'Spies' behind climate email hacking?

Independent:

A highly sophisticated hacking operation that led to the leaking of hundreds of emails from the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia was probably carried out by a foreign intelligence agency, according to the Government's former chief scientist. Sir David King, who was Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser for seven years until 2007, said that the hacking and selective leaking of the unit's emails, going back 13 years, bore all the hallmarks of a co-ordinated intelligence operation – especially given their release just before the Copenhagen climate conference in December.

The emails were stolen from a backup computer server used by the University of East Anglia. They contained private discussions between climate scientists that have embarrassed those involved, particularly Professor Phil Jones, who has stepped down from his post as head of the unit pending an independent inquiry into whether there is any evidence of scientific misconduct. He is not implicated in the hacking.

In an interview with The Independent, Sir David suggested the email leaks were deliberately designed to destabilise Copenhagen and he dismissed the idea that it was a run-of-the-mill hacking. It was carried out by a team of skilled professionals, either on behalf of a foreign government or at the behest of anti-climate change lobbyists in the United States, he said.

"A very clever nerd can cause a great deal of disruption and obviously make intelligence services very nervous, but a sophisticated intelligence operation is capable of yielding the sort of results we've seen here," Sir David said.

"Quite simply, it's the sophistication of the operation. I know there's a possibility that they had a very good hacker working for these people, but it was an extraordinarily sophisticated operation. There are are several bodies of people who could do this sort of work. These are national intelligence agencies and it seems to me that it was the work of such a group of people," he said.

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This begs the question of why this group was trying to hide this information. If they had nothing to hide then it would have been impossible to embarrass them before the globo warming conference. What it suggest is that these people who are trying to impose a control freak regulation of energy usage are not trustworthy. The material was found on a Russian server, but the article says they could have been loaded there from anywhere in the world.

The article hints that Americans who oppose the globo warming agenda were behind the hack, but I tend to doubt it. The best hackers in the world right now are in China, but Russia also has some good ones. If it was a foreign intelligence operation, I would put my money on the Chinese.

Whoever was responsible, they did a service for all mankind. Forcing greater transparency on a conspiracy to control the use of energy worldwide is a good thing.

Buried in this story is the Chinese reluctance to agree to much of anything at Copenhagen. This supports my speculation that theirs was the most likely intelligence agency involved in the hacking.