. Either would avoid the problem, although the second option would probably mean finding a job outside of climate science, since virtually all is publicly funded.
Julio,
“As it often happens, I was too naive and did not realize right away how misleading Nick’s analogy (comment #94482) actually was. The image it conjures up of a lone hard-working scientist being hit with an unreasonable and incredibly disruptive request has nothing to do with reality.”
Well, it happens that in this case Mann is safely out of the way. But I’m sure they wouldn’t hesitate to apply this treatment to a scientist in place. And there’s plenty for his colleagues left behind to deal with:
“Any and all e-mails or pieces of correspondence from or to Dr. Michael Mann since he left the University of Virginia that are in your possession, including but not limited to, those stored on any of the specified or referenced (see FN 1, supra) computers, hard drives, floppy drives, tape drives, optical drives, desktops, laptops, file servers, database servers, email servers or any other systems, and all backup copies used for archive, continuity or disaster recovery purposes, where data was transmitted orstored on purpose, or captured as a result of transient use of a system or application in the course of day to day research or to produce any work product or result. Include messages that may have been kept by individuals who interacted on the Grants.”
The message is, employ an outspoken climate scientist and this is what you can expect.
Re: Nick Stokes (Comment #94521)
Regarding question 2: you just respond that you are not clairvoyant and that, by definition, you cannot know anything about a document about which no records exist.
As it happens, I just got hit with a politically-motivated FOI request the other day (I swear, I’m not making this up). We (the University employees) were asked to turn over all e-mails to and from a certain politician who is running for the state senate. The request was all of ten lines long, and it took me two minutes to comply (most of which were spent struggling with Microsoft Outlook).
If I could draw a lesson from this, it might be that requests that are brief and to the point, whether politically motivated or not, are more likely to be answered quickly and positively. Requests written by a committee of lawyers are going to be automatically forwarded to a committee of lawyers, and any reason or logic goes out the window at that point.
Julio,
Well, that might work if no records exist at all. But what if there are references to it, but you can’t find it. Seems there’s lots of finding out to do.
lucia (Comment #94509) April 20th, 2012 at 6:43 am
“If your view is the request was fulfilled, why do you think it was unreasonalbe in the first place?”
No, obviously the ATI request wasn’t fulfilled. The University nominated something they could fulfill, agreed to do, and did it. And ATI wanted more – hence the case.
Nick
Complaining you’ve never heard of such a think and/or that the request is unprecedented is just silly.
First, FOIA laws tend to be new. The Federal FOIA is from 1966. FOIA requests evolve over time both because the law has been revised, groups added to the list of those required to supply documents under FOIA and because, owing to the advance of technology, records used to be on paper and are no often electronic.
Of course no one requested a a decade worth of emails back in 1966. They might have requested all the magnetic tapes with voice recordings though. They might have requested all correspondence on paper.
Of course it’s unlikely someone would request a decade of code back in 1966– the level of code use was smaller. (Plus, the University likely would not have the code! If Mann had been using code, he’s likely have backed it up on his own tapes or punch cards put them in an appropriately sized box and taken them with him when he left.)
People can only ask for stuff that could plausibly exist. The fact that asking for emails or code is recent doesn’t make those requests unreasonable.
lucia (Comment #94530) April 20th, 2012 at 9:08 am
Lucia,
I was responding to an assertion that this sort of thing is part of the territory. That needs to be supported by some evidence that it actually happens.
Boris
Well… that’s a loaded question. First, with respect to the “load”. Plenty of us have already said what will come after the documents are released and plenty of us who think UVA are being knuckle heads don’t think Mann is a “fraud”. A highly political spin-meister maybe who twists stuff in a tendntions way? Sure. But actually making up data? Diverting funds? Etc. I’d be surprised if we discover that sort of thing.
Second, on the likely outcome. Lots of us have said likely a big yawn especially on the “fraud” etc accusations. There will be lots of reading and discussion. Some of the emails will be sidesplittingly funny — and read and reported by people who are interested in reading 12,000 emails. Most will be boring, boring, boring.
But that’s pretty irrelevant to whether UVA should be fighting, whether ATI should have a right to ask and so on.
Nick:
I’m not seeing why you are outraged at this. The request is
“Any and all e-mails or pieces of correspondence from or to Dr. Michael Mann since he left the University of Virginia that are in your possession….,”
This is then followed by a helpful list of possible storage media. That list prevent people from responding from forgetting that correspondence can now be stored in multiple ways and prevents them from interpreting the request being restricted to letters written on paper and sent by snail mail. While the length may irritate you, it seems helpful and designed to avoid misunderstandings.
Yes. Under FOIA, you can expect some people will request public employees communications. That’s a good thing.
Carrick,
“I guess my point is that FOIA rules aside, those of us who accept public funding have certain ethical obligations that go with that..”
.
Yes, and that is really the issue here. Being a public employee means what you produce belongs to the public. Simple. That some publicly employed climate scientists believe the public has no ownership rights, which can only be exercised via FOIA, suggests that these scientists should find gainful employment in private industry. Of course, the situation is not much different in private industry: the work you do and your emails are the property of the company that employs you. There is no special presumption of personal privilege if those emails contain embarrassing information. If you want to never appear unscrupulous, be very careful what you write in emails messages while working.
.
There is something to be said for self employment. 😉
Lucia,
“This is then followed by a helpful list of possible storage media.”
Indeed. It reminds them that they have to search for birthday cards, phone messages, handwritten notes of phone calls etc. Mustn’t forget anything. And of course, UVa is a big place.
As I say, the message is, don’t employ climate scientists that ATI may take a dislike to.
Nick–
A government funded entity fulfilling the legislative requirements has always been part of the territory. Employees doing what their jobs require has also always been part of the territory. That the specifics change over time doesn’t suddenly mean they don’t need to do them. So it’s silly for you to get in a twist that a university might be required to provide code or electronic documents just because, in the past, code or electronic documents might not have been requested because people used to ask for paper or recordings on magnetic tape.
Nick
This is silly. If UVA weren’t wasting so much time and money fighthing this, their expense would be low and there would be no disincentive to hire people whose records ATI might request.
lucia (Comment #94535) April 20th, 2012 at 9:34 am
Well, if no-one had had to produce all their emails, then it can’t be part of the territory – they’ve been around for twenty years. But if you know of any people required under FOI to produce all their paper correspondence, that would do.
Remember all the complaints about UVa spending time and money opposing Cucci. But it turned out he had no authority to do the kind of bullying he was trying. Do you really want people to be able to pull off this kind of bluff because no-one is prepared to stand up to them?
“Do you really want people to be able to pull off this kind of bluff because no-one is prepared to stand up to them?”
I wonder the same thing about AGW.
Andrew
nick.
have i ever handed out computer code
per one of these demands
You did not want to ask that question.
I have instructed engineers to write code, expected that it would be demanded and hoping that it would be demanded in such a way. And yes That code was handed over. Handed to anyone in the world who wanted it. That kinda screwed up the people demanding it.
“produce the following …” Sure thing, I knew you would ask, and here’s my treat, im giving the code to the whole world. ouch.
They didnt expect that.
Then of course in the last 2 copies our repositories were open
so everything was shared from day one. No request form needed to take all the software or hardware design anytime you wanted
Nick,
“As I say, the message is, don’t employ climate scientists that ATI may take a dislike to.”
Or that Greenpeace might take a dislike to? I think UVa should have fully and promptly complied with the Greenpeace request as well. They are making all of this much more difficult than it needs to be.
.
The case could have been settled immediately if UVa had agreed to accept the court’s determination of whether specific emails were exempt under FOIA or not. They are insisting on an interpretation of the statute which reads things into the words that I don’t think are there. It seems to me UVa is essentially asking for an interpretation of the law that declares any substantive communication by their employees is exempt from FOIA requests. They want only to be required to release spam and irrelevant messages (“coffee and donuts will be severed at the staff metering next week”); I can’t imagine a more contorted interpretation of the statute. Sort of like FOIA without the ‘I’.
.
I have not a clue if UVa will get the interpretation/exemption they want. It would not surprise me if they do, although the process will probably take several years and millions of dollars in legal fees. It would also not surprise me if the legislature changes the statute to explicitly prohibit an interpretation UVa manages to get from the courts. After all, what is to keep the Va department of motor vehicles, or any other state funded organization, from declaring the same interpretation for their employees? Of course, by the time the legislature acted to address this issue, Mann’s emails would have been long ago destroyed. So I’d say the chance is reasonably good (>50%) Mike Mann will avoid the embarrassment of ever having his 12,000 emails subject to public review. There is a virtual certainty that public review will not happen for at least 2-3 years and maybe much more, even if UVa ultimately loses in the courts.
.
The message of the ATI suit to publicly funded organizations in Va is: tell your employees that all the work they do and all that they write on the public dime belongs to the public, and is subject to FOIA requests.
Nick Stokes (Comment #94537)
Dramatic phrasing but misleading. The Virginia AG (like in most states) has broad power to bully (i.e., issue a civil investigative demand) any company or individual vaguely suspected of any of a wide variety of unlawful activities. It just so happens he can’t do that to another part of the state govt.
People of of a certain political persuasion invariably applaud when CIDs are issued against private corporations. I am surprised that you seem to applaud the lack of accountability of Virginia state agencies such that they are not subject to the same “bullying” by state law enforcement as everybody else. Seems backwards, doesn’t it?
From what I can see, this case seems pretty typical. An institution takes a over-large view of its exemption privileges, plaintiff takes the opposite view. The practical problem is always how to you resolve it without expensive litigation over each doc, privilege logs, degrees of preliminary disclosure etc.
There is no question that ATI has standing to ask for the docs and a legal presumption in favor of full disclosure. The burden is on UVA to establish grounds for an applicable privilege or exemption. Mere assertion will not cut it.
Also, the list of material categories you are outraged about is legal boilerplate. It gets picky. People have litigated over whether the sticky tabs attached to original docs are part of the doc (courts usually say “yes”).
Nick
I was among those who criticized Cucci and thought he should not be using the power of his office and state moneys that way. It was an abuse of office.
I think ATI doing it is fine. They aren’t any sort of branch of the government.
So: I don’t want elected officials to use government money to go after political opponents. But I think it’s fine for private people, think tanks, news papers etc. to use FOI to find out what’s happening at public institutions.
The fact that Cucci and ATI both happen to want the same documents doesn’t mean that the cases are the same.
George
Wow! (BTW: the ruling seems right to me. If the sticky tabs communicated something, they are part of the communication. Moreover, if the didn’t communicate anything, I suspect no one would bother to fight the request for the sticky tabs!)
Steven Mosher:
Similar story here.
How I design my code is strongly influenced on whether there will be an audience.
Stuff I do for myself tends to C++ with full use of its data abstraction capabilities.
Stuff I do for other people where they will need to run it on their platform (but not necessarily modify) is written in as portable of a C version as I know how to right. And I just provide Makefile.mac, Makefile.linux and Makefile.cygwin for example to build it.
Stuff where they need to tamper with part of it, the core is C and the drivers are shell scripts (which most people can be taught to modify e.g.. default parameter values with).
Boris:
it’s actually an ethics violation to assume motive, or to use that assumption of motive to affect how you behave, so “care about motive” only applies if they clearly identify the motive.
Otherwise, the question you ask is “do they have a right to it?” and if the answer is “yes”, you provide it.
If it’s funded by public monies, yes there is. You are expected to behave in an open, honest and transparent manner with respect to the public’s property, which is intellectual knowledge that they paid for you to acquire for the betterment of society.
It is absolutely a complete and flagrant violation to refuse to withhold information just because you don’t like the politics of the people who are requesting the information.
