F.D.A. Surveillance of Scientists Spread to Outside Critics - NYTimes.com

F.D.A. officials defended the surveillance operation, saying that the computer monitoring was limited to the five scientists suspected of leaking confidential information about the safety and design of medical devices.

While they acknowledged that the surveillance tracked the communications that the scientists had with Congressional officials, journalists and others, they said it was never intended to impede those communications, but only to determine whether information was being improperly shared.

The agency, using so-called spy software designed to help employers monitor workers, captured screen images from the government laptops of the five scientists as they were being used at work or at home. The software tracked their keystrokes, intercepted their personal e-mails, copied the documents on their personal thumb drives and even followed their messages line by line as they were being drafted, the documents show... The documents captured in the surveillance effort — including confidential letters to at least a half-dozen Congressional offices and oversight committees, drafts of legal filings and grievances, and personal e-mails — were posted on a public Web site, apparently by mistake, by a private document-handling contractor that works for the F.D.A. The New York Times reviewed the records and their day-by-day, sometimes hour-by-hour accounting of the scientists’ communications.

NOAA Tampered Data Vs. Raw Data | Real Science

The recent data is upwards adjusted by 300% of the signal they are claiming to detect, indicating a signal to noise ratio of about 0.3 – i.e completely worthless data which no respectable scientist would use.

- Bishop Hill blog - Cicerone and the Today programme

The interview with Today's John Humphrys was notable for its somewhat adversarial tone (see transcript here). Humphrys is very, very green and despite his reputation as a journalistic rottweiler has tended to come over all poodle-like when faced with someone of who shares his apocalyptic views about the future of the planet. His new interest in challenging people like Cicerone is therefore something of a surprise and I have picked up a certain amount of grumbling at his impertinence from green quarters of the internet. Letters of complaint will no doubt be flowing to the BBC in due course.

What has prompted the change? It has been suggested before that there are some journalists within the corporation who object strongly to attempts to dictate their journalistic output. I wonder if it is possible that with the BBC now having largely excluded sceptic arguments from the airwaves, some of the old hands within the corporation are trying to put the arguments over themselves. If so, it's obviously a second-best solution but is commendable journalism nevertheless.

But it does make the BBC look very foolish.