Thousands of legal websites have been hacked to re-direct users to child pornography the Internet Watch Foundation has reported.

Whether or not there has been a surge in such activity over the past few weeks, the phenomenon is far from new, as the IWF knew or should have known.

Back in 2009  it was reported that a quarter of illegal child abuse images were found by the IWF on legal free to view sites.  In a further third it was not clear whether the hosting sites were legitimate or not.  Only a minority were clearly illegal sites.

That these facts are little publicised may be to do with the secretive nature of child pornography research.  As viewing or searching for the material is strictly illegal only the police, CEOP and the voluntary IWF watchdog are legally empowered to conduct research.

But in fact free-to-view legal pornography sites are a hornet’s nest of indiscriminate menus and redirection, often without the user being aware.  The reason for this may be to do with the dubious nature of many businesses dealing in ‘adult entertainment’.  Free-to-view sites are a shop widow for commercial pornography, scammers and phishers with redirection part of the promotional package.

In a rare piece of available research carried out into legal pornography sites it was found that these problems were endemic to the subject matter – and used as a fraudulent means of skimming income on a massive scale by claiming a few cents off every ‘hit’ to a commercial site and maximising the receipts by circular means.

A similar system operates in relation to fake ‘pharma’ sites with some of the subject matter such as Viagra and penis-enlargement closely related to the porn scams.

While the innocent surfer might be forewarned on the principle of ‘caveat emptor’ the consequences of your computer being unwittingly infested with illegal images may be grave and far-reaching.

Should your IP address be implicated in a sting operation, or your computer impounded on unrelated suspicions, vestigial evidence of illegal images that have left a footprint on the hard drive may be ‘recovered’ –  reconstructed from the base data – and you may be told that illegal images were found on your computer that you must have intentionally downloaded.

Thus confronted, you may be advised, be you ever so innocent, to accept a police caution to avoid a criminal conviction with the publicity, the shaming and the fact of a conviction for making or possessing indecent images on your record.

A police caution for such an offence however is a far from insignificant event.  You will have a record on the disclosure barring service  (formerly criminal record certificate) and will also risk being sacked if you are a teacher or in a similar profession with eternal banishment from employment or voluntary work with children and vulnerable groups.

For years it has been the opinion of criminal justice personnel and the Court of Appeal that such images cannot be unknowingly downloaded:

“In this case the operator, which I for the purpose of this ruling will describe as the defendant, joined some clubs so the process he went through was to call up a web page, select a category of, for instance, something called pre-teen, select from a choice of clubs and having joined the selected club or clubs then to call up through that club a series of pages, and it appears that on the pages would come a variety of indicators with various titles which can be explored, becoming more specific and narrowing down eventually until instead of titles the whole page or whole series of pages are illustrated or shown in miniature on a single page called thumb nails, and the final selection is made by clicking on a thumb nail and selecting a specific — in this case allegedly pornographic picture, the content of which is known absolutely to the operator from his having looked at the thumb nail, being a facsimile miniature that has been selected.

Each of those processes of narrowing down from one page to the next is a separate process to clicking the mouse so as to call up a screen from the Internet and creating an image on the screen. At one end of this process is what may well be so far as the intention of the operator is concerned, just a rather general exploration and it seems to me that what then follows is that there must be a gradual refining in the selection process and a clarification of the intention of the operator till at the other end there is the knowledge of the exact picture that is going to be called up to fill the screen.

Although for ease it has been called a process of enlargement, strictly speaking the move from the thumb nail to the full screen picture is not an enlargement. Every process of calling up a fresh screen is the same process: It is by connection to the Internet manipulating the screens, selecting a particular screen and thereby the operator is in effect converting digital and other electronic information which does not exist so far as he is concerned in any form of a picture and it is converted into an image on his screen that can be viewed.”

But in fact thumbnail menus of thousands of images of disparate provenance and full screen images may be automatically downloaded to the hard drive cache and then overwritten with the hieroglyphic imprint of each thumbnail or full image preserved.

What your computer was doing may be quite outside your control, knowledge or intention and you may never have seen any of the images, much less intended that they be there.

Should you take the bold step and dispute your culpability you will be faced with the evidence of the ‘expert’.  This is usually a police officer who has been taught to use software which picks up illegal image data and reconstructs the images.

A defence ‘expert’ will be allowed to consider the product, but not the source.  In all too many cases this results in the defence ‘expert’, who may have undergone similar training to the police, endorsing the prosecution case with a few mitigating caveats.

Chris Saltrese a solicitor who specialises in defending against abuse allegations says:

“They are extremely difficult, expensive and time-consuming cases to defend. The technical concepts are hard to elucidate and it is nearby impossible to find experts willing or able to explain them.

Defendants routinely encounter extreme prejudice. In one recent case a client who was sent five unwanted illegal images commented: ‘I was treated worse than a murderer’.”

What you won’t be allowed to find out, if it is discoverable, is the proportion of illegal images within the legal cache, context of browsing and the properties of the hosting sites and the various pathways from through legal browsing to unintended illegal dumping.

The Internet Watch Foundation and CEOP have the capability of finding all of this out, and in fact, from the evidence, knew it already.  What they have failed to do in the past is share this and it seems, were remarkably tardy in closing illegal sites down when identified. 

With research access being limited to child abuse law-enforcement, the focus of enquiry becomes narrowed down to identification of images and the presumption of guilt.

This tunnel vision is self-defeating since it precludes effective means of identifying how the material is generated and can be prevented.

The issue is not primarily illegal images but the ever evolving dynamics of internet, computer security and fraud, of which the illegal images are merely a minute strand.

Without this broader perspective, challenging the reliability of the data in the courts can be hazardous, not least because of the absolutist rights and omissions of those in whom we are meant to place our trust.

corevalue August 11, 2013 at 10:13

From MWT’s original Dail Wail article, where MWT details his experience
posing as a 14 year old on a social networking site (which one? It wasn’t
Facebook. Not “Adult friendfinder” was it Mark?)

“Within five minutes of the profile going live on one of the biggest social
networking sites, messages from men poured in. The first three who approached
me were aged between 20 and 40. Each asked ‘A, S, L?’ – teen text speak for:
‘What is your age, sex and location?’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256793/I-posed-girl-14-online-What-followed-sicken-you.html#ixzz2beM601oW
Follow
us: @MailOnline on Twitter DailyMail on Facebook”

Ah yes, and how many backed away furiously once they knew the “age” of the
imposter? MWT doesn’t deign to give us that info. Was it apparent to the men
that the fake poster was 14 at the start, or only after they asked for age?
Again, we are not told.

rabbitaway
August 11, 2013 at 11:08

@Core’ reality tv cops use a script, like SOME coppers have been known to
use a statement – you know that one that gets produced in an appeal court in
someone else’s handwriting

Margaret
Jervis August 11, 2013 at 11:42

This whole thing enters into the stratosphere of online absurdity.

The chatroulette story in the Daily Mail (see Predatory post for links
– won’t repeat it because it will attract moderation delays because of
more than one link) was a weird story about 11 year old girls being
targeted and blackmailed into emptying their piggy banks online on the
threat of sending compromising photos elicited by the online
adultbullies/groomers.

On checking this out, this seemed unlikely.

However – here is a version that is more likely – scammers pose as
police officers blackmailing angry fathers by saying they have
compromising pics of their daughters in a fake ‘sting’

http://therealsingapore.com/content/scammers-pose-police-and-angry-fathers-%E2%80%98underage-girls%E2%80%99-extort-money

I don’t know what is true here – but the Singapore story makes more
sense from a criminal perspective.

It’s all becoming reminiscent of the ‘bogus social worker’ scare back
in 1989/90. And also Ore etc

Ian B August 10, 2013 at 22:31

I’ve been following this dropping into my inbox with ever greater
perplexification. You all seem to be at crossed purposes. Or maybe I am.

Anyway, the first video is a self-promotional video by MWT of his various
appearances on the television and so on. The second video link posted by
Rabbitaway is just a youtube video showing a method of saving youtube videos
on your hard drive.

