Download release history to tmp instead of drupal root

I am having trouble running drush up to update views. This looks like a permissions error but I cannot tell where drush is trying to write to.

#drush -d @site up
.
.
Downloading release history from                                        [notice]
http://updates.drupal.org/release-history/drush/7.x [9.91 sec, 42.58
MB]
Executing: wget 'http://updates.drupal.org/release-history/drush/7.x'
  --2011-09-08 16:32:28--  http://updates.drupal.org/release-history/drush/7.x
  Resolving updates.drupal.org... 140.211.166.21, 140.211.166.6
  Connecting to updates.drupal.org|140.211.166.21|:80... connected.
  HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
  Length: 14752 (14K) [text/xml]
  7.x: Permission denied

  Cannot write to `7.x' (Permission denied).
Executing: curl -O 'http://updates.drupal.org/release-history/drush/7.x'
  Warning: Failed to create the file 7.x
    % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                   Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
 16 14752   16  2403    0     0  14852      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 14852
  curl: (23) Failed writing body
simplexml_load_file(): I/O warning : failed to load external entity  [warning]
"" pm.drush.inc:2103 [11.41 sec, 42.58 MB]
Calling unlink(Object) [11.41 sec, 42.59 MB]                             [debug]
unlink(): No such file or directory drush.inc:1216 [11.41 sec, 42.59 [warning]
MB]
Could not download project status information from                   [error]
http://updates.drupal.org/release-history/drush/7.x [11.41 sec, 42.59
MB]
Undefined index: drush drush.inc:202 [11.41 sec, 42.59 MB]              [notice]
Invalid argument supplied for foreach() drush.inc:202 [11.41 sec,    [warning]
42.59 MB]
drush self-update check: drush 4.5 is up-to-date. [11.41 sec, 42.59     [notice]
MB]
Code updates will be made to the following projects: Views [views-7.x-3.x-dev]

Note: A backup of your project will be stored to backups directory if it is not managed by a supported version control system.
Note: If you have made any modifications to any file that belongs to one of these projects, you will have to migrate those modifications after updating.
Do you really want to continue with the update process? (y/n): n
Aborting. [13.87 sec, 42.59 MB]                                      [cancel]
Changes made in drush_pm_updatecode have been rolled back. [13.88     [rollback]
sec, 41.41 MB]
Command dispatch complete [13.88 sec, 41.36 MB]                         [notice]
 Timer  Cum (sec)  Count  Avg (msec)
 page   13.617     1      13616.72

Peak memory usage was 43.28 MB [13.88 sec, 41.35 MB]                    [memory]