SteveF,
“I think UVa should have fully and promptly complied with the Greenpeace request as well.”
How? By waiving the cost? But then taxpayers bear the costs? And maybe auditors query.
“The case could have been settled immediately if UVa had agreed to accept the court’s determination of whether specific emails were exempt under FOIA or not. “
Well, they may appeal, as may ATI. But this is normal process. Of course the court will decide. UVa is simply engaging in the hearing, putting their view. If they don’t, then the court decides on ATI’s advice. Do you think they shouldn’t make their case?
One of the things people forget when they say “UVa should just do …” is that the phrase the UVa uses “release as permitted by law” is not empty. If they release docs that they don’t have to, then someone else may sue them. With stacks of staff and student info in the mails that is quite likely. That’s one reason why they have to go through the mails carefully.
as an exercise, someone should program a bot to keep the Stokesians responding. The factual content here disappeared a week ago but Nick is still doggedly duking out some non-existent point. Who know what he thinks he is achieving but I presume he must get some kudos from the Team hereby – some Romm points or something similar. But a bot could keep him engaged forever. And then he might be able to look at the real world.
Nick,
Revisiting the claimed exemption again:
The key word in all of that is of course ‘proprietary’, as in ‘property of’ or ‘ownership of’. What the argument boils down to is whether work all work done by professors at UVa is their personal intellectual property or if it belongs to their employers, which might be the university (the public) or an external public or private funding entity. There is no argument (I think) that work paid for by an external private company would normally be protected by this exemption, unless there is a clear contract stating otherwise.
.
So ATI and UVa (and a host of others) simply disagree about who owns the work of professors at public universities. The courts will make a determination (actually multiple determinations, including the likely appeals) but the final authority rests with the legislature of the State of Virginia; they can do pretty much whatever they want with the exemptions to the FOIA statute. They also hold the purse strings at UVa. I think UVa should be careful about what they hope for in this case.
Carrick (Comment #94546)
April 20th, 2012 at 1:08 pm
Steven Mosher:
I have instructed engineers to write code, expected that it would be demanded and hoping that it would be demanded in such a way. And yes That code was handed over. Handed to anyone in the world who wanted it. That kinda screwed up the people demanding it.
Similar story here.
#################
Sometimes Nick reminds me of Chris darden from the OJ trial.
Aksing OJ to try the glove on without knowling the answer to the question.
Can Uva Fight? Of course they can fight. No law is unfightable.
black is white and white is black. The question is “is the fight worth it” With regard to student records and staff info being intermingled in Mann’s mail. One would assume that Uva cares about this enough to have a proper document control proceedure.
One would expect them to institute an policy where this vital sensitive information was controlled. They should be on notice now that such a proceedure is prudent given the fact that they have been FOIA’d before. Since the Micheals case I wonder if the administration took any action to protect these sensitive records.
Did they take any action to separate exempt from non exempt after the micheals affair. if not, why not? Since they have a duty to the students to keep their records secret and since they have a duty to keep proprietary stuff proprietary and since they have a duty to produce Non exempt on demand, why would they NOT take action to make sure they could meet all three duties.
Did they change document control proceedures after the micheals request? I would ask for that under FOIA or suponea. What we suspect is that they found the excuse they gave to greenpeace worked. So they didnt change policy. They didnt make it any easier for themselves to meet all their duties.
Actually, in general, “proprietary” only applies when there is a monetary value associated with it. You can’t arbitrarily withhold information that the public paid you to obtain, simply by claiming proprietorship.
I’m pretty sure, giving Mann’s typical funding agencies (NSF and NOAA), that in fact, the bar is very high for withholding information. Where I am, it starts with an invention disclosure.
Question: Has Mann filed any invention disclosures with UVa regarding his flawed research in tree-ring proxies?
Doubt it.
Apparently, some states are a little more “open” than others.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1153205-arkansas-football-documents-reveal-the-final-days-of-petrinos-time-at-arkansas
From what I can piece together from various other reports of this incident, the state of Arkansas has very few exemptions from FOIA requests. The AP is being particularly aggressive in filing FOIA requests, which I guess tells us something wrt AP’s approach to College Football vs climate science (they view one as far more important than another?).
Anyway, if rumors are true that Michael Mann is shopping his wares on the open market, we can be sure there’s one state that’s not on his list.
“Question: Has Mann filed any invention disclosures with UVa regarding his flawed research in tree-ring proxies?”
All science is ‘flawed’. Otherwise we would have nothing to research.
Of course not all work done by university professors belongs to the university. Professors routinely write books and are not obligated to give any royalties to their universities. There may be specific rules for openess by certain funding agencies, but, as a default, the professor would retain the rights to his work.
As to emails, in my experience, a lot of emails are exchanged with students, sometimes about their academic performance. Universities have a legal obligation to withhold those emails.
Well, in Petrino’s case there was clear evidence of wrongdoing. And in Mann’s, there was zero evidence of wrongdoing. That might have something to do with it.
“I was among those who criticized Cucci and thought he should not be using the power of his office and state moneys that way. It was an abuse of office.
I think ATI doing it is fine. They aren’t any sort of branch of the government.
So: I don’t want elected officials to use government money to go after political opponents. But I think it’s fine for private people, think tanks, news papers etc. to use FOI to find out what’s happening at public institutions.
The fact that Cucci and ATI both happen to want the same documents doesn’t mean that the cases are the same.
George”
We already know what he’s doing. He publishes his research, he gives interviews, he goes to conferences. If the “climategate” emails are anything to go by, what will happen is, once again, a massive exercise in selective quoting, spin and misrepresenation of the facts. More strength to Mann.
There are various side issues, but the case has boiled down to UVA’s claim that the withheld 12,000 emails contain FOIA exempt proprietary information. Judge Sheridan seems not to be too impressed with UVA’s and Mann’s other lame protestations.
The judge has been given 17 emails by UVA along with some assertion in lawyereze that they are proprietary. Presumably, just like all of the hidden 12,000. That 17 is an odd number, in more ways than one. Why not 20, 0r 30? Do they think the judge has a 17 email attention span? Is 17 supposed to be a representative sample of 12,000? I guess they expect the judge to take their word for it on the other 11,983.
My guess is the judge is aware that when they were first presented with an FOIA request for this stuff UVA denied having it, only to stumble on a forgotten backup server in a broom closet when the state’s chief law enforcement officer got on their backs. And ATI has given the judge 14 counter-examples of emails that UVA presumably held back, when they released the 1,800.
I predict that Judge Sheridan is going to find it necessary to conduct a thorough examination of the 12,000 emails, and that he will determine that the bulk of them must be released.
Boris,
Depends on when the AP actually made the FOIA request.
Kurt Voigt, the AP reporter who obtained the FOIA records indicated in this radio interview that on April 1 nobody could have imagined this scandal.
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2012/04/12/aps-kurt-voigt-talks-petrino/
By April 10, he was happily reporting about “records obtained by the AP” under an FOIA.
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/04/10/2070458/ap-source-petrino-out-at-arkansas.html
Amazing what can be uncovered when an investigative reporter actually investigates and when an FOIA actually is geared toward freedom of information.
Imagine if someone uncovers an e-mail or text message where Petrino makes or forwards a request to delete messages because they are subject to an FOIA request.
All I see are phone records. If someone wanted Mann’s phone records, they would have had them in a couple days too. Maybe a little bit more, because athletic departments already have all this stuff ready to go if the NCAA comes looking for recruiting violations.
bugs:
His original research performed at UVa is flawed to the point of unusable. Not actually a criticism of him, as you point out, science moves forward.
You can’t make the claim of proprietorship on known to be useless programs and methods.
You’d see a few hand-written notes and personal letters, if you were willing to look hard enough (like do a google search). Are you seriously arguing that e-mails are more sacrosanct than these forms of communication?
http://www.whas11.com/sports/Petrino-detailed-affair-to-boss-before-firing-148188855.html
http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/rapid-reports/post/18529352
Really? Hope you used plenty of lubricant to pull that one out.
Looks like a best practice looking to find its way to a Climate Science department near you.
Boris
‘As to emails, in my experience, a lot of emails are exchanged with students, sometimes about their academic performance. Universities have a legal obligation to withhold those emails.”
Yes. And the greenpeace request for Michaels mails should have put the university on notice that they had an obligation to segregate this kind of exempt material. They have an obligation to turn over non exempt material and protect exempt. They chose to do NOTHING to insure that sensitive mails were segregated. Instead they rely on the hope that no one in the future will FOIA records and they rely on the hope that future requestors will not pay the costs and they rely on their right to litigate. Instead of taking action that would have allowed them to met requests quickly and efficiently while protecting students rights, they choose to allow sensitive information to be co mingled with non exempt material. Effectively the render all mail exempt by co mingleing and force requestors and the legal process to enage in the administrative task of document control.
Comingling sensitive information with non sensitive information in some areas can be a crime. But here its just SOP. In fact, this whole process makes it more likely that the university will continue to co mingle sensitive with exempt.
Did I miss something? Has UVA claimed that they are withholding the 12,000 emails, because some are exchanges with students? ATI doesn’t want that stuff. It’s a non-issue.
UVA apparently went through the ~14,000 emails and determined that only 1,800 were non-exempt. (Or was it non-incriminating?) Does anybody believe that they could not find Mann’s voluminous files, but they had the dope on the deniers Michaels and Singer readily at hand? Why should UVA be trusted to decide what is exempt, and what ain’t exempt?
They call this stonewalling, and Judge Sheridan get’s it.
Steven Mosher (Comment #94572),
To be fair to UV, the trove of Mann emails were discovered in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’ Even if they have a current system of differentiating student/faculty emails that are appropriately exempt from emails that aren’t exempt, it seems to be asking a bit too much to expect them to have applied such a system to this stumbled-upon archive.
Note: I’m drunk posting. Pouring one out for my homie TCO.
Dude, do you know how many professors there are at a major university? Hundreds (including instructors and whatnot). It would be a GSA-scale waste of money to start segregating emails when you never know who is going to come demanding email, notes, toenail clippings and etc.
Respectfully, I think you’re talking out of your ass with the commingling and crime stuff. It’s already commingled FFS.
Soellcheck brought to you by Cruzan rum.
Also, how could people not versed in climate science know what emails are sensitive or not?
Boris:
LOL.
Earle Williams (Comment #94575)
April 21st, 2012 at 5:06 pm
Steven Mosher (Comment #94572),
To be fair to UV, the trove of Mann emails were discovered in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’ Even if they have a current system of differentiating student/faculty emails that are appropriately exempt from emails that aren’t exempt, it seems to be asking a bit too much to expect them to have applied such a system to this stumbled-upon archive.
##############
That is not what I am arguing. I am saying that after the michaels affair the university was on notice that outside agents could request faculty correspondence. I would ask the admistration what steps they took to meet the various obligations they have: obligations to keep student records secret, obligations to protect proprietary data, and obligations to provide non exempt collections available when requested. What you will find is that the admistration probably took no action because they BENEFIT from having poor document control.
Boris.
Its rather simple. We had thousands of engineers on projects and guess what? even stupid engineers could learn how to label a document. the number of professors has nothing to do with it.
You merely have them attend a training class: and they practice simple document control. Student sends you a mail or you get a mail with student info.. bingo.. goes in the right place. Same for proprietary info.
http://www.computereconomics.com/article.cfm?id=1117
Some people who work in good organizations know to label every document they create> here is a simple example from somebody writing to an online help list
https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2009-February/187256.html
I hate the idea of FOIAing emails. With a couple of others above, I think the ATI effort is harrassment. And with Nick, I think insufficient thought has been given to where this might lead.