I always use a Firefox plugin for that (Download Helper) but that’s just
me.

rabbitaway
August 10, 2013 at 22:33

Thanks Ian – I was confused too – just trying to help folk ‘save’ any
vids that might be useful later

Ho Hum August 10, 2013 at 22:37

Best by far

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-downloadhelper/

Moor Larkin August 10, 2013 at 22:47

I’ve just videoed it off the screen with my camera…..
)
Now all I’ve got to do is get it to Lou Grant, who can save me
from……
oh shit!!
It’s not like the 70′s anymoor is it…. :-{
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBZf7vifXmY

Ho Hum
August 10, 2013 at 22:49

That is SO sad… LOL

rabbitaway
August 10, 2013 at 23:27

Cheers Mr Hum – will give that a go – the converter thing I use is not
that good – the lip sync is all out – this is for you and anyone else out
there funniest ever

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSFWgKl-O-A

Ho Hum
August 11, 2013 at 00:05

Most Witless TalkShowHost?

Ho Hum
August 11, 2013 at 00:32

Hello, Mr Bunny

As only you and me still seem to be awake (or should that sober?),
I’ve found some REAL evidence of historical sex abuse by TV performers!
Skip to 8.45 on

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVnJLMf2XZ4

And are those yewtrees in the background? Were they doing their
homework that far in advance?

Anyway, who do we report him to?

rabbitaway August
11, 2013 at 10:56

Hey – try 3.43 Brucie and Diana Dors – just for a change the roles
are reversed somewhat – SHE’S DEAD !!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVnJLMf2XZ4

rabbitaway August 10, 2013 at 18:39

Then you get a converter cd offa ebay – a couple of quid and …… you have
the AV formatted disc to play on your DVD player

Moor
Larkin August 10, 2013 at 16:42

Repeat comment since the system juggled the first one upthread…..
>:-}

@Margaret Jervis
Probably best to verbatimise the dialogue on that video
then, before it gets deleted……

Mark Williams-Thomas to camera: “My latest investigation has uncovered
shocking new evidence of how paedophiles are posting horrific images and
videos of child abuse on facebook…..”

Facebook pages out of focus – Voiceover by Mark Williams-Thomas: “At first
glance these could be innocent images of young kids posted by themselves or
their families but a closer examination of their profile page and the friends
linked to them reveal some truly disturbing image of children being sexually
abused along with keywords that direct other paoedophiles to places where they
can find them……… ”
00:04-00:32

Moor
Larkin August 10, 2013 at 16:39

@Margaret Jervis
Probably best to verbatimise the dialogue on that video
then, before it gets deleted……

Mark Williams-Thomas to camera: “My latest investigation has uncovered
shocking new evidence of how paedophiles are posting horrific images and
videos of child abuse on facebook…..”

Facebook pages out of focus – Voiceover by Mark Williams-Thomas: “At first
glance these could be innocent images of young kids posted by themselves or
their families but a closer examination of their profile page and the friends
linked to them reveal some truly disturbing image of children being sexually
abused along with keywords that direct other paoedophiles to places where they
can find them……… ”
00:04-00:32

Fed_Up August 8, 2013 at 18:04

“I really can’t believe that if you do the job you do, you are so naive. As
for LE, here are two examples related to the NSPCC- both genuine:”

I guarantee you none of my colleagues are aware of these issues; job come
in the door, we do the job, jobs goes back out the door. One feature of our
job is that NO-ONE communicates with us, we get no welfare visits or “just
passing by”. People just drop jobs off at reception and that is it. I have a
standing order with NSPCC, am going to regret this, but where can I find out
more, please?

Anna
Raccoon August 8, 2013 at 20:11

Some helpful links to original material embedded in this piece. Don’t
know anything about the author though.

http://www.theopinionsite.org/nspcc-maintain-abuse-hysteria-as-donations-fall/

Fed_Up August 8, 2013 at 15:27

“but I am concerned that it is being used to subvert our judicial system by
those with an agenda which has naff all to do with child protection.”

Having a had a nose about the site and visited some of the external links
then I am now starting to have the same concerns as well. This is not good, I
thought I was on the side of the angels…am not so sure now. Cogs are whirring
and pieces of the puzzle are starting to fall into place. This needs a bit of
focussed reflection…..

Anna
Raccoon August 8, 2013 at 15:39

Ah so Grasshopper – I have finally had my wicked way with you….!

You probably are on the side of the angels if your work is as you say it
is – but what use are others putting your work to? That is the question my
friend.

The real concern is that whilst all this headline grabbing high voltage
stuff is going on, real children in real British homes ARE being abused –
and no one seems to give a toss about them. I hear what you say about saving
a Philippino child from abuse and I am not suggesting that a Philippino
child is worth one iota less than a British child – but the millions being
consumed by headline grabbing ground breaking work might be better spent on
real children like that poor little shaver that starved to death under
everybody’s nose recently.

Were you aware that the NSPCC don’t have any Inspectors any longer? I
wasn’t until last week – if you contact them with child protection concerns
they phone Social Services for you or the Police – so they are effectively a
giant call centre constantly bleating for donations in order to continue to
be a giant call centre constantly bleating etc. ad nauseum.

Fed_Up August 8, 2013 at 16:02

“You probably are on the side of the angels if your work is as you say
it is – but what use are others putting your work to?”

I did address exactly that point in a reply I drafted last night, but I
dare not post it…it is a bit incendiary. You are a perceptive old stick as
well!

Margaret
Jervis August 8, 2013 at 16:15

Reply to Anna (to fedup) – ‘Ah so Grasshopper…..’
‘Were you aware
that the NSPCC don’t have any Inspectors any longer? I wasn’t until last
week – if you contact them with child protection concerns they phone
Social Services for you or the Police – so they are effectively a giant
call centre constantly bleating for donations in order to continue to be a
giant call centre constantly bleating etc. ad nauseum.’

Have you forgotten Pallial? and Giving Victims a Voice?( ‘the
investigation’) referred to in the PR below.

The NSPCC are frontline investigators now. Though whether they leave
their claims reference phonelines for this we don’t know. But you can bet
they’re being paid for it:

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/news-and-views/our-news/child-protection-news/13-04-29-operation-pallial/operation-pallial-peter-watt-comment_wda95795.html

Fed_Up August 8, 2013 at 13:38

“But I’m grateful that you use the term ‘LE’. It now includes the NSPCC and
who knows who as ‘front line investigators’.”

Yep, it is a big catch-all term and impressed that you picked up on it. It
encompasses, MOD-Police, HMRC, trading-standards, highways agency, SOCA, UK
border agency, customs & excise, health & safety executive, Marine
& Fisheries Agency, UK fire & rescue, local authorities and railway
companies.

All of them making sure that you are not being naughty boys and girls.
Comforting, isn’t it?

Margaret Jervis
August 8, 2013 at 13:49

This thread is so jumbled up it’s completely lost its reference – and
thus its sense. If only we still had filing clerks!

To fedup – take it easy. Passion is commendable but it won’t assist in
saving a single child from abuse. Dispassion is all in such matters
investigatively speaking. Passion distorts judgment – which can work both
ways.

It’s your day off. Look up at the sky, listen to the birds singing, look
at the butterflies fluttering and remember something nice, and funny. And
someone you love. Have a nice day.

Fed_Up August 8, 2013 at 13:52

“It’s your day off. Look up at the sky, listen to the birds singing,
look at the butterflies fluttering and remember something nice, and
funny.”

That’s kind of what my last counsellor suggested…easier said than done,
though.

Margaret
Jervis August 8, 2013 at 13:54

It won’t harm to try. Free will?

Fed_Up August 8, 2013 at 12:56

“Oh dear. It’s almost impossible to respond to such an excitable techie as
fedup on his day off. ”

Snarky-snark-snark….:rolleyes:

“But the Courts are beholden to LE and the experts in these matters. For
the record the prosecution withdrew their evidence on the search terms when it
was demonstrated that they were, in all probability on the evidence,
automatic.”

