I’ll look into it.

I do not believe any institutions or individuals actually placed any restrictions on the data. Climate data is not sensitive or related to national security. A restriction on data is contrary to the standards of science. The claim data was provided to Jones with restrictions is not credible IMO. If it had happened, there would be written agreements detailing exactly what the restrictions are. Someone should file an FOI request for these agreements. I bet Jones cannot come up with even one. Yes, I read the link by curious above and I think the excuses from CRU about why they cannot provide these documents would be highly entertaining.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6702869.ece

The data were provided to us by Professor Phil Jones from the University of East Anglia, for the sole purpose of updating and distributing a gridded data product which we freely distribute without restriction.
It was made abundantly clear to us that there were restrictions placed upon Professor Jones at the time of data collection by some Institutes and individuals that preclude distribution of their station data. Some, but by no means all of these are documented in Hulme, 1994 which includes costs and restrictions for solely European data. The Met Office was not party to detailed information about which Institutes or individuals were involved.
Data which we have quality controlled for the purpose of performing real-time updates since 2000 and for which we know for certain no restrictions apply are made freely available on the website referred to.
The full report is: The cost of climate data-a European experience, M Hulme, WEATHER, LONDON, 1994, ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY.

[Steve: you're abusing the term secret here relative to other situations.]

The Met Office wish to monitor the use of these analyses and require an acknowledgement of the data source if they are used in any publication.

The application for access to the Met Office Central England Temperature data includes the Met Office Agreement to be completed online. Please note that the Met Office data sets are available for bona fide academic research only (sorry no undergraduates). If you wish to access the Met Office data for commercial or personal purposes, please contact the Met Office directly.

Your application for accessing the Central England Temperature data will be processed within a day of receipt and you will receive a confirmation email. Provided your application is complete and fully meets the Met Office conditions, a web account will be activated to allow you access to the CET data directories via your login account from the BADC WWW Browse Archive pages.

Please read the 00README file available under /badc/ukmo-cet/ directory to guide you through the tree structure and the data directory.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Force the Climate Research Unit, or other publicly funded organisations to release the source codes used in their computer models. The Met Office, the climate research unit and various individuals at numerous academic institutions are refusing to release the source codes used in their climate research models.

These are tax payer funded institutions, which are influencing government policy decisions which will affect the day to day lives of us all.

With the Prime Minister’s belief in a new age of transparency, it is unsurportable that these publicly funded organisations, are not open to public scrutiny .

Only after repelling raiding parties from the neighbouring Barons. And then I usually get the prisoners to take all the dead bodies out and away with them…