I agree that complete material supporting scientific publications should be readily accessible. Whether this should include material reviewed and excluded from publication of statistically driven work seems arguable. But if it isn’t provided, and the work was done with government funds, it should be FOIAable.
What FOIA appears to this non-attorney is to create a poor-man’s Discovery. Anyone can FOIA seek information from an organization subject to the act without alleging anything, or disclosing any interest, and without bearing any of the organization’s costs other than those related to providing the information. Discovery would require a suit, allegations, attorneys, and the very real possibility that the suit would be adjudged frivolous and the costs of the organization’s defense assigned to the plaintiff. This is a very high risk.
But with FOIA, there is no protection from frivolous motivation because the motivation needn’t be stated. Nor, I think, should the motivation be required to be disclosed as a part of an FOIA request.
I suspect that the need for FOIA is driven by a distrust of the machinations of our representative form of government – well warranted.
But, if FOIA requests are used to harrass, as I think the ATI request was, and probably the GreenPeace effort as well, the legislation enabling them will be reframed to require that requests be more closely drawn and made more difficult to formulate. The intent of the refaming will not be to increase access or induce more transparency (maybe illumination is a better term?).
I think the more worrying risk to our representative form of government if use of FOIA inquiries expands is bypassing inquiries via our representatives. If it comes to enabling citizens to mind the store without them, the pressure to have responsive representation will diminish, we will pay less attention to who does represent us and soon we will have lost it. This seems already the result of legislation by referendum that is being suffered in California.
Now that I’ve drifted so far afield, I’d like to share the product of this morning’s 3am wakening.
Everyone’s missed the important element in Lincoln’s statement about fooling the people. The important observation wasn’t that you cannot fool all the people all the time, but that you can fool all of the people SOME of the time. Some of the time is enough for a lot of things. You don’t need to do it all the time.
j,
What a load of crap. If those who are succoring at the public teat conduct themselves honorably, then they have nothing to fear from FOIA.
The FOIA legislation needs to be re-framed to include nasty punishment for those stonewalling clowns who lie about not having the information, when they receive FOIA inquiries from people they don’t like.
Don,
my point was, why don’t you seek redress through your congressman?
j,
What if my congressman is a little hostile left-wing loonie, who would view my attempts at redress as harassment?
You really don’t have a clue about how our political system operates.
j ferguson,
Are the Greenpeace and ATI FOIA requests extreme examples? I doubt it. Even if you are like Nick Stokes and ascribe every possible virtue to the University and every nefarious motive to ATI, that perspective is meaningless under the law.
Are those requests politically motivated? Of course. But the law doesn’t care. Or would you rather have transparency of government available to everyone except those disfavored by the government.
If the ATI case is an over-reach, there are mechanisms under the law to ensure that the need for transparency is balanced against other public needs. Saving the University from embarassment generally doesn’t fall under a public need.
As to whether the Greenpeace or ATI requests are harassment, I suppose that depends on your definition of harassment. Are they n annoyance, a poke in the eye? Surely. They are also a natural consequence when you are employed by a publicly-funded institution and repeatedly violate Wheaton’s Law.
Steve–
Of course training faculty to identify which emails are covered by student privacy would facilitate future FOIs, but it couldn’t help with the ATI one since UVA really didn’t foresee this in 199X or 200X.
Even now if you put an IT guy on the project, he could easily create a screen to catch many emails to and from students. Nearly all university phonebooks have a tag indicating “student”, “faculty”, “staff” emails.
Any email “to” or “from” an individual undergraduate student could be screened out immediately. (Anything going to multiple students probably isn’t a privacy issue and should be looked at manually rather than automatically deemed private.) Granted, students using gmail, hotmail etc. would not be screened. But this could save the University a lot of time in screening.
If I had the 12,000 emails and I had access to the university email lists and I wanted to find the most interesting emails quickly, segregating out the ones from students would be a good first step. They aren’t the ones ATI really wants anyway. In fact, if ATI were trying to lower costs, they should have requested they system manually screen out as unresponsive any that where the “to” included only undergraduate students, or any mailing list students enrolled in individual classes like “geology 123”, or the “from” was from an undergraduate student. (Hmm… ATI probably did not consult any sort of IT person before writing that request. If they had, they might have negotiated something that would help all sides. )
Going forward, the university might be wise to come up with a way to create a system to make identifying exempt emails easier. These systems would be created if the University has an incentive to create them. That incentive should be:
government entity (in this case UVA) pays either all or most costs of screening to be sure the materials release are not exempt. Requestor pays cost of duplicating etc. Based on caselaw cited in the letters exchanged between ATI and UVa, this may actually be what the law requires, but UVA was (is?) insisting ATI pay for the screening.
Who pays for what is quite likely one of the issues in the civil action. But making the entity that conducts the screening carry all or most costs of screening is one of the only ways to encourage them to do the task efficiently. Otherwise, if they don’t want to release stuff, they may have an incentive to set up the review in the most inefficient time consuming costly way possible.
I’m not sure I fully understand the issues for emails to and from students. The emails of mine that got published (with my consent) were written when when I was a graduate student.
I guess the emails would have to be of a confidential and personal nature. Even then, I can’t think of very many of those that I’ve been involved with, where parts or whole of the email would need to be redacted. Even the ones that involved personal dispute, I don’t see anything wrong with letting others see them after the matter has been fully resolved. Window into the (somewhat boring) world of academic politics and all that.
Is it concern over class performance or discipline of students? Grades?
Couldn’t you just screen those with the email addresses?
j, I obviously favor more transparency rather than less. We haven’t exactly been hammered by FOIA requests and neither has anybody else.
IMO, UVa has already spent far more resources fighting the FOIA, than it would have taken to have responded fully and openly it.
I also doubt that there is much in the way of student emails in the Mann emails that actually meets the threshold of the privacy concerns raised. Lucia also makes a good point that these probably aren’t ones that ATI really wants anyhow. On the other hand, protecting the privacy of individuals is one of the public needs that remain in tension with the transparency provided by FOI laws. There are bona fide privacy issues, and there are false flag privacy issues. ATI, and perhaps the VA circuit court, don’t think that UV is adequately distinguishing between the two.
I haven’t delved into the VA law, but I am aware of many of the Federal provisions for protecting both private information and commercially sensitive information from improper release. The concern is real and the consequences can be quite punitive. That doesn’t permit an agency to ignore FOIA requests, rather it argues for a comprehensive records management plan that ensures that sensitive records are flagged and procedures established to prevent the morass in which UV currently finds itself.
You know, one could argue that UV violated the privacy of several students when it provided a copy of the emails to Michael Mann. My exposure to this lawsuit has been limited because it strikes me as an inkblot issue. As such, I haven’t explored the specifics, such as how many of the emails were sent to Dr. Mann. The university was obliged to screen out student emails before forwarding the rest to Dr. Mann. If they did not, their credibility in arguing the privacy issue is seriously undermined.
Earle Williams,
I don’t dispute any of your observations above with regard to the operation of a lawfully enabled FOIA request. I am not certain your characterization of Nick Stokes’ disposition is accurate and in any case it is not mine. I am not a defender of the university. I think it is possible and maybe not unreasonable to not like the scope of application of a law. I do not like the idea of surrendering emails any more than I like surrendering notes made to oneself during the evolution of some project, even though the surrender of both can be lawfully compelled under some circumstances.
Part of my suspicion that both GreenPeace and ATI’s requests are harassment, admittedly legal as FOIA requests AFAIK, is that I cannot imagine that the emails would contain anything worth knowing other than to confirm that in the ATI instance Mann can be blunt, among other things. There is far too much concern about deportment in our skeptical world.
It may be that ATI supposes that the emails include material from which conspiracy or some other offense might be inferred and that with the emails in hand put them in a position to demand (if that’s the right word) further investigation and prosecution. I have no way of knowing this. Do you think there might be something like that?
I have very bad experience with my emails becoming semi-public. After I retired, the emails written in connection with my last project were needed to support litigation on a related financial issue. I was asked (probably unnecessarily but it was a good company) and I gave permission that they could be accessed. The person chosen to manage the documentation and who was given access to 3 years of my emails was a person whose promotion possibilities I had discussed at some length with another manager with whom she worked. The possibility of this promotion became known in our division and elicited several promises to seek other pastures should this person rise any higher in the organization. The problem was a tyrannical approach to management.
So I got a very angry phone call complete with all nature of threats some of which were plausible. As it happened, little that was discussed in the emails was not also contained in the semi-annual and annual review documents. And, thank God, there had been no jocular observations in our email discussions.
Yes, I was naive to write anything whose discovery could be uncomfortable. I do think I was quite thoughtful on this issue with regard to issues which might have been of interest had we been sued for something or other, but something like what did happen never occurred to me.
Earle Williams, you clearly are very sharp on this subject. Would it be possible to share your thoughts in comparing FOIA scope and scope of Discovery?
And interestingly has ATI’s litigation improved their grasp of the emails now by other means.
Lastly, I think the university acted stupidly. What I think they should have done is say “We will print all the emails and give you a room to look at them. You will not be permitted to copy any and we will have a monitor in the room to see that you don’t. you can bring a pad with you to take notes and we will indicate which emails you can have and which you cannot have. You can then take sufficient notes to enable you to dispute us where you think it warranted.”
This thread provides an interesting discussion with a number of important implications regarding such issues as (1) the differences between government and private entities obligations to reveal details of operations, (2) the differences between government and private entities to request these details when government is involved, (3) whether FOIA requests can be fulfilled arbitrarily, (4) whether FOIA laws are merely a facade for government to appear to be transparent while in fact in fighting many FOIA requests or delaying the request, and finally (5) the seeming opposition of rights to privacy of the individuals who work for government and/or any other taxpayer supported efforts.
Obviously under items 1 and 2 above, government, under a constitutional regime such as we have in the US, must be limited in its capability to search and interrogate individuals while at the same time must come under severely more scrutiny in revealing details of its efforts than required of private entities. It is the only method available to limit the powers of government and even then that method can many times fail in practice.
It would appear to me the most government entities are not inclined to be open and the more power we give to government the more we run up against these inclinations against transparency. In my view if it is advantageous for a government (or better the current administrators of that government) to fulfill an FOIA they will be more than happy to do it and without playing with the language of the law. On the other hand, if the request fulfillment could put the administrators in a bad light they can apparently fight it until the pursuing entity takes the issue to court where even there a predisposed judge can be arbitrary in ruling on the matter. If lawmakers and citizens were truly interested in an open government those rules would be established upfront before the fact and not have to be dealt with so inefficiently after the fact. It is always telling what organizations, and particularly governments, and individuals are willing to reveal voluntarily – and by that I mean not merely saying what they will reveal but actually revealing it and without spin.
With government run and funded science and academic operations we often have a contradiction of affording the scientist and teacher independence and at the same time provide the public detailed information about what those individuals are doing. I think this dichotomy is a major weakness in government funded projects whereby the projects are either opaque and without any citizen scrutiny or the project becomes overly politicized and the people involved have no independence of thought or effort.
In my view what we discuss in these threads are hardly ever special cases but rather examples of weaknesses in our systems and often weaknesses that are very fundamental to the system itself and not aberrancies.
j ferguson,
My experience and perspective with the Federal FOIA is that it is a necessary tool to ensure that those with the power to compel the public are accountable to the same public as to how public moneys are spent and how an organization lives up to the laws, regulation, and policy that direct institutional behavior.
Discovery in a lawsuit is governed by the Rules of Civil Procedure. I am no attorney and have only the most limited exposure to the discovery process. Using discovery as a “fishing expedition” is not condoned by most (all?) courts, but due to the adversarial nature of a legal action it is incumbent upon each party to define the limits through motion practice.