So it’s just as well that the prosecution are prepared to withdraw their
evidence when the contrary is shown. You do know that this is an example of a
well functioning judicial system, right? Prosecution put evidence forward,
defence challenge it, prosecution concede the point where appropriate and
withdraw the evidence. You do know it works the others way as well…when
defence have to concede issues based on prosecution evidence? I can easily
give examples of when I have rebutted defence experts assertions and they have
conceded the point. Unlike you, I don’t take this as evidence of the defence
experts crapness, I take it as evidence of a decent criminal justice system
(imperfect, but better than many other countries’). You have scoured the world
looking for an expert to support your hypothesis, but can’t find one. Like
EVERY other science out there, there are gaps in knowledge of computer
forensics, theories are proven and disproven, what is widely accepted as fact
today is shown to be bunkum tomorrow, you assume incompetence. Life would be
so much easier if everything was known, categorised and remains in a state of
stasis. You don’t seem to be able to grasp that life isn’t that convenient.
The best we can do is thrash out each point of dispute and hopefully come to
some form of agreement before stepping into court – where no agreement can be
reached then let the court decide. You arrogantly ignore the thousands of
cases the “non-professionals” got it bang on and through the courts. Your main
complaint seems to be (and is seems justifed) that many people were arrested
purely on the basis of credit card numbers appeared on a database 15 years
ago. That material was never looked at by “plod” in-house techies, as well you
know, that decision was never taken by “plod” techies, as well you know. You
cite numerous cases where “plod” followed procedures to the letter and were
actually vindicated in Court appeals. You give examples where “plod” techies
rightly concede points when argued by the opposition. In fact you only seem to
be able to find POSITIVE examples of “plod” techie behaviour to make a case of
“plod” techie crapness. You bemoan that defence can’t find technical experts
who will say what you want them to say…yet somehow it is the “plod” techies
who have failed? Please explain….

Fed_Up August 8, 2013 at 12:15

Okies, I am familiar with Joe Sullivan, but is there a “potted history” of
this Mark Williams-Thomas character anywhere? Google lists lots of articles
that he has written, but am struggling to see where he fits in to the big
picture – not had any dealings with the guy at all.

Anna
Raccoon August 8, 2013 at 12:24

https://www.annaraccoon.com/annas-personal-stuff/trial-by-posthumous-innuendo/

Anna
Raccoon August 8, 2013 at 12:26

Sorry, meant to give you this one.
https://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/fanning-the-flames-in-the-ethical-vacuum/

Fed_Up
August 8, 2013 at 13:12

Thanks. He seems to be using the “child protection expert” epithet in
the same way that some people use the “SAS” epithet…if they claim to be
it, you know it ain’t true.

So, I have really only read your postings about your time at your old
school up till now. Having had a bit more of a look-see on your site I
can understand your scepticism and as such…ummm….*stares at ground and
shuffles feet*…would like to make ANOTHER flipping apology and withdraw
my earlier snippier remarks, you actually seem to be a decent enough old
stick. In my defence I would like to point out that I am as equally as
passionate about this subject as you obviously are. My experience is
vastly different to yours. So far, have had 2 breakdowns through PLOWING
through all the material and at one point lost my family when I got a
bit too work-focussed trying to sort it all out. I have never sought
publicity or the limelight, certainly don’t subscribe to the dozy “pedo
behind every lamp-post” hysteria and have major issues about how the
subject is being presented by the powers-that-be.

Anna
Raccoon August 8, 2013 at
15:10

“Old stick”? “Old stick”? Have you got a death wish or something?

Venerable landlady at a bare minimum Sir!

Anna
Raccoon August 8, 2013 at
15:13

But on the other hand, if you are that passionate about the
subject, regardless of your point of view – you are welcome on this
site at any time…
Contrary to your earlier view, I have never
doubted that there is a problem in this area and in child abuse in
general – but I am concerned that it is being used to subvert our
judicial system by those with an agenda which has naff all to do with
child protection.

Moor
Larkin August 8, 2013 at 12:37

@Fed-Up
What’s with these Okies?
Are you pan-handling………….

Fed_Up August 8, 2013 at 13:00

Fella, I just don’t known if you are being smutty or not….:D

Moor Larkin August 8, 2013 at 13:06

I’m learning new words every day…………
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=okies
option
6 is especially good…….

Fed_Up
August 8, 2013 at 13:15

*Gives up and heads out to get plowed…*

Fed_Up August 8, 2013 at 11:53

Lest there be any doubt.
If it is is the case that people were arrested
and prosecuted simply on the basis of that person’s credit card being on a
database that linked to numerous web-sites, some of which were child abuse
types, then this is WRONG. That would be very foolish indeed!

Jim
Bates August 8, 2013 at 04:36

I feel I’ve been quiet long enough. I am pleased to find a sensible
discussion about the issues and I’m happy to contribute where I can.

Fed Up says:
Defence has access to EVERYTHING, if they want the original
computer, they get the original computer. As it is defence experts normally
accept the image of the hard drive, but they will get the original computer
every time if that’s what they ask for. Your assertion is so worryingly
wrong…am beginning to wander what the agenda is here, it doesn’t seem to
involve an impartial reporting of the facts as the title of your piece
asserts.
This used to be the case but in Operation ORE, proper forensic
access to the computers was refused many times. I had to wait before David
Stanley brought the legally disclosed back-up tapes from the US before I could
begin proper work. Within hours (quite literally) I identified over 3,000
instances of credit card fraud mainly affecting UK cardholders. I had to wait
until late 2010 before the expert employed by the police accepted this in the
following terms: “The close proximity of the requests, and their unusual
nature do appear to indicate fraudulent activity, probably on behalf of the …
webmaster.”
Additionally, in the Harris case at Bristol, my colleague and I
were allowed access to the evidential computer for the purpose of securing a
digital copy of the hard drive. When the machine was brought to us, we noted
(and filmed) the fact that it was housed in an unsecured (i.e. unsealed)
evidence bag. We also found some unexplained anomalies which might have been
the result of contamination. We were unable to bring this evidence to court
because of our subsequent arrest, seizure of our equipment and highly
restrictive bail conditions.
He also comments on Margaret’s observation:
“vestigial evidence of illegal images that have left a footprint on the hard
drive may be ‘recovered’ – reconstructed from the base data ”

that sentence is tortuous and nonsensical beyond belief! What “footprint”
do these images leave behind (apart from themselves) and what is this
vestigial evidence that arises from these “footprints”?
On the contrary –
it makes perfect sense to me. During certain types of bulk file download each
file was identified (and accompanied) by a ‘virtually unique’ MD5 hash value.
These hash values were stored in a separate file during the download. If the
files were subsequently deleted and overwritten, only the hash files remained.
I know of cases where attempts were made to charge suspects on the basis of
these hash values. I did some research on this and discovered that the hash
values were incomplete and thereby not unique. I was under the impression that
this particular approach had been discarded some time ago.

Margaret said:
“For years it has been the opinion of criminal justice
personnel and the Court of Appeal that such images cannot be unknowingly
downloaded:”

I believe that this particular observation stems from a statement made by
Stuart Hyde, Assistant Chief Constable of West Midlands Police on 25th
February 2005 on Radio 5 live. As far as I am aware no one in authority has
since questioned this statement.

Any data from the hard drive not adduced by prosecution can be easily
adduced by defence with a simple request for access to the original data –
which I have never know (sic) refused. If the judge asks for any additional
data, then unless one wants a trip to the cells, then the data gets supplied!

The problem here is that piecemeal access to computer files is no good for
proper forensic examination. You cannot ask for something if you don’t know
that it’s there. A request for say, ‘all the clusters containing HTML code’
would likely be met with the objection that this would be prohibitively
expensive and time consuming. In many cases (for both prosecution and defence)
when the question of mens rea was raised it was my practice to attempt to
reconstruct the web pages that the computer had received (including popup code
occasionally) and attempt to match them with the browser history. These,
suitably censored, would be included in my bound report (which incidentally
gave rise to Colin Port’s assertion that I had thousands of printed images of
child abuse).
This idea of piecemeal access was in fact the main problem
with ORE cases. The courts were told that I could have access to copies of the
computer hard drives but only on police premises using police equipment – and
I could not take any copies of anything away with me. The judges thought this
was reasonable, so in many cases I had no option but to withdraw from the case
with profuse apologies to the defence teams involved. Either I do it my way,
based on years of experience, research and acquired skills, or I don’t do it
at all.
Fed Up bemoans criticism from “interested parties” and points out
that “Those of us on the other side of the discussion simply don’t have the
same freedoms.”
Well sir, I have been on both sides of this problem and
have encountered an increasing number of police officers who are clearly on a
crusade to nail as many ‘paedos’ as possible. The merest suspicion is enough
to get them frothing at the mouth. Many of them claim an expertise they simply
do not possess and become extremely irate when it is pointed out to them that
they do not have a case.
Over a long career working for both prosecution
and defence, I have helped to convict many suspects (they usually pleaded
guilty) and I have also helped to convince the CPS to drop many cases where
their evidence was flawed.
I have seen collections of images of children
which were stomach-churningly obscene. I have seen attempts to classify images
as underage when a little research reveals that the models involved were well
over 18 at the time the images were taken.
I’ve even seen images presented
in a court of law which did not feature human beings at all, not cartoons or
drawings but graphics associated with browsers etc.
For domestic reasons I
have not been able to do much analysis or research recently, but things have
improved a little so I’m back in harness. As a properly engaged expert, I
still hold the material that David Stanley brought from the US.
My aim now
is to publish the forensic (and therefore verifiable) truth about Operation
ORE as my analyses make it available. The authorities have demonstrated that
they will fight tooth and nail to rebut this because the consequences for them
are too horrendous to contemplate.
Sorry about the length of this comment.
Now – will somebody buy me a drink please? I understand that the bar staff
will offer credit if pressed.

