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Holding a principled objection to witch-hunts demanding unrestricted access to paw through researchers' emails is hardly a case of 'asserting privilege.'
We all saw the numerous examples of desperate cherry-picking and out-of-context soundbytes being used in an effort to smear the University of East Anglia scientists immediately preceding the Copenhagen conference, and again preceding the Durban conference. The partial releases of the hacked data at politically-motivated times says enough on its own, even before we start looking into the twisted misperceptions created by popular soundbytes like "hide the decline," or the generally-favourable results of the numerous formal investigations conducted on the victims.
According to your OP it was shortly after that second selective release of hacked UEA emails that this 'Free Market' Environmental Law Clinic sought governmental authority to trawl through the University of Arizona researcher's emails. Quite aside from the irony of what a chilling effect this kind of forcible intervention could have on academic freedom, the fact is that the university had already provided all relevant material, by their scientists' assessment. The contentious point here is simply the witch-hunt side of the request, the vague hope of finding something which - if the UEA example is any indication - might be likewise stripped of all true meaning and whored out as a new slogan for contrarians to chant.
If memory serves the only damning thing about the UEA case (on the scientists' side that is, not the politically-driven hackers' and slogan-chanting parrots' side) is that the subsequent investigations showed there had been some actual, relevant data which Jones had refused to release to hostile critics in response to an FOI request. It can be difficult to balance the importance of academic transparency with academic freedom; for the public (however ill-intentioned some may be) to have access to pertinent information which we've paid for without stifling research under a Big Brother regime. I think that in some regards Jones failed the transparency test, and should have released the relevant data regardless of the hostile intent of those requesting it.
In this University of Arizona case, all indications are that's unlikely to have been the case. But the witch-hunters can always live in hope, I suppose.
What blithering BS. The UEA emails revealed a cesspool of bad faith and manipulated processes.
In the Arizona case there's the added factor that all those involved were public employees, and all their work-related emails were public property.