Fishing expeditions under FOIA are implicitly condoned. Responsive documents that are not exempt must be provided, with provisions for appropriate recovery of some costs. That’s the law, full stop. For the Federal Freedom of Information Act of 1966, the listed exemptions are:
1) classified or secret
2) internal personnel rules and practices
3) specifically exempted from disclosure by statute
4) trade secrets and commercial or financial information
5) limited inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums
6) personnel and medical files and similar files
7) some law enforcement records
8) regulation or supervision of financial institutions; or
9) geological and geophysical information concerning wells
Full info at http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/552
Everything else is fair game, and is only limited by what a requestor is willing to pay for and what an agency can legitimately refuse. Note that the Federal law does not provide for refusing vexatious, annoying, politically driven, or ‘harassing’ requests. There surely exists case law that establishes some bounds but that is outside my knowledge or experience.
The FOIA laws provide for the access to anyone, regardless of motivation. The Federal law provides clear guidance to agencies to get and keep their houses in order. If an agency has maintained records without concern for which, if any, are sensitive and should not be released under FOIA, they don’t get any sympathy from the law and likely not much from the courts.
Agencies have FOI officers whose duty is to review responsive documents and screen out excepted material. It sounds like the personal experience you related would have benefitted from careful review of the emails prior to making them available for the secondary use. It also reinforces the point made by Steven Mosher and me that agencies should maintain a document/records system that flags private, commercial, or otherwise sensitive information and limits the inadvertent dissemination of the sensitive information.
As you may have guessed, I dealt with FOIA in my work life. I conducted several records searches and provided responsive documents in a few instances, none of which qualified for exemption. FOIA is a fact of life for public employees, and most have come to accept it. When uninvolved parties express their outrage and start clutching their pearls over the trauma induced by a specific FOIA request, you can accurately surmise that it doesn’t engender much sympathy from me.
This is really not that complicated. That stuff that Mann left behind at UVA, when he found himself a better deal in PA, does not belong to him. It belongs to the people of VA, period. The custodians of the people of VA’s property should have told Mann that If he wanted to be copied on the people of VA’s emails, he would have to establish residency in VA and file a freaking FOIA.
“Though Mann did not join the suit until November, U.Va. provided the 12,000 withheld e-mails to his lawyer, Peter Fontaine, last September. Fontaine said he needed the e-mails to prepare his argument, and to prepare the sample e-mails to submit to the judge. David Schnare, ATI’s lawyer, said Mann was not entitled to the e-mails as an ex-employee, a non-party to the suit and a non-resident of Virginia. Once they were released to someone like Mann, the FOIA exemption was waived and the e-mails should be released, Schnare argued.”
What right did Fontaine and his clerks have to receive and examine those emails? How were the supposedly sensitive and secret emails to be secured? Was he charged $8,000? I don’t think so.
UVA administrators have been dishonest, derelict and have made complete asses of themselves in this matter. Schnare is killing them.
Thanks much Earle Williams, very helpful.
j ferguson,
I didn’t really respond to your question about whether I thought some misdeed had occurred that would justify the ATI request. As I said earlier I haven’t looked into the specifics of the ATI lawsuit at all, and were it not for Nick Stokes I would have made a passing comment and moved on.
Does it make a difference if I suspect that Dr. Mann facilitated the deletion of emails at the behest of Phil Jones? Nope. Does it make a difference if Greenpeace thinks Pat Michaels was on the payroll of ExxonMobil? Nope. How about if UK journalists suspect MPs are cheating on their expense reports, or if someone wants to make a career out of interpreting Sarah Palin’s emails? Nope to all.
Most FOIA requests are quite mundane, and it’s only the juicy ones you may hear about. And those are probably the ones most critical, because they discomfit an organization. It shouldn’t be necessary, but that helps draw the line for an institution as to what the limits are for those decisions and actions that involve agency discretion.
Earle Williams (Comment #94591) April 22nd, 2012 at 12:28 pm
“You know, one could argue that UV violated the privacy of several students when it provided a copy of the emails to Michael Mann. “
It would be a stretched argument. They are emails from his email account – that is why they are being sought. They would have been addressed and previously sent to him or written by him.
On that argument, they would have been violating privacy whenever they allowed him to access his own account when he worked there.
It ain’t the same banana, Nicky. Mann is no longer employed by UVA. He is not a resident of VA. He did not make an FOIA inquiry. He had no right to be copied on emails that belong to the citizens of VA. He certainly had no right to receive and share any private information on students, whether he had seen it before in the course of his UVA employment, or not. The emails are not his property. Hello! How many people other than Mann do you think have seen those emails, since they were so graciously turned over by UVA? What is the legal justification for giving the emails to the freaking lawyer and his crew? Where are all those emails now? How many copies floating around? Is UVA keeping them safe from dissemination? I will help you: hell no!
Your credibility continues to diminish with each post, Nicky.
Technically, aren’t you supposed to destroy (or transfer if they need to be retained) confidential documents (e.g. student emails) when you leave the employment of a university?
I work with human subjects occasionally, and I think the same issue applies there. I don’t believe I’m supposed to take records with me when/if I leave an institute that would allow one to link a particular individual to data collected on them.
Nick Stokes,
Let’s see, how should I say this…
“Quite untrue.”
Firstly, it was the university’s email account, not Dr. Mann’s. Dr. Mann had access at the university’s discretion.
I remain perplexed as to why you argue nonsensical positions. For starters, the privacy issues presumably stem from the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. UV policy is here:
https://policy.itc.virginia.edu/policy/policydisplay?id=STU-002#Prior_Consent
Please read section 6. It’s pretty long, so I’ll quote one snippet here. Please pardon my snipping the lead material…
There’s quite a bit more below that defining who constitutes a school official. I don’t see former employees on that list. Further below in section 6 is a list of external officials to whom the university may disclose without prior consent. I don’t see former employee on that list either.
You may wish to argue that none of the 12,000 emails constitute educational records as defined under FERPA. In that case you would probably be right. That would alleviate concerns that UV had violated FERPA and the privacy of former students. But at the same time it undermines the rationale to withhold those emails from public release.
Carick,
In the UV faq page they explain why they couldn’t find Dr. Mann’s email whereas they could find Dr. Michaels’. In it they state that email accounts are deleted when an employee resigns, whereas they may be maintained and used by former employees that retire from the university.
So, taking that statement at face value, UV deleted Dr. Mann’s email account when he went to Penn State. At least that was the plan. Was that in compliance with a document retention schedule? I doubt it. But then again I expect that the privacy issue with respect to Dr. Mann’s 12,000 emails is a smokescreen, with just a hint of validity.
Earle:
I tend to agree with you here. And of course Nick jumped on this crumb just like any other. Spare no expense (including your own dignity) when shilling for these guys.
“In the UV faq page they explain why they couldn’t find Dr. Mann’s email whereas they could find Dr. Michaels’. In it they state that email accounts are deleted when an employee resigns, whereas they may be maintained and used by former employees that retire from the university.”
But they did find a whole bunch of Mannian emails a few months later, when the Attorney General took an interest. A brief alleged description of the initial failed search is found here:
http://www.virginia.edu/foia/climatechange/timeline.html
“12/17/09 U.Va. responds to Marshall request that after a thorough search, engineers are unable to find any Mann e-mail on University servers because Mann’s e-mail account was terminated when he left the University in 2005.”
They must have had more competent engineers do the second even more thorough search.
I am IT illiterate (some might say completely illiterate), but wouldn’t they be deleting the resigned employees email account from the email server, because he ain’t working there anymore and retains no right or authorization to send or receive emails, or to view and retrieve the contents of the university’s email system? Whereas, a retired prof might be granted some sort of customary emeritus status allowing continued use of the uni’s email system. And don’t the engineers who develop and maintain these systems know about backup servers?
PS: Would it be customary/policy for the university to completely delete the contents of a departed employees email account?
Don,
I know just enough about IT and email servers to almost think I know enough to answer your questions. But when it comes to IT and the brutal upgrade cycles that businesses maintain for hardware and software, I know enough to bite my tongue.
Things may have changed over the years, but in my university days there was a lot of departmental autonomy when it came to IT. Take for example the description of IT management that came out of UEA after Climategate broke. That completely jibes with my experience. So it doesn’t surprise me in the least if there was an old server sitting around, chock full of old data.
In my current place of employment, when an employee leaves their email account is deleted. Of course, emails are already backed up centrally and kept long after the employee departs. Existing files on the network drive are moved over to the supervisor’s directory.
Earle Williams (Comment #94601) April 22nd, 2012 at 9:14 pm”
“Firstly, it was the university’s email account, not Dr. Mann’s.”
Quite untrue. See #94602:
“UV deleted Dr. Mann’s email account”
But the point is that UVa was not disclosing anything to Dr Mann. They sent him copies of emails he had previously received and sent.
I have not, BTW, contended that the presence of student information means that emails can’t be released, for that reason. I said it was a justification for UVa to proceed carefully. I think everyone would agree that the information should be redacted.
Nick,
Who deleted the account? Dr. Mann or the university? Or are we getting back into redefining ‘is’ on this point?
It’s really simple here, when Dr. Mann was an employee of the university, he qualified as a school official. When he left the university, he did not. Certainly he possessed knowledge of what was in the emails, assuming he read them. And he may have prepared an archive for himself for use outside the university system.
Those points are irrelevant to the fact that in 2011 he was not a school official for UV as defined by the privacy law. If any of the emails contain information that qualifies as an education record (plausible, if student performance were discussed) then the university is in clear breach of its duties.
You are right that UV should have proceeded with caution. Hopefully they vetted the 12,000 emails prior to sending them to Dr. Mann’s attorney and are satisfied that not a single email contains an education record of former students.
You really ought to read that UV FERPA policy page. Under section 2 it lists the student’s rights, which include
I guess they forgot to add the part about “or someone who no longer works here”.
Can you point me to any part in the policy page (https://policy.itc.virginia.edu/policy/policydisplay?id=STU-002#Prior_Consent) that authorizes UV to release documents that may contain education records or personally identifiable information to Dr. Mann, someone who left the university more than six years prior?
Earle, #94608
What is your point here? It is possible that the University technically breached some requirement there. Of what relevance is that to the FOIA case?
My point is that public release of emails containing student or other personal information would be harmful and a cause of civil action by the parties concerned, and UVa should make sure it doesn’t happen. Do you disagree?
If any student or other person has been harmed by Mann’s receipt of copies of emails from his former account, then some appropriate action should be taken. But that is not relevant to the FOI issue.
I disagree. I think whether the release of an email containing student information is harmful to the student or causes civil action by the student would depend on the contents of the email. For example, an email to the the student chapter of the ASME would probably cause no harm and no civil action. I don’t think merely adding a student’s email to the distribution list magically transforms the email to ‘private’ and exempt. I think student would have no cause of action. Certainly, even if he had a cause of action, it would be highly unlikely a student would act and it’s highly unlikely any judge would grant him much in the way of damages.
But maybe a lawyer who practices in the US would know more. I wouldn’t consult on in Australia.
But releasing the unscreened emails to him may mean that UVA is treating them as public. The judge did not grant the motion to hand them over to ATI, but he dismissed without prejudice— meaning that the matter is not closed. The judge did not make a ruling about what the law requires on this issue.
Lucia,
“would depend on the contents of the email”
Indeed. That’s why they have to go through them all rather carefully, which takes time. And yes, I should have said could be harmful.
“may mean that UVA is treating them as public”
But that’s not connected with the student info issue. And yes, the judge did dismiss that motion. It can be revisited, but it’s not supportive.
No more carefully than anything else really.