Anna
Raccoon August 8, 2013 at 06:33

Give that man a large double on the house, and a packet of pork
scratchings – he’s earned it.

Jim Bates
August 8, 2013 at 09:29

Cor thank. Can I have the packet just over the left bosom of the large
lady pictured on the card please?

Fed_Up August 8, 2013 at 07:49

Well, the entire article seems to have transformed into a discussion
about a particular operation. I can’t really comment, as it wasn’t my
operation. I have read and heard much about it. Judging by the testimony of
people caught up in it here, it seems to me that a public enquiry is long
overdue, to find out who made what decisions and on what basis. Am bound to
say that I find some of the accounts posted here completely soul destroying,
I can’t judge the case from my sofa, not without hearing both sides of the
story, but what if what is being claimed is true then there is a SERIOUS
miscarriage of justice here.

All I can reasonably comment on is current practices (as practised in our
office). Current practices are that the defence get full access to
everything. If a request for ‘all the clusters containing HTML code’ was
made, we will do better than that and provide the full disk image, and hand
that disk image over. I can’t recall ever denying this fundamental right to
any defence party. Current practices also mandate that merely having illegal
image(s) on your hard drive is not enough to justify any form of
charge/caution. If we can’t establish mens rea, then that is the end the
investigation.

“Well sir, I have been on both sides of this problem and have encountered
an increasing number of police officers who are clearly on a crusade to nail
as many ‘paedos’ as possible. The merest suspicion is enough to get them
frothing at the mouth.”

Well, that is the general attitude of the public, and as officers are
drawn from the public it is no surprise to see them bring those attitudes
with them. In fact that there is now a strong trend for cyber-vigilantes
with the same attitudes to engage in their own paedo crusades. The court of
public opinion, and indeed the government, seem to be saying that we aren’t
doing enough to tackle paedos. This view seems to have lead to the practice
of staging public enquiries where child abuse was not spotted or acted upon,
with officers asked searching questions about why they failed to act.
Perhaps you mistake that “frothing at the mouth” for a natural and rational
wish to avoid being crucified in a public hearing if you make the wrong
call? Having said that, there is seems to be a collective societal hysteria
about the whole topic, where those who at the sharp end
who actually know
a bit about the issues are seldom, if ever, consulted – thus dubious “high
publicity” investigations are launched whilst the real problems get ignored.
If it were up to me, I would order a complete disclosure of everything Op
Ore related right now, the whole episode has dragged on too long, it is
casting a shadow over legitimate enquiries (yes, some are actually going
on!). It is not at all healthy where the only information available is on
blogs, where only one side of the story is available. Those caught up in it
deserve better, we need to know exactly what went on, this can only be
achieved with a public enquiry with full disclosure.

“On the contrary – it makes perfect sense to me. During certain types of
bulk file download each file was identified (and accompanied) by a
‘virtually unique’ MD5 hash value. These hash values were stored in a
separate file during the download. If the files were subsequently deleted
and overwritten, only the hash files remained. I know of cases where
attempts were made to charge suspects on the basis of these hash values. I
did some research on this and discovered that the hash values were
incomplete and thereby not unique. I was under the impression that this
particular approach had been discarded some time ago.”

Well, you would know that reconstructing the image from this base data
(hash value) is not possible, although this seems to be claim in the
original article (assuming the author meant “hash values” when referring to
vestigial-footprint-base-data). We certainly never even considered charging
on the basis of hash values in our office, and I don’t know anyone who has.

Obviously I find it exasperating that I am up to my eyeballs in child
abuse (and no, not that stuff that falls into that corridor of uncertainly,
age-wise – I wouldn’t even consider evidencing such stuff, as if I can’t be
certain how can a jury ever be?) cases, that everything is overshadowed by
an operation from 14 years ago. This should have been sorted out, with a
public enquiry years ago. Having said that, I recognise that my annoyance is
small beer compared to what some people appear to have been through on that
operation.

Moor Larkin August 8, 2013 at 08:21

@fed-up
There seems a very credible blog here:
http://artist-on-trial.blogspot.co.uk/2013_04_01_archive.html
that
points to clear and present-day examples of police and legal unfairness
and deliberate deceit of the Defence, and the decades-long obsessions of
the Met with “getting Graham Ovenden”. I’m surprised that if there are the
sorts of things you refer to “out there” in their “tens of thousands” that
police and legal time is being wasted on such a specious case as Ovenden,
and it really is specious, involving some bonkers woman called Minty, who
seems to live a life of fantasy writ large.

Fed_Up
August 8, 2013 at 08:42

Well I am certainly not going to claim that there is no wrong-doing
by Law Enforcement (any human-based system is bound to have wrong
doing). I do however, think that extrapolating wrong-doing to all Law
Enforcement is not a good interpretation of what is actually going on,
particularly in respect of cyber-crime.

The thing that has has stunned me most about the discussions on here
(after the claims of the OP: Ore victims) is what appears to be the
widespread belief that there is little child abuse imagery on the ‘net
and what there is misinterpretation by actors investigating it.

What would you (or anyone else) estimate that the number of
unambiguous child abuse images are out there on the ‘net?

Anna
Raccoon August 8, 2013 at
09:00

“What would you (or anyone else) estimate that the number of
unambiguous child abuse images are out there on the ‘net?”

I don’t see how any member of the public possibly could, or more
importantly, should even attempt to answer that question. Any more
than any of us could attempt to say for certain whether Jimmy Savile
was or wasn’t a paedophile.

What we are concerned about is that claims are made, by the police
and also various charities,that there are ‘thousands of such images’,
that Savile committed ‘thousands of such offences’ and there is never
any evidence – as in, every time a dribble of evidence comes into the
public arena – the Duncroft allegations, Graham Ovenden convicted over
deleted ‘reconstituted’ images, the Operation Ore fiasco with a chief
constable defying the High Court, those dribbles of evidence turn out
to have more holes than a Swiss cheese.

Given that the only evidence that the public get to see has been
manipulated – by the media, by charities, by the police – then surely
you can understand that the public are becoming sceptical as to the
scale of the problem.

Ian B
August 8, 2013 at 09:03

Fed-Up

“What would you (or anyone else) estimate that the number of
unambiguous child abuse images are out there on the ‘net?”

This is the problem. We don’t know. We’re not allowed to know.
Nobody is allowed to look and see for themselves. My own assertion was
merely that in years of looking at adult porn, I’ve never seen any
kiddie porn on the web, so if there is a lot of it out there, it isn’t
among the mainstream porn; but people are now so paranoid that many
(such as the author of the article) are too scared to look at any porn
at all in case they accidentally see something illegal.

This is a central problem. The English law was traditionally based
on justice being “seen to be done”, so that the general population
could be reasonably confident that miscarriages would come to light;
hence, trials in public, etc. But on this issue, we are obligated
under the most draconian threats to trust the authorities, and to go
by vague descriptions of the content. So, we don’t know how much there
is, nor what the nature of it is, other than police/NSPCC etc telling
the Daily Fail that it’s awful beyond imagining. This does not produce
an atmosphere of trust does it?

