1995 film, United Artists
When a friend directed me to the stories indicating that the webmail server for the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia was hacked, I felt like a bomb had gone off in my stomach. Private emails among scientists discussing controversial and difficult research? This is going to be a cherry-picking, anti-science, PR nightmare. After reading only one or two blog posts covering the story, I instead sat down to read the actual leaked emails in chronological order. These are cataloged and searchable! over at The Opinion Times (but I will not provide the link here, you can search it yourself).
First, my opinion on the issue of the hacking of these emails, derived after a quick discussion with a wise, open-source-loving, and somewhat idealistic friend. It is true. Your email does not belong to you. Your email that you send using your government-funded university webserver definitely does not belong to you. However, it is culturally and socially accepted that email is meant to be read by the sender and receiver only. So, yes, in the grand scheme of Web 2.0 and our technologically driven globalization, anything on the web is free and open to anyone with the means of obtaining it. But reading other people’s email is unforgivably rude. However, now that these emails are massively accessible, I read them, and this is not meant to be a justification for why I read these emails, but an explanation. They are going to be quoted, mis-quoted, cherry-picked, and referenced out of context. They therefore serve as a form of primary reference, which is infinitely more valid than any secondary summary. And since I hesitate to comment on anything without having read it with my own two eyes, I skimmed through about three years of these things… BORING!
I read a bunch of discussions about funding, who was getting what to do what, and with whom.
I read garumphing over publication reviews and possibilities.
I read tales of woe over incomplete datasets that make analysis a statistical nightmare.
I read dismay and outrage that non-scientists were misconstruing their results.
I read endless debates over statistical minutiae that I will re-read as a cure next time my insomnia strikes.
But I also read about collaborations and the sharing of data, not just among many researchers, but among multiple nations.
I read about the sharing of money to support essential research that wasn’t getting funding.
I read about critiques of methodology and statistical analysis that led to creating stronger results and conclusions.
Finally, I read that scientists, as a lot, can diverge widely on their political views, and that they try, but perhaps sometimes fail, to prevent their politics from influencing the path (but not the outcome) of their science.
Ultimately, I feel like this issue has not blown up nearly as big as I would have expected, largely because there really isn’t anything that controversial in these emails. But there are so many underlying issues deep in this exposure, that I feel this will not blow over quietly. I think these emails will cause repercussions, both positive and negative, for some time. We have been struggling with changing definitions of privacy for decades now. Issues relating to ownership of data may come to a head over our global climate problems. Scientists are accused of working in a vacuum, but that complaint works both ways, do we want unbiased automatons or emotional and politic researchers? On the other hand, I do have a way to look at this as a glass half full. While I definitely do NOT condone the work of the hacker(s) (and of course I am picturing Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller, aren’t you?) who have breached these researchers’ privacy, these emails might provide an amazing historical body of work one day. I am imagining the day when we are driving around in our solar powered flying-vehicles in our kinetic energy capturing space suits (mine is purple) and laughing over how naïve humanity was in the 21st century. In the same way we pore over Darwin’s correspondences or Einstein’s, we might also learn about how to better deal with scientific issues that are also global, social and political issues. Join me in my Utopia, it is nice in here.
Blog roll for posts that further sum up the hacked emails:
From the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
What any of this has to do with Hack Climate Change 2008, I am not sure.
In the end… what’s the worse that could happen<shrug>?
Just a clarification, email is indeed intended for the sender and receiver eyes only, and privacy rights are far more important in an open environment. However, aside from this ideal, in practical terms email is a fairly old technology and can be easily sniffed and breached. Even more so, in most cases when we sign up for an email service, you agree to no liability by the service provider, as well as to ownership of your data. Most any software package we use presents a contract we sign (usually called EULA or end user license agreement) by which we agree to in most cases without reading and impose awful draconian terms)
It is important to acknowledge that what is culturally and socially a norm, is often not the case from a technology and more so from a legal point of view, put simply norms do not matter much in the eyes of the law. As it stands it is far easier for law enforcement to gain access to your email than to your paper letters stored in a drawer at home. Hackers are not that much of a problem in a grand scheme of things. If one is working on a controversial field (be it scientific or political or both) one should take measures to protect themselves, and i would wager it is an important and completely missing aspects of public discussion and education today.
Encryption is a good measure for many basic breaches, but more important then that, it is not a paranoid statement to acknowledge that by any good measures our online movements are watched, and one should take steps to protecting their data.