I don’t know why you are dwelling on student emails in particular. The stuff that needs to be private is generally not in emails. Faculty don’t generally send letters of recommendation to students and not by email. They don’t generally send grades out by email. (Doing so can be unwise since the faculty member might screw up and send to the wrong person. That would be privacy matter at the time the email is sent!). Of course, someone might slip up– but most emails between faculty and students is not going to be the exempt sort of stuff.
BTW: It occurs to me that one of the potential dangers for any faculty member whose emails are requested is that people could discover he violated student privacy while working at UVA.
That said, I already said think ATI would have been wise to ask UVA to exclude anything that is “from” a student using his university email and whose “to” list contained only undergraduates or student clubs. Those aren’t what ATI wants anyway. Since UVA is charginging ATI it would have been in ATI’s interest to get those screened out automatically using an computerized filter.
But this isn’t a legal matter.
If the 12,000 emails sent to Mann contain student info then sharing them with someone not employed by UVA– i.e. Mann would potentially violate exactly the same privacy laws as sharing them with ATI.
If any of the students who sent email to Mann want to make a stink of it, they might. If a group wants to back students to fund them to make a stink, they might.
Nick–
If any former UVA students still living in UVA are curious about the emails sent Mann or nervous that any of their private information might be publicized during the release, they might consider each, individually writing an FOIA requesting UVA send them copies of any emails that included their own “to” and “from” information sent to Mann. In their letter, they should request that UVA expedite their screening the emails by first filtering the “to” or “from” address and filter the emails for any mentions of their name for:
a) student email and
b) email of any email lists the student received email from.
An enterprising student who wants to keep potential costs to himself low might even include a simple script that does the job for UVA.
On the one hand, “some” might consider requests coming in from multiple students “harassment”. But on the other hand, individual students might have preferred the situation where Mann no longer had access to information he lost– and they might be nervous about the emails.
Lucia,
I am not one of the “some” who would consider individual student FOIA requests for copies of their to and fro’s harassment. They would clearly have what to me seems a legitimate interest, anmd yes, I understand that there is no threshold for legitimacy of interest in the FOIA legislation.
Having asked Mann a truly stupid question via email and having that interchange become public could certainly become embarrassing to a student in later life particularly if that student continued in academia.
If Mann’s response had been compassionate, it might not be evident to non-climatologists just how very stupid the question had been. This also supposes that the student email filter would sieve out only the email issues suggested in earlier comments.
I still hate the enFOIbleing of emails.
It’s one thing to comment here and take the chance the Don will think you are an idiot. At least you can foresee that possibility, but it’s another to have thought (however unrealistically) that your dialog was private.
What? me immoderate? is “idiot” a proscribed word?
apparently i-d-i-o-t is a bad word around here.
j– Yep! If you logged in as author you could probably get away with that word.
On stupid questions– I think anyone who thinks badly of a student for asking a ‘stupid’ question about course material is an idiot. Students have questions about subject matter they have not yet mastered. Asking is the way to get clarification on a point.
Of course, there can be stupid answers…. 😉
Nick,
My point remains that which you contested in #94598. One can argue that UV breached the privacy act when it released 12,000 emails to Dr. Mann. You argued that point, which you now concede.
My original point was nothing other than an observation and a musing, with no particular argument to make. Yet you charge in and counter-argue, seemingly for the sake of arguing. You make facile assertions unsupported by evidence and appear to deliberately miscontrue every statement you oppose.
I have not argued that any students were harmed by UV’s lapse, but that is because I know not what is contained in the 12,000 emails. UV has argued that they must be careful about protecting those student’ privacy while at the same time violating it. You champion UV’s actions in protecting something special to you and climate science, while ignoring the potentially harmful action the UV has taken, an action not compelled by court order or subpoena.
Why, Nick, do these purveyors of climate science get a free pass, and no one else does? Have you any sense of how your arguments reflect upon you?
Thanks, Earle:
“In my current place of employment, when an employee leaves their email account is deleted. Of course, emails are already backed up centrally and kept long after the employee departs. Existing files on the network drive are moved over to the supervisor’s directory.â€
That’s what I was looking for. Seems to me that most organizations, public and private, would have reasons/policies to keep former employees email communications on file for some length of time.
Nicky, Nicky
“But the point is that UVa was not disclosing anything to Dr Mann. They sent him copies of emails he had previously received and sent.”
The emails do not belong to UVA and they do not belong to Mikey Mann. They belong to the people of VA. UVA is simply the custodian of the information. What control do they have over the copied information that they gratuitously sent off to some lawyer and his clerks, in PA?
If Mann has already seen the stuff, why do he need to see it now? Huh, Nicky?
Does anybody believe that Mann would prevail, if he decided to sue UVA for releasing the 1,800 emails to ATI? Hell no! They are not his emails.
Don
Most UK companies of any size have a data retention policy, and I think that the same applies to most UK universities, which specifies how long certain types of data are kept. They are mostly influenced by the statute of limitations. So my employer states that its policy is to hold central copies of emails for 6 years and it encourages its staff to delete old emails too. There may be exceptions for certain types of email that relate to tax/legal affairs.
If similar conditions apply in the USA, then it is possible that UVA would have deleted any centrally stored emails sent to/by Mann around 2011 – given that he started to work for Penn State in 2005.
There might be an obligation to retain IPCC-related emails for longer but you would imagine that this is the responsibility of the IPCC – and therefore in their data retention policy relating to their filing system – rather than the organisation that employs the person who did the work.
However, emails proliferate around servers and pcs in most set-ups and, depending on the archiving/back-up regime, in off-site stores. I suspect that most IT departments would only clear down the central servers and leave the backup tapes and othercopies alone, unless they are very thorough.
This could lead to a grey area because I am fairly sure that any FOI legislation would not have been written by anyone with any practical knowledge of major IT systems. Does the act apply to data stored contrary to the organisation’s stated data retention policy – if it has one?
Earle Williams (Comment #94618) April 23rd, 2012 at 9:51 am
“Why, Nick, do these purveyors of climate science get a free pass, and no one else does?”
We are discussing the actions of UVa lawyers who are trying to do their jobs in difficult circumstances. They are not purveyors of climate science. I have no interest in defending them, and I think it is odd that people here insist on regarding them as enemies. I am merely trying to provide some logic and balance, and a bit of focus on facts.
Have you located that agreement by UVa to release Michaels’ emails yet?
“I am merely trying to provide some logic and balance, and a bit of focus on facts.”
No..you are prevaricating and obfuscating, gollum, gollum.
Nick–
Who’s regarding UVA as enemies? Commenting on their decisions– even very negatively– does not mean one sees someone as an enemy.
lucia (Comment #94625) April 23rd, 2012 at 3:36 pm
“Who’s regarding UVA as enemies?”
Then why is thare a widespread belief that UVa released Michaels’ emails while resisting ATI. And when no evidence can be found for that, the fallback claim that they had agreed to release them, again with no evidence.
Why I find that odd is that, again, these are just UVa lawyers. Their ties to Michaels, who is an Emeritus prof at UVa, are stronger than to Mann, who left years ago. Why the persistent belief that they these lawyers are acting from ulterior motives?
surely Mr Stokes is not prevaricating and obfuscating again? But does the bear not shit in the woods?
Some people just look at the facts, Mr Stokes…other people just build smoke screens of denial and obfuscation.
Nick–
People failing to remember the precise situation with regard to Michaels emails doesn’t mean they view UVA as enemies. Your thinking so is just another of your illogical thoughts.
UVA did write a letter in which they appeared to agree to release the emails to Greenpeace but requested more money than Greenpeace was willing to pay. The reason people think UVA did that is that UVA did that. The letter is inserted above.
What’s odd about UVA lawyers being involved in a UVA case? I have no idea what your point is here. As your your notion that UVA laywers have stronger ties to Michaels than Mann: You are speculating pretty wildly here.
What’s with your persistent use of loaded rhetorical questions. Quite likely lawyers are not, themselves making decisions. The administration likely is. Also, what do you intend to convey by the use of the adjective ‘ulterior’?
Presumably whoever is deciding to go to court has some motive or other. Various and sundry theories are described above. I have no idea which speculation about motive is correct. The somewhat incomprehensible ones you’ve tap danced around involving invocation of the word “students” seem (to the extent that I can guess what you are suggesting) implausible.
But the fact is: I think UVA is collectively likely being foolish. That doesn’t mean I consider them my enemies.
Don
If you did not see this before, this is a very clear and comprehensive account of the problems of FOIA and email – it cropped up on WUWT so it probably has passed by a few very superior folks here but it does correspond with what i know to happen in large organisations subject to data laws…and the UVA must come into that category.
I hope you enjoy:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/30/the-climategate-email-network-infrastructure/
I guess it comes down to how you want a university to spend its income….fighting FOIA requests or educating the students?
A clear data retention policy would help. EG. segregate your emails into folders that are subject to deletion within 3 years (or some other limit), or else deemed subject to FOIA. Maintain a regime that says that we take incremental baqckups every day but on the 30th of each month we freeze…and get back to what is in the FOIA folder.
If we get radical, we do what Carrick might propose and post the POIA fol;ders on a public wiki site.
Cost of complying with a FOIA request? Yes, the cost has been passed down to the people who write emails…but that is a cost they can control. they do not have to write emails.
diogenes,
Thanks for your input. Hey, don’t get your lamp too close to Nicky, or it will explode. Nicky is a real spinner, ain’t he. All sorts of little disingenuous attempts at distraction. Lame. When I first started looking at these blogs, I got the impression that Nick was intelligent, lukewarm, and honest, like Mosher. But he has morphed into a not so slick mindless dogmatic defender of the faith. I wonder what happened to that boy.
This is really not that complicated. There is a FOI law in VA. The UVA emails are public record, and non-exempt emails are required to be turned over, when a legitimate request is made by a citizen of VA, period. ATI have already received 1,800 emails, and all that is left now is legal haggling over how many more they will get. It is highly unlikely that the remaining 12,000 are all exempt, or the UVA lawyers would have found more than 17 examples, with which to impress (fool) Judge Sheridan. It looks like they are hanging their hat on the story that the bulk of this stuff is proprietary. That’s ludicrous.
Look Nicky! OMG, Mann don’t own the freaking emails:
http://www.virginia.edu/recordsmanagement/email.html
Nick,
Thanks for the offer, but I won’t chase your phantoms. You seem to be the only arguing whether UVa agreed to release Dr. Michaels’ emails that are exempt from FOIA. If you can find a comment from me where I did argue that they agreed to release exempt emails, I will gladly eat crow. By the way Nick, that is a colloquialism, not a literal statement on my part. You know, kind of like hyperbole. It means I will acknowledge being proved wrong, even if I find it distateful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_crow
As to the hard-working lawyers defending the gates of UVa, I only wish they had worked a little harder. I think they should have advised whomever it was at UVa that sent 12,000 emails to Dr. Mann what the liabilities and risks were.
You then ask “Then why is thare a widespread belief that UVa released Michaels’ emails while resisting ATI.[sic]” I don’t know Nick, just like I don’t know why there are widespread beliefs that channeling your life force can heal others, that peer review ensures the validity of published research, and that Miller Lite tastes great. That’s probably why Lucia doesn’t permit rhetorical questions. 🙂
If you’re wondering about the commenters in this thread, I see little evidence to suggest that there exists the widespread belief you allege. In fact, I would go so far as to say there is none supporting a widespread belief.
Shall we step through each comment in turn, and rate them as believer or non-believer? Let’s make it easier, I count about 24 unique commenters here. What counts as widespread belief, 50 percent? 25 percent? Can you point to 6 commenters that believe UVa released emails to Greenpeace? Remember, Nick+Evidence = Earle+Crow.
Or, um, was this Nick using hyperbole again? Dang, I wish I saw that sooner. I really wish you would settle into one rhetorical style man, because your flips from nano-precise literalism to over the top bombast just aren’t working for me.