I mentioned before that, many years ago, I stumbled across some on
Usenet. (That hard drive is long gone, by the way). Having
accidentally downloadad a couple of the images, I decided I may as
well look at the rest; hung for a sheep than a lamb, and all that. The
girls involved appeared (by my bad age guessing) to be maybe 13 or 14.
They were posing in a studio, naked, somewhere between “glamour” and
“arty”. They seemed in some of the pics to be smiling genuine enough
smiles. The studio and lighting seemed to be of a professional
standard. (I have since read elsewhere that there was in the early
2000s a Ukrainian outfit producing such stuff that were shut down. May
have come from there).

It is hard to see who was being abused or harmed by these pictures,
but had I been discovered with them, my life would have been ruined by
the authorities. Prior to the global adoption of Americn standards for
what counts as “porn” (so much as a nipple if it’s under 18) they
probably would have been seen as “artistic nudes”. That is, in
objective terms, not the product of “harm” and not “harmful” in
themselves.

Now I appreciate that contrary to that, there are child rapists
doing the most appalling things and presumably photographing, videoing
and distributing that content. I have no doubt that to look at it must
require a strong stomach and must make one lose one’s faith in
humanity. But we have lost all sense of proportion. And I honestly
think that part of the reason for the absolute secrecy regarding this
material is that many people, if they saw the pictures I saw, would
think “well actually, this isn’t that bad after all” and may move from
a position of general hysteria about anything vaguely underage to a
more nuanced focus on the genuinely abused children. Show me a man
raping a child and I’ll happily ask you for the key so I can
personally throw it away. But a 14 year old with her kit off, paid to
pose in a studio? I’m entirely at a loss as to who is getting hurt, or
why looking at it should be illegal at all.

Moor Larkin August 8, 2013 at 09:44

@ number of images @
When I was back-tracking over Operation
Wonderland an one or two other cases I came across numbers of images
quoted. One was that 750,000 images were counted – without checking I
think that was “Wonderland”. Another operation was said to have
yielded 3,000,000 images and this stemmed from a very few people –
another of these “collector groups” possibly three or four of them as
I remember – it was all in google-news archives so easy to find………

Via my claculator I have worked out that if I spent sixty years
without sleep I would need to look at a fresh image every 4.5 seconds
in order to satisfy my craving for 3,000,000. I think some of these
numbers are utterly meaningless. I even wonder if some of them are
duplicitous and represent the numbers of “stills” in a video for
instance. Counting for counting’s sake.

I also don’t really understand why people like fed-up are wasting
their lives and our money, sitting in rooms “classifying” tens of
thousands of images. Are all of these tied to an actual culprit in
custody/bail fed-up? Is there someone in the frame as it were? Or are
you just “counting sheep”? All these images are on the internet and
can be downloaded onto dated police hard-drives for future reference
presumably – they aren’t going anywhere. I see no point in anyone
sitting in rooms classifying endless data streams unless there is a
suspect in a jail cell and then you have his images on his hard drive
anyway. How many of the suspects thenreally *need* to be “classified”?
A dozen really nasty ones should suffice surely. Why submit officers
to this degradation this way; it’s completely unnecessary. I’m sure
they’d rather be out on the real streets helping real children.

Most of the ones on the images are long gone I imagine. I was
reading that after Wonderland they actually managed to track down
about three of the “victims” out of all the possibly hundreds and I
think the report said two of the three refused to co-operate with the
prosecutors.

Jim Bates
August 8, 2013 at 10:20

The current hysteria stems mainly from statements by senior police
officers involved at the time. On Jim Gamble told parliament ‘in 1999
towards 7,000 people in the UK sat at their computers and accessed child
abuse images’. This was when the only evidence they had was the list of
subscribers provided by the American USPIS. It might be said that Mr
Gamble was perhaps a little enthusiastic in condemning people without
trial and without evidence.

The BBC program ‘Crash of an Internet Porn King’ (BBC2 – 20th May 2005)
showed a police briefing in which the infamous ‘Click Here Child Porn’
banner featured. Even quite recently, John Carr (NSPCC) was still saying
that people saw two buttons, one led to child porn, the other did not.
This despite:
a) the admission (finally) in 2010 that this was
irrelevant, and
b) by May 2003, the prosecution already had their first
expert’s report in which it was stated that, “there was absolutely no way
to navigate to any kind of user’s sign-up page from the Keyz or Landslide
homepages.”
Emails complaining about this were sent to the NSPCC and
were acknowledged, but nothing was done to correct his statement.

The reaction by the various authorities to any attempt to publicise the
shortcomings of ORE speaks volumes about their attitude. You are right
that ORE spread a cloud that is unlikely to be dissipated in the near
future, even if a JR is ever ordered.

People died, families were destroyed and individuals are still being
damaged by the fallout.

Remember that the original data was seized on 8th September 1999, the
first arrests in the UK were in 2002. By that time most of the expected
evidence on home computers was long gone. The ruling was then made to
proceed with incitement prosecutions. No images needed y’see.
Note also
that local police were only given specific database entries, all
investigation was concentrated within a handful of people based at CEOP
and Celt (the civilian experts used by the police).

Many of the news posts of the time have now been removed but the strong
impression was that the paedo-panic was engineered by zealots within the
various authorities. If it were not so serious the story of ORE would have
all the elements of a Whitehall Farce.

I am so desperately sad for the people involved, both the victims and
yes, the few honest coppers who now have a mountain to climb in terms of
credibility.

Little wonder that the constant stream of unverifiable statistics from
the NSPCC, the IWF and CEOP is viewed with a jaundiced eye by an
increasingly sceptical public.

That said, I will happily go on record that a few police forces reacted
in a sensible manner and conducted their inquiries in a quiet and
sensitive manner. Others (a majority in my experience) were happy to rack
up their conviction rates with what they considered to be easy busts.

Ooops, now I’m starting to froth at the mouth – what was in those pork
scratchings?

Jim Bates
August 8, 2013 at 10:22

Oh dear – eyesight again. A typo at the top of this last post should
have said “On 20th May 2003, Jim Gamble told Parliament …

Does this posting thingy have an edit facility?

Fed_Up
August 8, 2013 at 11:03

Am not doubting the broader point you make, but am fairly sure that
the current hysteria is nothing to do with what was said 15 years ago…I
haven’t seen JG’s comment quoted anywhere in the press over the past few
years when it has all been kicking off.

(Just in case anyone is wandering…it’s my day off!!!)

Margaret
Jervis August 8, 2013 at 11:15

fed_up says’(Just in case anyone is wandering[sic]…it’s my day
off!!!)’

Really? I thought it was everyone’s ‘day(s) off’, when they joined
in with this debate. I would have thought if it were otherwise, as you
infer it was, you might post in your real name, or that of your firm.
Am I missing something here?

Moor Larkin August 8, 2013 at 11:15

Jim aint a shy boy….
And
here on Upper Crescent, three former police officers think the time is
now right to take their fight against crime into the 21st century. The
company provides a range of services around making people ‘safe and
secure’ with key areas of expertise including child safeguarding and
social media, combining their own security knowledge to produce mobile
phone applications aimed at increasing the safety of young people in
the online environment.

Another feature is a unique ‘evidence gathering’ method which
allows the user to take a photograph of an incident or injury and send
it directly to a solicitor. However the picture cannot be saved to the
phone’s library, where it could be edited or modified by the less
scrupulous potential claimant.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/business-news/hitech-firm-takes-fight-to-crime-the-21st-century-way-29439584.html
Ineqe
is bringing together some of the most high-profile names in the fight
against child exploitation at a conference in Belfast later this
year.

‘Inside the mind of a child sex offender’ will feature speakers
including Mark Williams-Thomas, the TV presenter, criminologist, child
protection expert and former detective who unmasked Jimmy Savile as
one of the UK’s worst predatory paedophiles.

Also speaking will be Peter Spindler, former lead officer on
operation Yew Tree, the most complex criminal investigation into
high-profile offenders of its kind, and Dr Joe Sullivan, one of the
foremost global experts on offender character and behaviour, the
principle developer of the Behavioural Analysis Unit and adviser on
major police inquiries including the Madeline McCann and April Jones
investigations.

