For Those Who Can't (or won't) See The Difference...

The recent deception involving the interception of private documents belonging to the Heartland Institute has anti-skeptic web sites all a-flutter with giddiness. Never mind that the only remotely "damning" document is now widely considered a fake, let's not allow facts to get in the way of a good drubbing.

Most of these anti-skeptic sites are comparing this illegal act against a privately funded organization with the so-called "Climategate" emails, which are most likely the work of a CRU employee or whistleblower.

As a result of the these events, an open letter was supposedly written by several prominent climate scientists purporting to sympathize with their plight. I'm going to focus on a couple of statements made in the open letter:

We know what it feels like to have private information stolen and posted online via illegal
hacking. It happened to climate researchers in 2009 and again in 2011. Personal emails were
culled through and taken out of context before they were posted online.

These sentences really get to the heart of the matter, in my opinion. The CRU emails were not "private" in the sense that the Heartland documents were. The University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit receives public funds, therefore their work product is public property, and emails such as those which were "stolen" are subject to Freedom of Information requests in the UK and its territories. CRU scientists and administrators were, and still are, actively working to thwart legitimate FOI requests. It is apparent that such actions were repugnant to someone on the inside, thus we ended up with the release of the CRU emails. It is possible that whomever released the emails engaged in illegal activity in doing so. If that's the case, they should be prosecuted if found. It's also likely that the person(s) involved would be protected by whistleblower laws.

As for context, it has been provided in spades on numerous sites. Yet explanations by those named in the CRU emails are always weak and clearly do NOT follow the context (e.g. "hide the decline" and "delete all emails re AR4").

The interception of the Heartland documents, on the other hand, if obtained as Heartland has characterized, is outright illegal in more than one respect. To my knowledge, Heartland receives no public funds, and is therefore not subject to FOI requests in the US, their documents/emails are indeed private. There is no comparison.