Lucia,
I am commenting from the home of evil span (and worse) servers… AKA Brazil. I hope that I am not going to be blocked.
.
My understanding is that rhetorical questions at the Blackboard are, if not strictly prohibited, very strongly discouraged. Looking at Nick’s comments on this thread, it seems to me that there are many more rhetorical questions, absent an immediate response to the posed rhetorical question, than is normally allowed at the Blackboard.
.
So, is Nick receiving preferential treatment? 😉
SteveF–
I too am under the impression Nick is trying to rely on the method of rhetorical questions to achieve the appearance of making points. Of course, using that method means no one can quite know what points he intends to make and he can dodge whatever…
But he’s not getting favored treatment. Mostly, we moved Jim Sr. from assisted living to nursing care this weekend. . .
Earle Williams:
“I think they should have advised whomever it was at UVa that sent 12,000 emails to Dr. Mann what the liabilities and risks were.”
How do you know he didn’t send all 12,000 himself? Maybe no-one ever sent one to him. Maybe this is the dark secret that he doesn’t want to surface.
Clearly that cannot be anymore likely than him receiving all of them because it would have made the collation of 1,800 already available to ATI seem a little strange – the collation, not the emails to attempt precision.
Since emails can come in from outside the UVA, the 12,000 could include missives from all manner of people.
All I see is Nick trying to address what it is that has people so excited about this thread. Every time he thinks he has a point to address, he’s told he’s wrong, it’s about something else.
BTW, Nick puts out far more real work into the ‘debate’ about climate science and global warming than anyone else here. The work on his website is amazing. People raise ‘skeptical’ points, he tries to address them, with facts and figures.
Earle and others,
Please ignore my comment above. I’d misconstrued what you meant by “12000 emails from uVA.”
Maybe what I wrote could serve as an example of a “truly stupid comment.”
bugsy,
This discussion is not about science. It’s about law and ethics. Specifically it’s about how left-wing arrogant academics respond to lawful FOIA requests from people they don’t like. Nicky is putting up a stubbornly disingenuous defense of the left-wing arrogant academics. He is not having any success. Maybe he should stick to the science.
j,
Your last comment is very refreshing. Seriously.
It’s a bit complicated. You could, of course have read about it at Rabett Run, but to summarize, UVa did not give Greenpeace or ATI any Emails, they offered to look at the Emails and select those which were not confidential as defined in the VA FOIA statute. Of course, for them to do so they would require payment. . .
Greenpeace backed away (UVa sent them Michaels CV and a list of grants). ATI pressed on
Any suggestions that UVa is not going to ask for payment for fishing any Emails out of that pile are risible.
Anyone interested in wading into the minutiae of Virgina FOIA is encouraged to read the 2010 report of the Virgina Freedom of Information Advisory Council.
http://foiacouncil.dls.virginia.gov/2010ar.pdf
The last 34 pages list opinions by the council interpreting VaFOIA.
Eli–
Yes. And Greenpeace declined to pay. This information was oisted a week ago in “lucia (Comment #94391)
April 17th, 2012 at 3:34 pm Edit This ”
I have no idea why you and Nick seem stuck on thinking that you need to “correct” this by basically…. repeating it in a way that suggests there is any misconception to the contrary.
Has anyone suggested they aren’t going to ask for payment?
Eli:
Yeah, I know. Because those computer scripts are so hard to write.
Don Monfort (Comment #94641)
April 24th, 2012 at 9:15 am
Seems to me to be as much about the ethics of trying to attack politically science that you don’t like. I don’t recall any other scientific issue attracting this level of scrutiny or politicisation. It seems that since Global Warming cannot be beaten with science, legal maneuvers are going to have to do it.
It’s getting warmer, just as it was predicted it would, the cryosphere is shrinking, just as predicted, OHC is rising, just as predicted. I guess the ATI doesn’t have any other course of action. Just as people here are now accusing Nick Stokes of being a troll.
Re: bugs (Comment #94647)
I think that is just a limitation of memory in the here and now. Go back and think of past issues ranging from natural selection to nuclear energy to DDT to tobacco-related cancers to nutrition to breastfeeding.
I hope Uva does ask ATI to pay.
Raising the money via crowd source will be a great marketing event to highlight the story and pound home the message day in and day out.
I think if eli didnt exist skeptics would have to invent him.
Please uva, demand that you be paid to go through the mails.
Steven Mosher (Comment #94649)
What message is that?
bugs:
Nobody accused Nick of being a troll (only reference was to Nick “being trolled” by Earle).
The cyrosphere isn’t really shrinking btw (It appears to have been growing slightly for reasons nobody is quite sure of).
As to OHC and global temperature temperature change in say the last 120 years, how much is anthropogenic and how much natural, and how do you distinguish the two (or is it politically incorrect to entertain this question?)
You seem confused on this, so here we go again:
Facts aren’t things we want to be true, they are things that are true regardless of what we think.
I don’t know how a graph that shows a distinct downward trends over a long period of time is ‘growing’.
http://theconversation.edu.au/if-you-want-to-roll-the-climate-dice-you-should-know-the-odds-6462
As for accusations of trolling.
“SteveF (Comment #94634)
April 23rd, 2012 at 7:45 pm
Lucia,
I am commenting from the home of evil span (and worse) servers… AKA Brazil. I hope that I am not going to be blocked.
.
My understanding is that rhetorical questions at the Blackboard are, if not strictly prohibited, very strongly discouraged. Looking at Nick’s comments on this thread, it seems to me that there are many more rhetorical questions, absent an immediate response to the posed rhetorical question, than is normally allowed at the Blackboard.
.
So, is Nick receiving preferential treatment? “
Bugs,
“It seems that since Global Warming cannot be beaten with science, legal maneuvers are going to have to do it.”
I fear you may not really understand the motives involved here. You probably could understand better if you could accept that the people at ATI (really, really, honestly and truly, from the very bottom of their hearts!) believe that what they are doing…. harassing a political opponent via FOIA…. is perfectly justified and completely ethical. They honestly believe many ‘outspoken’ climate scientists (like Mike Mann) are using global warming, and a tilted presentation of “the science”, as means to force upon the public their own political views, which include demands for profound changes in the way people live their lives, and a concurrent substantial expansion of the role of government (national and international) in all aspects of human existence.
.
You can argue that ATI is mistaken in its evaluation of climate science and outspoken climate scientists. You can say that you agree with the policy goals of the outspoken climate scientists, and that a substantial expansion of the role of government is a “good” outcome. But what you should not imagine is that the people at ATI are motivated to do what they do because they are in some absolute moral sense “wrong”. They honestly do not believe “the science” is being accurately presented. They believe showing the public through his emails that Mike Mann is snarky, unpleasant, and politically motivated will make him a less effective policy advocate. They believe that what they are doing is just as “right” as you believe it is “wrong”.
.
Mike Mann chooses to act as an outspoken advocate on public policy, and he has every right to, but for ATI (and many others) he then becomes a political target… and they have every right to target him. It is just politics, and that is not ever going to change. IMO, the first step in finding a consensus on global warming policy is for people to stop thinking the other side is “evil”, and accept that there are very big differences in sincerely held political views.
bugs (Comment #94652),
What!?
I challenge you to point to anything in my comment #94634 which could be construed as making any reference to “trolling”. The comment was intended to be a bit tongue-in-cheek, but where do you see a suggestion of “trolling”?
” They believe showing the public through his emails that Mike Mann is snarky, unpleasant, and politically motivated will make him a less effective policy advocate. They believe that what they are doing is just as “right†as you believe it is “wrongâ€.”
A scientist is snarky and unpleasant. Heaven forbid, the sky must be falling. I have no idea what Mann is like as a person, but I know that if we proceeded to hunt down and persecute all unpleasant and snarky scientists, we would snatch up quite a large bundle of them.
SteveF (Comment #94653)
“the people at ATI (really, really, honestly and truly, from the very bottom of their hearts!) believe that what they are doing…. harassing a political opponent via FOIA…. is perfectly justified and completely ethical”
“but for ATI (and many others) he then becomes a political target… and they have every right to target him.”
Indeed. And UVa does not want to join in this enterprise by forwarding his emails. They have every right to seek legally not to do so. There is nothing more legal than appearing before a judge, and so far they have been not unsuccessful.
lol
“†They believe showing the public through his emails that Mike Mann is snarky, unpleasant, and politically motivated will make him a less effective policy advocate. They believe that what they are doing is just as “right†as you believe it is “wrongâ€.—
Does this mean the case against Global Warming is so poor they have to find an unpleasant and snarky scientist to attack as an individual to challenge it?
Carrick – Even I am really not sure how you can interpret the graphs you linked to as showing the cyrosphere is growing slightly. My eyeballed estimate would be that it is shrinking slightly.
Eli (and Mosher) – Why bring up the payment issue yet again. It is moot. Greenpeace didn’t pay, ATI did. It really is as simple as that. The current court matter isn’t about payment, it is about two things. First, can ATI, as previously agreed to, review the unreleased emails to verify UVa’s interpretation that they are exempt from FOIA and, second, did UVa waive its claims of confidentiality for the remaining emails by releasing all of “rediscovered” emails to Mann, who is no longer associated with the university. The second one is a tricky issue. By law, the emails are the property of the University, not Mann and it can be reasonably argued that Mann has no more right to receive them than ATI. On the other hand, Mann was either the recipient or author of the emails so the question is does this place him in a different position vis-a-vis FOIA than other third parties, such as ATI. It will be interesting to see how the court rules.
“It will be interesting to see how the court rules.”
According to this report the court denied the motion, though without prejudice.
Nick–
Yes — without prejudice. So, he’s not releasing them now. This is not uncommon when the judge can’t decide what the correct ruling should be. With respect to this particular motion if the correct ruling should be to deny, releasing them when he is not sure would be inappropriate. Defering causes some harm, but not the same harm.
So, I agree with BobN, it will be very interesting to see how the court ultimately rules when the actually finally rule.
Re: Carrick (Apr 24 22:18),
Umm, if you cherry pick a starting date of 2006, the trend of global sea ice extent (NOAA) is slightly positive, but it isn’t significant. Start at 2005 and the trend goes slightly negative. I do think the whole ‘death spiral’ thing is overwrought. It’s looking so far this year that there will be a significant increase in average area and extent compared to last year, but it’s still very early. The Bering Sea, for example, saw a 30 year high in peak area, for example. I would probably bet some quatloos against the Northwest Passage being open this year.
The only point I wish to address is as to motive and statements about why we filed this case. I’m not particularly happy having anyone, friend or foe, put words in my mouth. So, if you want to see what we are doing, go to the ATI website and look at the video we posted yesterday. My co-counsel, Chris Horner, explains what we have done and why.
The many many errors about the facts and the law in this thread are too numerous to correct. I didn’t really have time to read all these comments and am too busy to correct the mistakes. I suggest you wait for the judges opinion and restart your discussion then.
David Schnare
Counsel for the Petitioners
The usual suspects are piling in here to shed crocodile tears over the politically motivated attack on a noble scientist’s freedom from accountability. Just like they did in the Wegman affair, when they supported the efforts of the left-wing arrogant academics at George Mason U. , who defended the principle of academic freedom and Wegman’s rights all the way up through zero freaking courts. Special thanks to the rabette for hopping by. As usual, I agree with Mosher. The little long-eared varmint is a gift.
And thanks to bugsy, who has alerted us to the fact that the biosphere is shrinking. I felt something getting tight, lately. Thought I was gaining weight. What a relief. Also, we should take under careful consideration bugsy’s suggestion that we call Nicky a troll.