Margaret
Jervis August 8, 2013 at
11:50

Dear oh dear. These psychological profilers do like to puff
themselves up don’t they? Sullivan hails from the cottage Gracewell
therapeutic industry of the late Ray Wyre (who chucked it in for
poker before he died). The people that brought us ‘satanic ritual
abuse’. Here’s Sullivan in action on McCann.http://www.itnsource.com/shotlist/ITN/2009/11/03/T03110902/?v=0&a=1
Transcript
below. (And in case you’re wondering, I think the ‘McCanns did it’
theory is hideous tosh too) But at least we now know the MO of
‘Savile’ in ‘a nation groomed’
Transcript

By Nigel Moore

Keir Simmons: [to Dr Joe Sullivan] So, this is where you planned
this appeal, thought about these words, in close detail?

Dr Joe Sullivan: That’s right, this is the Behavioural Analysis
Unit at CEOP, where, errr…

Presenter: [Voice Over] Tonight the police psychologist who
designed the message spoke exclusively to ITV News.

Dr Joe Sullivan: The person responsible for the disappearance of
Madeleine McCann is a significant risk to children. This person is
very likely to behave in the same way again and there’s… it’s
crticially important that we identify that person.

Presenter: [Voice Over] He says that person will have persuaded
those around him to keep quiet.

Dr Joe Sullivan: Most people associate grooming with something
that the perpetrator does to the victim but grooming is also
something that is, errr… used by the perpetrator to silence those
people around them, that will potentially, errm… disclose
information or cause their identity to be… to be known to the
police.

‘

Anna Raccoon August 8, 2013 at 11:56

Interesting – because the next person to step up to the McCann
bandwagon was none other than ‘child protection expert’ Mark
Williams-Thomas, claiming that the McCann’s had hired his
expertise to find Madeleine….something debunked later when it
transpired that his only contact with them had been a single phone
call to their press agent……it just goes round in circles, the same
zealots over and over again.

Margaret
Jervis August 8, 2013 at
12:59

Yes. When MWT emerged from nowhere on this back in 2009 I
looked him up on google. It turned out that he was doing
training promoting the
‘child sexual abuse accommodation
syndrome’. Anyone familiar with McMartin?,…. Broxtowe?
…Orkneys?…. well you could keep going. You still can.

Moor Larkin August 10, 2013 at 15:35

@Margaret Jervis
According to this promotional video,
paedophiles were placing horrific images of child abuse on
Facebook back in 2011.
Maybe they still are? I’ve never
heard about this scandal before.
Check out the first 40
seconds or so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1lfp2xFQ5M

Margaret Jervis August 10, 2013 at 15:42

I think it was one of his early stings. As I remember MWT
and the Daily Mail had to apologise to facebook about this –
sure its logged somewhere.

Fed_Up
August 8, 2013 at 11:19

@moor_larkin@

“I see no point in anyone sitting in rooms classifying endless data
streams unless there is a suspect in a jail cell and then you have his
images on his hard drive anyway. How many of the suspects thenreally
*need* to be “classified”? A dozen really nasty ones should suffice
surely. Why submit officers to this degradation this way; it’s
completely unnecessary. I’m sure they’d rather be out on the real
streets helping real children.”

OK, one really important point that gets overlooked. those kids in
the pictures/movies I classify…they ARE “real children”. Understand
that our efforts aren’t just towards banging out a few “possession”
charges, we (Law Enforcement) actually do some really Gucci stuff
around victim identification and tracing of the kids being abused in
those pictures.

The image classification is done in respect of people on bail or
currently in the cells. The process isn’t just about classifying
images, it is seeing what the potential for victim id/tracing is. You
are right to query the value of classifying images. It used to be the
case that the court wanted every image viewing and classifying.
However this was really time consuming, it was sometimes taking 2
years or more for people to get to court from time of arrest. After
representation by defence council, Judges got (understandably) very
cross with this situation. So we introduced some automated processes
to speed things up. Defence now object to this practice as well, see
Elizabeth’s comments on this thread. So, what do we do? Just look at
images until we have a few hundred…enough for charge, then stop? What
happens if the next image we would have looked at is an image of the
suspect abusing a child? Do we manually view and grade every image –
thus leading to a “justice delayed is justice denied” situation? To we
use technology to automate the process then get attacked by defence?
All suggestions gratefully received….

Moor Larkin August 8, 2013 at 11:28

@ we (Law Enforcement) actually do some really Gucci stuff around
victim identification and tracing of the kids being abused in those
pictures. @

I’ll back you up on that one.
http://www.4ni.co.uk/northern_ireland_news.asp?id=92648
Like
your other example this relates to Sex Tourism, which the meeja was
lauding as the latest fun-thing-to-do a decade or so ago. I met one
guy personally once who told of his going back-shagging every year. He
was quite offended when I said I though this was wrong and immoral.
I’m often out of step with Society it seems.

TotallyConfused August 8, 2013 at 17:27

Fed_Up
I really can’t believe that if you do the job you do, you
are so naive. As for LE, here are two examples related to the NSPCC-
both genuine:
1)My youngest child was at a school assembly. They
were supposed to be talking about ‘self protection’ and handing out
cards for Childline to 6 year olds!!!! My son jumped up ‘Never believe
them- they are lying! They steal children from their beds!’
Fortunately my home was only 700 yards from the school; he was home
before the school could ring me.

2) A pleasant lady knocked on my door one day asking for
‘sponsorship’; she was doing a ‘fun run’ for the NSPCC. I told her
‘Sorry dear, but I do not support State Sponsored Child Abuse.’ She
was stunned.

Do you know how much of the NSPCC budget goes on helping REAL
children in REAL need? Try 8% of their income. (I FOI’d them) Please
don’t try to tell me that lies and mistruths from 15 years ago are not
relevant. They are and our family live it everyday.

By the way- Landlady- Jim Bates next double- put it on my tab and I
will even pay for his next bag of pork scratchings.
TC

JK August 8, 2013 at 00:20

@ (primarily) Moor Larkin,

The “tools of the trade” where Fed-Up’s job is concerned includes (but is
not limited to) algorithms – so for instance, a post where KP is referenced,
it triggers a looksee. “Over here” commenting on the post isn’t a normal
occurrence – unless it takes place in a “chat setting” – while I don’t know
for certain, I’m figuring your “in the know” authorities would never take part
in any discussion whereas, I “think” from this side of The Pond, one of our
authorities might take a chance/stab at justifying.

But this subject is not my “usual hobby” – I’m generally most comfortable
dealing with the subject matter of ferreting info on stuff at least
‘peripherally’ concerned with the whys of stuff like our [US] very recent
Diplo Warning/Alert status – I read here primarily because of Anna’s very
excellent (and knowledgeable/legible) commenters. And because the site was “so
recommended” – don’t ask please.

My “hobby” uses algorithms too. Just different sorts of keyword
strings.

Moor
Larkin August 8, 2013 at 00:55

@JK
Margaret Jervis’ blog itself is all about innocent people having
inadvertent nasties on their computer but one thing that hasn’t been made
clear is why a person might be targeted in the first place. Obviously in the
past that seems to have been via credit card info., but I guess the
implication of your algorithms hint is that nowadays people chatting on
forums etc. push a virtual button someplace and then the ISP’s can be
collected.

So fars as the circumspection of our coppers is concerned, you might get
some amusement from this:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/showbiz/417925/Big-Brother-star-Dan-Neal-Police-stifled-me

JK August 8, 2013 at 05:32

@ Moor,

Pretty much. Depends on the Search Engine. Switch “forths” and
“retreats” – from “feints” and “probing” to the opposite and that’s how it
(seems) to work … “bonuses” either accrue of bonuses don’t.

This page is tabbed – I’ll be back. Might not reply though.

JK August 8, 2013 at 06:09

@ Moor Larkin,

Kinda busy just now and what I’m about to place has a lot of
“extremelies off-topic” – but you’ll maybe get a hint where I’m talking
about math.

This stuff is primarily geared toward a specific set of Readers –
which makes it particularly difficult for those without (hopefully). In
the “Old Days” called one thing and in these latter days, because the
www is here, known simply as “steganography across the blogosphere.”

http://malcolmpollack.com/2013/08/06/just-another-day-in-the-dar-al-harb/

But perhaps links are not your “hobby”? Then again, everybody is
always looking for insight into how a engine works – excuse the “a
engine” as just a something else.

TotallyConfused
August 7, 2013 at 15:37

The original warrant served on my home, was to do with Landslide. (which I
did not know anything about at the time although I had seen the Sunday Times
headline and didn’t give it much thought or attention)

My husband was found to have a total of 10 images; mainly level 1; so yes
like Sam Fox. All were on his Kazza V.1. There was one which they classed as
‘potentially a level 3 or 4′. He swore (I have read all 300 pages of his
police interviews) that he had never seen this one image. (I will not give
detail) The moron refused a solicitor in interview the first time because he
could not figure out what he had done.

But here is a sample of an exchange in interview:
DI : In this image do
you believe this to be a child?
Answer :No
DI: If I turn it upside down,
now could it be a child?
Answer: I have no idea?
—————————————–

DI: Have you ever seen little girl’s being raped?
Answer: Yes
DI:
When?
Answer: When I was in the military. I saw it in Rowanda and Bosnia.
We were instructed to take no action.
DI: Did you report it to
anyone?
Answer: Yes, as a switch operator in the Signals, I was required to
inform my higher ups. I was told to report that we were to take no
action.
DI: You have the highest security clearance- is this
true?
Answer: Yes
DI: You have a step-daughter; have you ever encouraged
her to sit on your lap?
Answer: No, never. There are boundaries.
DI:
Have you ever viewed adult material?
Answer: Yes
DI:When?
Answer: In
the guard house when I was on night duties. When I was single, I did look at
adult material. But now that I am married with 3 children, I don’t even look
for that because I am now a Father.
DI: Are you a computer
expert?
Answer: No.

———————————————
Meanwhile while being locked in a room in my own home I
demanded to take a shower. I was told I could not do so without two women
officers watching me. They removed my shower curtain. I asked ‘What are you
going to do when you find out you have arrested a complete geek who plays
Dungeons and Dragons and watches Star Trek?’ ‘That matches perfectly the
profile of the type of man we are after.’
—————————————-
I was not
allowed to change my baby’s diaper/nappy; they had to do it incase there was
hidden child porn inserted into the diaper/nappy. (Seriously?)
TC

The Blocked
Dwarf August 7, 2013 at 16:37

“DI: You have a step-daughter; have you ever encouraged her to sit on
your lap?
Answer: No, never. There are boundaries”

The other day I was visiting my granddaughter (3ish) and she wanted me to
read her comic to her. I patted my lap to gesture etc. Having read what you
wrote there I won’t be doing that in future, the little ratbag can sit next
to Granddad on the couch in future. Thanks for the warning- I mean it.

Moor Larkin August 7, 2013 at 16:41

@The Blocked Dwarf
What difference do you think that’ll make? In 20
years after therapy, she’ll say you jounced her on your lap anyway, and
who’s gonna believe any different?

Best to accept a child’s innocent love while you still can, and let it
warm your heart, otherwise you’ll become as bitter an old bastard as the
rest of them…..

The Blocked
Dwarf August 7, 2013 at 16:43

I AM a bitter old bastard and in 20 years time my 60 a day will have
killed me anyways so I won’t need to worry about it :p

Moor Larkin August 7, 2013 at 17:09

You smoke!!??!!
Beyond redemption anyway……………….

mandrake August 8, 2013 at 03:28

I spent an hour telling them that I received ‘spam’ emails begging me to
go to (adult) porn sites everyday by the cartload and it drove me crazy/ I
didn’t explain it like that though as on the charge sheet it ended up being
“accused admits to corresponding with pornography websites”

Ian B August 7, 2013 at 14:49

I’d really like an answer from Fed_Up about the hypothetical Samantha Fox
naked images. Are they kiddie porn? A fairly short answer should suffice.

Fed_Up August 7, 2013 at 15:19

Okies, is a fair question, but to be clear, I am NOT giving any legal
advice here, this is just my personal opinion.
First neither me, not any
techie nor any LE official can decide what is kiddie porn. Only a court can
make that determination.
I guess a more germane question would be: Would
LE come for someone if they had info that that other person had it in their
possession?
It depends, understand that the LE hierarchy is more
concerned with looking good than doing good. A senior officer, with no
technical
knowledge but an eye for an easy “child abuse” collar might
authorise it. If the unthinkable happened and senior officer actually came
to the techies,
who have some clue about what they’re are doing, then
there would be much rolling of eyes and a firm “NO – Forget it!!!!” advisory
issued.

In the event that you were arrested, I believe prosecution would be
unlikely under your scenario, based on R v Stephen Neal [2011] EWCA Crim
461.

The Blocked Dwarf
August 7, 2013 at 14:47

In my limited experience you’ll only ‘stumble over’ kiddy porn if you visit
sites like /b/ (and those here who don’t know what that is haven’t missed
anything except cerebral hemorrhage inducing inanity) . Most of what is posted
there tends, again in my limited experience, to have been pulled off ancient
ftp darknet or usenet servers and is older than the teenage American posting
it. I once reported some and it was clear from the background items in the
picture that the 10 year oldish girl was being ‘abused’ in her bedroom, in the
US, around the time Ronnie Reagan was President.

Enough to put one off Cabbage Patch Dolls (remember those?) for life….and
Star Wars Light Sabres (you may vomit if you wish).

Fed_Up August 7, 2013 at 14:21

Err, was the plowee, not the plower…but that still doesn’t help much, I
suppose…

TotallyConfused
August 7, 2013 at 14:19

Just to clarify:
Much of the prosecutions in Operation Ore were put ‘on
hold’ until the SOA 2003 was passed. (This meant being on bail for upwards of
18 months, with no access to wives or children.) Even if the ‘offense’ (being
a victim of credit card fraud) was from 1999 (when Landslide was shut down),
they applied the new ‘standards’ of SOA 2003. The reason for SOA 2003 was
directly because the UK authorities were unable to give the sentences to the
Wonderland Club as they wished.

My husband and I joined a group of people trying to get out the truth
behind Operation Ore. A member of Wonderland, inflitrated that group claiming
to be ‘one of us.’ This individual was rearrested in 2009. On his computer
were found graphic descriptions of his fantasies about raping and torturing
and ‘spanking’ a 7/8 year old boy on a beach. My child’s name was mentioned in
these chats. We knew nothing.

However, we were arrested. We had gone on a geniune holiday. We were having
our holiday approx. 40 miles from where this person was arrested. The police
came for us; wasn’t it a co-incodence that our child’s name was in his
‘fantasy’ chat logs, we were on holiday in the area, and our home was on the
beach? We were accused of ‘child neglect by way of attempting to sell our
child’ and ’3 counts of possession of indecent images.’ After 36 hours in the
police cells and explaining that we did not know this person’s true name and
history and yes, we were members of this campaign group, all charges against
us were dropped.

However, the accusation, even though it never left the police station, is
now on my PNC and other records that impact on my occupation.

The 3 ‘indecent images’ were 1) An image owned by Elton John called ‘Ella
and Bella Bellydancing’ The file path shows it was ‘accessed’ via the SKY News
website. 2) The other two were from some now infamous viral email ‘boys, boys,
boys’ which was sent to my husband unsolicited by a work colleague. The report
shows, he never even opened it. The IWF and CEOP have said it is not ‘illegal
or indecent’. Ironically, my husband’s solicitor had the same email.- Sent to
her by ‘a friend’ who worked for the Crown Prosecution Service!

Meanwhile, the social services wrote a report to say that when they raided
our home, there was a David Stanley looking after our cats. The report
specifically states that Mr. Stanley was ‘an unconvicted sex offender’ and
this was another example of us associating with ‘inappropriate people’; yet
Mr. Stanley was completely cleared in Operation Ore.

Being angry and frustrated that such insane and libelous comments were made
about me and my husband and my dear friend, I a) recruited a solicitor to sue
my local police and b) Got the police force dealing with Mr. Wonderland Club
on my side and they have provided a statement that they knew we were innocent
and should never have even been arrested or our child taken.

Mr Wonderland Club, after putting us and our child and extended family
through years of hell, finally pled guilty under the Obscene Publications Act.
I have invited him to sue me if anything I am saying is false; he has not.