Mr. BobN is correct; payment is a non-issue. Greenpeace would not have been dissuaded from their political attacks on the evil deniers, Michaels and Singer, by the cost of a few thousand bucks. They have not said they won’t pay, or that they are giving up the hunt. They suspended their efforts so as not to get in the way of UVA’s tenacious defense of little Mikey Mann. I wouldn’t be surprised, if they have been requested to do so by certain parties.
However, Mr BobN is also incorrect; the emails are not the property of UVA. They are the property of the people of VA, and I have seen no one state any credible reason why the left-wing arrogant academics at UVA are legally authorized to copy Mann and his team on all the emails without regard to exempt status, while withholding 90% of them from a citizen of VA, who has made a lawful request under the state’s FOIA law. That Mikey saw the emails when he used to work at UVA and the left-wing arrogant academics like him, don’t cut it.
I recently observed part of a civil trial on a matter that I am peripherally involved in and the judge dismissed a plaintiff motion, without prejudice. In explaining why he dismissed the motion, he essentially told the plaintiff attorneys how they could correct the defects and come back with a winner. Judge Sheridan has stated the he is not up to speed on VA FOIA laws, so he punted. The motion will be revisited. The left-wing arrogant “journalists†at the WaPo cited “a number of well-informed FOIA experts in Virginiaâ€, who said that UVA screwed up:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-state-of-nova/post/pwm-climate-change-case-takes-center-stage/2012/03/19/gIQA1vLGQS_blog.html#pagebreak
“By giving the emails to Mann, the university has waived any exemptions they’re claiming to the state Freedom of Information Act, ATI says.
You gave ‘em to him, you gotta give ‘em to us, basically. And a number of well-informed FOIA experts in Virginia say that ATI is right.
“I would agree with that,†said Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. “Once you turn it over in one venue, you’re deciding to give it out.â€
Kevin Goldberg, a First Amendment and FOIA lawyer in Arlington, said, “I can see that the balance is now tipped in [ATI’s] favor. Now it’s up to the University to prove they can still withhold the material.â€
A lot more of Mikey’s emails are going to be aired in public. But don’t worry Nicky, I bet UVA and their altruistic hardworking underpaid legal team have a strong case for exemption on the 17 emails they cherry-picked. That’s not many cherries, but a small victory is better than none.
Mr. Schnare,
I am not able to get to your website. Anybody else having trouble?
You are kicking UVA’s buttocks. Why don’t you file an FOIA request for any communications between Mann/his lawyers and UVA, concerning the release of the emails? Or can you do that with discovery?
lucia,
“So, I agree with BobN, it will be very interesting to see how the court ultimately rules when the actually finally rule.”
I made a long post a few minutes ago that is in limbo somewhere. If it never sees the light of day, here is a part with some info that you may not have seen regarding the prospects for the motion dismissed without prejudice:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-state-of-nova/post/pwm-climate-change-case-takes-center-stage/2012/03/19/gIQA1vLGQS_blog.html#pagebreak
“By giving the emails to Mann, the university has waived any exemptions they’re claiming to the state Freedom of Information Act, ATI says.
You gave ‘em to him, you gotta give ‘em to us, basically. And a number of well-informed FOIA experts in Virginia say that ATI is right.
“I would agree with that,†said Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. “Once you turn it over in one venue, you’re deciding to give it out.â€
Kevin Goldberg, a First Amendment and FOIA lawyer in Arlington, said, “I can see that the balance is now tipped in [ATI’s] favor. Now it’s up to the University to prove they can still withhold the material.â€
Now able to get on ATI website. Can’t find the video. Has it been removed, Mr. Schnare? Got link?
Another comment in limbo. Whatever. I will try it this way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5Vz3i0j_J0
The annoying background music ruins the damn thing.
DeWitt,I’m using sum of north + south sea ice 1979-now. Doesn’t it have a positive slope (or is consistent with zero slope) over that period?
Whether 2006-now or 2005-now have positive slopes is irrelevant, because what ever slope you get is insignificant compared to the uncertainty associated with natural fluctuations over that short of a period.
slaps forehead.
bugs: the message
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/25/atis-video-pitch-on-the-mann-uva-case/#more-62039
Uva gets its Nixon On.
Boris, whether the global area is shrinking or increasing (slope is positive or negative) is less interesting to me than whether it’s significant. I went back and looked and I guess I had my eyes crossed or something… I agree the slope is slightly negative over that period. If somebody’s done the analysis (correctly) and finds that the slope is negative and not consistent with zero, then I’d agree that bugs is (finally, for once) right about something.
bugs (Comment #94658),
No, unlike many who worry a lot about global warming, I don’t think the sky is going to fall. 😉
.
I do not know Mike Mann, but in reading many of his emails, he does not come across as someone who many (most?) people would like or trust. There is no desire on the part of ATI that I can detect to “hunt down and persecute” unpleasant and snarky scientists (we can leave that to their associates, who have strong personal motivation). Their target is political adversaries, not snarky scientists. You may be right that there are lots of snarky and unpleasant scientists, but this has not been my experience. Most I have worked with are quite reasonable, even if sometimes a bit grumpy.
.
There is clearly a desire on the part of ATI to reduce the credibility of climate scientists who are vocal advocates of major public policy changes, by showing that they are snarky, unpleasant, and politically motivated, and I am confident that if ATI manages to get the emails, poor Mike will not emerge seeming like a true prince… and most likely quite the contrary. To me personally, it matters not at all if ATI prevails… I was convinced by the UEA emails about Mike Mann’s credibility.
.
Based on your comments, I suspect that you are unable to look at things from anywhere except your rather narrow political POV.
Bugs,
“Does this mean the case against Global Warming is so poor they have to find an unpleasant and snarky scientist to attack as an individual to challenge it?”
No, it means that lots of people do not trust anyone who acts like a politician. Pretty easy to understand. I have said before and will say again: The most counterproductive thing climate scientists can possibly do, if they truly care about global warming, is to become political advocates; it utterly destroys their credibility as scientists. Making yourself a part time politician and part time scientist is never going to be a good thing; people distrust politicians (with good cause!) much, much more than they will ever trust scientists.
Nick Stokes,
“Indeed. And UVa does not want to join in this enterprise by forwarding his emails. They have every right to seek legally not to do so.”
Indeed they do, but by choosing this path, UVa also runs the risk of becoming a political target. This is 100% politics. It is about whether many scientists (and the Universities they work for) can effectively act as both an “honest broker” adviser to the public and an advocate for public policy changes. I see the two as conflicting… and believe it will lead them to be effective in neither role.
Re: Carrick (Apr 25 12:29),
An OLS regression in Excel on the annual average extent of NH plus SH sea ice from 1979-2011 (NOAA monthly data) gives a slope of -0.036 ±0.013 Mm²/year (95% confidence, uncorrected for serial autocorrelation). I didn’t test the residuals for normality either, but they look reasonable to the eye. The F statistic significance and the P values for the slope and intercept are at the ppm level (> 5 nines). Cryosphere Today sea ice area data gives similar results. The only question remaining is whether Greenland and Antarctica are also losing mass. GRACE says yes, but snow accumulation, particularly in Antarctica, is inversely correlated to temperature, according to the ice core data, so one would think that mass there should actually be increasing in the long term.
Nick Stokes (Comment #94626)
April 23rd, 2012 at 4:34 pm
lucia (Comment #94625) April 23rd, 2012 at 3:36 pm
“Who’s regarding UVA as enemies?â€
Then why is thare a widespread belief that UVa released Michaels’ emails while resisting ATI.
————————————-
Nick I find it fascinating how you can deny to accept the facts as clearly explained by Lucia again and again. A true denialist throughout. Congratulations, most of the people accept arguments when presented logically to them.
You do not want to compare the 2 cases objectively. I read all your comments through and still wonder what is driving you, what is your motivation? Are you taking this case as an exercise to be a lawyer, and defend no matter what your judgment tells you?
I find Lucia’s patience amazing.
ҠThey believe showing the public through his emails that Mike Mann is snarky, unpleasant, and politically motivated will make him a less effective policy advocate. They believe that what they are doing is just as “right†as you believe it is “wrongâ€.â€â€
Does this mean the case against Global Warming is so poor they have to find an unpleasant and snarky scientist to attack as an individual to challenge it?
——————-
No, it means that Al Gore is not longer fat
Carrick, good luck on writing a script that can figure out that Phil Jones, student is not Phil Jones, enemy of the state.
In short bull, they are going to want a lawyer to look at every email to be released.
And just for those not in on the fun, street rumor (Morano is throwing a fit) is that Mann is in negotiation with UVa for a named chair, so much for them not having interests in common:)
and meanwhile, Mann has been awarded a medal that can only be deemed tainted. In the UK, there is/was something called the Queen’s Award for Exports. If your company won that, then it was odds on that the company would fail soon after.
Mann has been awarded the Oeschger medal. The first recipient, in 2002, was a certain PD Jones.
http://www.egu.eu/egs/award6v.htm
Other recipients include Raymond Bradley in 2007 – http://www.egu.eu/awards-medals/award/hans-oeschger.html
It seems like a great honour/honor.
May they walk with pride through the halls of life!
Lars,
“Nick I find it fascinating how you can deny to accept the facts as clearly explained by Lucia again and again”
You offer nothing specific there. But I suppose you refer to this alleged agreement by UVa to release Michaels’ emails. Or where they “appeared” to agree.
Lucia cited a form letter written by UVa at an early stage of the application. It reads as a standard letter in the process – I cannot see anywhere where it says that Greenpeace will get Michaels’ emails.
UVa was, at about that time, making it very clear to Greenpeace that they did not liberally give out emails. And in response to the email with Lucia’s “appearence” of agreement, Greenpeace made it very clear that they understood that what was being discussed was “non-exempt emails”. They used that exact phrase. And Mann’s “non-exempt emails” are what UVa has at all stages been offerring (and has delivered) to ATI.
Nick–
I have no idea why you think that’s a form letter. For letters do not generally mention case specific things like “we have had subsequent e-mail exchanges concerning Virginia residency and our need to seek an extension in responding.” I’m intrigued by your decision to substitute the vague “at about that time” for the more specific “about two weeks later”. Early in the process UVA’s letters are written in a way that does not mention impediments, and indicates that fees are required “accessing, duplicating, supplying, or searching for requested records.” That’s language that very certainly encourages the reader to believe that they are agreeing to release documents.
No one has ever said Greenpeace thought they were going to get exempt emails. I have no idea why you seem bent on repeating this as if somewhere out there someone has suggested that.
Ah stop that. You don’t know whether all of Mann’s non-exempt emails were delivered to ATI. This is a matter under dispute.
I find it difficult to believe that the ratio or exempt/non-exempt emails by any faculty member at any University is 10/1. By difficult I mean “nearly impossible”.
Test 🙂
Lucia,
“I’m intrigued by your decision to substitute the vague “at about that time†for the more specific “about two weeks laterâ€.”
That particular statement “two weeks later” was clearly not the first time it had been made clear to Greenpeace. In the actual Greenpeace response to your “agreement” email (5 days later) they use UVa’s phrasing “non-exempt emails”.
“This is a matter under dispute.”
The dispute is over whether the emails withheld by UVa are in fact exempt, in a sense to be determined by the court (and not your ratio speculations). But AFAIK there is no dispute that UVa did for ATI what they would, on their stated policy, have done for Greenpeace. That is, to deliver all emails that they consider to be responsive and non-exempt.
Lucia,
“By difficult I mean “nearly impossibleâ€.”
.
Depends on if you define any email that contains anything other than spam and and messages like “coffee and donuts will be served at the next meeting” as “exempt”, which I am pretty sure is the case here. UVa and Mann want any message that contains substantive information to be considered exempt. That is, they seem to want to re-define the meaning of ‘exempt’. Will they succeed? I sure don’t know. Probably nobody will know for a least a couple of years, and maybe much more. I don’t doubt that UVa and Mann will appeal to the Federal courts (adding more years of delay) if they lose at the Va Supreme court.
ok guys …if Nick Stokes invites you out for a drink just be aware that the invitation did not mean or suggest or give you any right to presume that he might buy you a drink.
diogenes,
I don’t think UVa invited ATI (or Greenpeace). But they offerred what the law requires.
SteveF,
“That is, they seem to want to re-define the meaning of ‘exempt’.”
What was the previous definition? And whose was it?
lucia,
“I find it difficult to believe that the ratio or exempt/non-exempt emails by any faculty member at any University is 10/1. By difficult I mean “nearly impossibleâ€.”
Yes, it seems reasonable to assume that a sizable percentage of the emails came from outside UVA. What proprietary interest could UVA claim to have in the contents of those emails? Some other significant percentage of the emails would have been of a personal nature, or were discussions of innocuous subjects that are of no proprietary value to anyone. Such as conspiring with various colleagues from competing institutions to get some wayward scientist or journal editor fired. Well, after spending a year ducking and dodging and having to be ordered by the court to turn over non-exempt emails, UVA have presented to the court 17 examples of allegedly exempt emails, out of the 12,000 they refuse to turn over (except to Mikey Mann).
Tsk, tsk Nicky:
“And Mann’s “non-exempt emails†are what UVa has at all stages been offerring (and has delivered) to ATI.”
When first asked for Mann’s emails in an FOIA, they denied having them. After the second request, they have done nothing but stonewall and they have not turned over anything voluntarily. Claiming that they have been “offerrinng” to turn over anything is dissinnenguouss, NNiccky.
From one of the sources described by the WaPo as being “well-informed FOIA experts in Virginia”:
http://www.opengovva.org/newsletter/january-2012/1575-foia-in-the-courts
Meanwhile, the FOIA dispute between the University of Virginia and the American Tradition Institute over access to former professor Michael Mann’s email and records dragged on when a judge ruled in early November that Mann could intervene in the case.
ATI filed its FOIA request for Mann’s records in January 2010. UVA initially responded that it would respond, but then did not. In May, a court ruled that UVA had 90 days to either release the records or to invoke any applicable exemptions. In a protective order, the judge also said at that time that ATI could privately view even the exempt records to determine if it wanted to challenge the exemption’s use. Mann filed his motion to intervene toward the end of the 90-day period.
The judge’s new ruling allows UVA to renegotiate the protective order and says the parties can pick a neutral third party to review potentially confidential records.
The case has drawn widespread attention, with the FOIA issue often getting obscured by debates about the underlying data — climate change — and academic expression.
UVA has not explained why it did not invoke any available exemptions when ATI’s request was first made.
#94698
From one of the sources described by the WaPo as being “well-informed FOIA experts in Virginiaâ€:
Well, not so well informed. ATi’s application was in Jan 2011, not 2010. And
“UVA has not explained why it did not invoke any available exemptions when ATI’s request was first made.”
UVa was big on exemptions from the start. From UVa’s response to ATI’s initial demand:
“Among other things, the University must ensure, after individual examination, that documents containing federally protected student information under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, 20 U.S.C §1232g are not released. We also must confirm that applicable FOIA exemptions and the University’s academic freedom interests are preserved. Of course, we do not know which actual exemptions may apply until the records are accessed and reviewed by counsel.”
“In response to your request, we will have to review each record to determine whether: 1) the record is subject to FOIA; and 2) the University is prohibited from disclosing the record by state or federal law or the record is exempt from production under FOIA. Please understand that the University will not release records that are protected from disclosure by law or for which a FOIA or other lawful exemption applies.”
That last para, BTW, is exactly word for word what they said to Greenpeace.
Eli:
When I was a grad student, I paid for part of my upkeep by being a UNIX system administrator, so I do have a bit of experience here.
I could probably write a script that could drop it down to a couple hundred emails pretty easily just using From and To fields.
Some review would absolutely be necessary, and I think the inquirer (ATI) should pay those costs. I’ve said the same thing above in this thread.
(What’s not clear to me is how they managed to not incur any costs in delivering emails to Mann, in screening them to make sure there was not information an ex-employee had no right to.)
Still not an employee (yet). Anyway, this is just rumor mill right now.
Nicky deigns to respond. I am flattered, at last. I will take this as an assurance that none of my other comments had anything in them that you could challenge.
Are you saying the biased left-wing arrogant journalists at WaPo don’t know an expert when they see one? They did say expert on FOIA, not necessarily on the gritty details of UVA’s stonewalling of any particular FOIA request. Do you think that Greenpeace would have had to win a court order, before they got any emails out of UVA?
You are citing boilerplate from UVA’s standard FOIA correspondence to pretend that Greenpeace and ATI received equal treatment. That’s BS. And when are you going to explain the legal justification for UVA handing over to Mann and his lawyer and the lawyers secretaries and clerks the email records that do not belong to Mann, or the rest of his crew? Do you know what safeguards are in place to secure the property of the people of VA?
Carrick,
“(What’s not clear to me is how they managed to not incur any costs in delivering emails to Mann, in screening them to make sure there was not information an ex-employee had no right to.)”
Have you seen anything to indicate that they screened them at all? Or are you being sarcastic 🙂
They had no reason to screen them. Mann is a trusted teammate. And if he is destined to return to UVA , all the more reason for UVA to stonewall for their boy.
Don,
Don’t be absurd! Of course they screened them.
UVa is incapable of error, as is Michael Mann.
They would never, ever break their privacy rules, it’s not even a possibility, not even for a trusted former employee who may soon be returning. So if they don’t have mad scripting skills this means they sat down and went through the emails themselves (keep in mind needs to be senior staff who are allowed access to the contents of these emails) and I am absolutely certain they would never, ever spend a dime of taxpayers money without asking for it to be repaid.
It’s utterly ridiculous to suggest otherwise. You see what you don’t seem to understand, Philistine that you are, is the mere aura of Michael Mann’s climate shield and His Thought drifting their way is enough in itself to allow them to achieve the Nirvana like state of incapacity for error.
(Yes the power and might of climate porn has reached that far into and has torn the very fabric of reality. Belief in CO2, the Global Warmingizer, of whom I believe this is a likeness of, confers with it strange and mysterious powers of perfection of motive, mind and spirit not afforded to us mere mortals).
Sarcasm, me? Bah!!!! 😛
Carrick,
That’s what I thought you would say. But you are wrong about me being a Philistine. I lived in Manila for a few years, but I was born in Detroit.
They were Emails that were sent to or written by Prof. Mann, perhaps, just perhaps that may have something to do with why they were not screened before the file was sent to him?
Does anyone seriously doubt that if a former professor asked for his Email file that a university would not give him or her access?
Of course, no one knows how many of the 12K were spam but 12K not spam Emails over 5 years or so is not so many, about 6-7 a day.
” And just for those not in on the fun, street rumor (Morano is throwing a fit) is that Mann is in negotiation with UVa for a named chair, so much for them not having interests in common:)
Still not an employee (yet). Anyway, this is just rumor mill right now.”
A rumor that has not been denied, so a pretty strong one, and when you are in negotiations you do share some interests.
Universities, companies and private individuals unwittingly do things that are unwise all the time. A university that did send a former employee emails the employee did not save could potentially get itself in trouble if sharing the information violates privacy laws.
For that matter, it might be wise for any employer (including a university) to inform an exiting employee they should destroy all work records in their possession. Of course the employer couldn’t verify the employee had destroyed them. But the request would make clear the former employee is no longer authorized access to material and information they were permitted to access as a consequence of their employment.
With regard to the Mann/ATI case, we’ll see how a judge views this when he ultimately rules. It could turn out the judge’s view is not the same as a certain rabbit brained professor’s.
Eli-
I suspect your concept of “shared interests” doesn’t fit neatly into the legal concept of shared interests.
I suspect UVA’s lawyers are not going to suggest they have a right to share emails because the UVA administration is trying to recruit Mann. Giving a person you are trying to recruit access to information that privacy laws require you to keep private might be viewed as a really, really, really bad thing. Possibly scandalous.
This is just a rerun of CRU’s FOI stonewalling. Wouldn’t it be amusing if a UVA employee sympathetic with the public’s right to know, or one of Mann’s lawyer’s clerks decided to blow the whistle? If all those emails turned up on a Russian server, who would know where they came from?
Not going to happen. Soooooo unethical.
Wow.
If Uva does recruit Mann that’ll lead to a whole new round of inquiries..
lucia,
A lot of people do unethical things. Even (GASP!) lawyers and their clerks. I was not suggesting that it was very likely. But I wonder what precautions, if any, UVA took to ensure that copies of the emails did not stray from the possession of Mann and his minions. Did they even get a signed non-disclosure pledge from anyone? Did they inquire as to how the stuff would be kept secure? Would clerks be taking home files on laptops to work on? Seems like ATI should have filed an FOI request for any communications between UVA and Mann and his team on this.
Mosher,
Yes, UVA would just be begging for more trouble.
“A rumor that has not been denied, so a pretty strong one, and when you are in negotiations you do share some interests.”
Next time your on trial Eli try to marry one of the witnesses and then claim a marriage exclusion. I suppose if I were ATI I would probe to see if Uva approached Mann because they wanted to create a shared interest that they could then rely on in getting mann to enter the case. heck if I were a Virginia lawmaker I’d want to see all the communication between Uva and mann.
Nick Stokes (Comment #94684)
April 25th, 2012 at 3:49 pm
Lars,
“Nick I find it fascinating how you can deny to accept the facts as clearly explained by Lucia again and againâ€
You offer nothing specific there.
—————————————————————-
Here something specific:
The first letter to Greenpeace said: <>
The first letter to ATI said: <>
Please answer honest as you have learned from the blog above.
Look at the two answers you gave. Are they the same? Same standard letter?
Please tick one answer:
Yes/No/Maybe/Not able to understand/Other
Don Monfort
I think my brother-in-law pulls stuff from a cloud. That eliminates the need to store on laptops.
But clearly, the more people who have these things, the greater the possibility of a leak/hack/unauthorized-release. That’s why classified stuff requires people to have security clearances and have a need to know.
I’d just be very, very surprised if anyone from Mann’s attorney’s law office were ever to leak stuff. Attorney’s and their clerks are used to dealing with sensitive stuff and not leaking is– to some extent– a reflex. They are even likely to periodically review procedures to keep confidential material confidential.
On the other hand, if Mann himself has access, I’d be not-especially surprised of someone got stuff some how. The category of people could include grad students, under grads, post-docs, IT people, secretaries, a woman he might meet on a speed-date &etc. Faculty members may be individually circumspect, but except for a few disciplines where lucrative invention are plausible (e.g. medicine) , they rarely spend much time worrying about people stealing emails, codes, info etc.
Paleo-climatology is not a field where researchers frequently invent things that might become patent worthy.
“Paleo-climatology is not a field where researchers frequently invent things that might become patent worthy.”
They have invented some nature tricks and novel statistical methods. Anything patentable?
if Mann does get a chair, it will probably be emeritus or honorary or “we never want to see your ass on campus” or something – anything that keeps him away from perpetrating more of what tamino calls mathturbation
after all…the British Museum displays the Parthenon Marbles in the Duveen Room ( named for the possibly “crooked” art dealer) and both Oxford and Cambridge universities have professorships endowed by the celebrated arms dealer Basil Zaharoff. I am sure that Mann would enjoy the company. He might feel that he had accomploished something worthwhile.