My husband and I split up; our extremely successful company was shut; I had
a breakdown and for a few months was a complete ‘nutjob’ and got myself into
deep water with the authorities. I was homeless and living in my car. I was
found one night in the back of my car drinking from a wine bottle. Because the
keys were in the ignition so I could use the CD player, I was charged with
‘drunk in charge of a vehicle’; because I was homeless, I was put on remand
for 9 days until my solicitor managed to find a friend to vouch for my good
character and provide me temporary accomodation. By the way, fortunately, the
Judge took great pity on me and I was sentenced to an £80 fine, 12 months
probation (which the probation service applied to have revoked after 6 months
because I clearly was not a problem) and to attend a 12 hour alcohol
awareness/offending course. (this too was revoked after my attendance of 5
hours because the course facilitators believed this was absolutely
inappropriate for me as the reason for my offense was so clear to them)

And so here I am……all because of ‘guilt by association’ and a fraudulent
credit card transaction in 1999 before I even met my husband.

Up until this time, the only ‘transgression’ on my ‘permanent record’ was I
had a speeding ticket in 1997 for doing 35mph in a 30mph zone.
TC

Anna
Raccoon August 7, 2013 at 14:32

Totally confused,

I have no reason to doubt a word that you say since I am party to your
real identity (which I shall not reveal, relax!)

You have my absolute sympathy.

I am also interested in what you say about your ‘group’ being infiltrated
by a paedophile. I have long been of the opinion that in some quarters of
forumland, it is mainly paedophiles who have the sustained interest in
discussing the specific sexual details of abuse, rather than the legal
matters – and that the police might profitably look into some of those
forums rather than their present hunting grounds….!

Ho Hum August 7, 2013 at 13:30

@ Fed_Up August 7, 2013 at 13:19

OK, so you got a rough time of it, probably because a lot of people were
pissed off with your ‘agenda’ comments, as was I, those being were well out of
order. But you’ve apologised, which is fine. The past is past

But, look, some of the rest of us get a going over too, and we haven’t run
off. Well, I haven’t, even if some might wish I had

So hang in there and deal with some of the issues raised. I’d like to hear
what you have to say.

Anna
Raccoon August 7, 2013 at 13:50

“But, look, some of the rest of us get a going over too, and we haven’t
run off. Well, I haven’t, even if some might wish I had
”

May I say, Sir, I admired your courage…..

And now you’d be sorely missed…

Fed_Up August 7, 2013 at 13:19

This is all too bad. There are many good points raised here that deserve to
be answered, but based on the comments so far, it ain’t going to be
me.
There is no way I am going to fling myself into this particular lions
den. It would be better for me if you all believed I was a fraud, lying and
some sort of dis-information agent working for the US government (really…I
mean REALLY?!?!?!). I made an damn silly error, spotted it the moment I hit
send and apologised immediately.

Everyone has had their say, it’s clear that I am not going to get any sort
of fair hearing. What a damn pity, but all I can say is: “Well played,
Anna…very well played indeed”.

The only other thing I want to do is apologise to Margaret for my wholly
unwarranted “agenda” comments, they were unnecessary and they are withdrawn.
The points you raise deserve a much wider discussion, but it is clear that any
sober, reasoned discussion is not going to be possible here…what a damn pity!!
I’m sure you know the answer to this question Margaret, and why I ask
it:
What, in your view, is the biggest challenge facing LE computer
forensics labs, currently?

Margaret Jervis
August 7, 2013 at 13:26

The investigators?

Ho Hum August 7, 2013 at 13:33

Very funny.

Come on, Fed_up, start there, but be serious about it

Moor Larkin August 7, 2013 at 13:45

@fed-up
Anna never wrote the blogpost.
This made me larf but
has no bearing on anything either.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=plowed

Ho Hum
August 7, 2013 at 14:02

I have just choked on my coffee……..this might be my last breath….

Fed_Up
August 7, 2013 at 14:02

Wow…I’ve certainly been plowed in the (recent) past, and didn’t
even know it. You are going to have to work out which way I have been
plowed ‘tho….

Anna Raccoon August 7, 2013 at 14:18

Anna! Do not enquire whether he plows both ways and thus the
confusion, do not, don’t – too late. Bloody woman’s uncontrollable.
Ed.

Anna
Raccoon August 7, 2013 at 13:42

Of course you will get a fair hearing – everybody does round here. If you
make damn stupid mistakes, don’t expect people to ignore them – they
certainly don’t when I make mistakes I can promise you – why should it be
any different for you?

On the other hand, this is probably the most intelligent, well read, well
informed, and entertaining group of commentators in the blogosphere – I
certainly find myself taken apart by them on many occasions and I run the
gauntlet of them day after day after day……it takes nerves of steel some
days!

But then if you want an excuse not to engage with the author of that
piece, you don’t have to – I am surprised since you were so upset that I
wouldn’t engage with you on a subject I know nothing about – but then turn
down the opportunity to engage with Margaret.

Still, as a result of that article I have had an e-mail from another
expert in computer forensics – specifically child abuse images – who has
offered to write an article for the site. Such a small world, you probably
know him.

ZeroIntelligence
August 7, 2013 at 11:09

Joshua, Masha, and many thousands more.

CHILD VICTIMS – ABUSED BY THE FBI & American Sex Gulag.

http://www.inquisition21.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=150

http://www.inquisition21.com/index.php

Ms Mildred August 7, 2013 at 11:08

Late again on this subject. Most of it sails over my non techy head. THE
OPERATION ORE ISSUE however is so unsettling. The suicides. The attitude of
get the ‘paedos’ no matter what. Feed the frenzy. Wreck families. Kill
careers. Infect the public with even more hysteria. Ignore FBI request not to
follow up credit card inputs. I recall as soon as heard of ore I remarked on
credit card fraud and multi computer use and fitting someone up with a child
porn visit on their hard drive. Got into an acrimonious argument soon enough.
No they are all guilty….no matter what an incorrect accusation might do to a
person. I am only a rather old woman, shocked and disapointed at what goes on
in the establishment. Duck kennels and Wisteria and plates of shellfish and
manipulated ownership of housing etc. Now others have joined the manipulating
and listening in to further their own ends. Truly they are shafting this
country for whatever reasons.

Geoff August 7, 2013 at 05:46

Very useful discussion, thank you everyone.

I hope FedUp can find the time to reply to Margaret Jervis’s considered
response, as his original comments were interesting. There are also two
earlier questions to FedUp which I hope he finds the time to reply to, one
from ivan, and one about Samantha Fox etc from Ian B.

Ian B August 6, 2013 at 22:09

@Margaret Jervis

The thing that still is baffling me about this article, with all due
respect, is that it reads as being written by somebody who doesn’t really
understand what they’re writing about, like some middle american
anthropologist observing a tribe of savages in darkest Africa, and their
mysterious customs. The presentation of the adult web seems to be deliberately
slanted towards presenting things which are rather mundane, such as traffic
trading, TGPs etc, as sinister.

The thing is, I don’t know why you’re referencing a “report” about it.
You’re on the internet. Why not just look for yourself? Why not go and read
and even interact with an adult webmaster forum like Go Fuck Yourself. Why not just go visit some TGPs, click a
few thumbs, and see how many infant rapes you can find?

It’s like everyone involved in this is so desperate to not be associated
with nasty dirty porn that they have to keep up this “well I don’t look at it
myself, lawks, but I’ve heard that [insert terrible thing here] goes on”,
whether it’s the Kidporn Kops with their “tens of thousands of raped infants”
or La Perry with her imaginary “Google is full of it” or apparently yourself;
so far as I can tell the thing you’re presenting here is that somehow the
adult industry is for some unfathomable reason tricking people into getting
child porn on their hard drives.

I feel like I’m the only person on the planet who will admit to ever
looking at any. Well, here’s that admission, and I must have visited a zillion
porny pages over the years amd, I repeat, I have never seen any child
pornography. Not so much as a single thumb.

Where is it?

Margaret Jervis
August 6, 2013 at 22:46

Well it exists on people’s hard drives. But going out and looking for it
is dangerous. And you may have something nasty in the woodshed even if
you’ve never seen it. Put the two together and you’re down so this is why
people don’t as a rule make active research forays.

But no we don’t know how much is out there or is simply duplicated stuff
that has been washing around the net for twenty years.

And by the way some of the stuff you say you’ve come across would be
illegal too as extreme, bestial etc

And cartoon depictions are illegal too – even though I can’t fathom how
an empty reference can have a distinct age classification.

Of course masses of commercial mainstream stuff of kids would count as
‘level 1′- erotic clothed poses- if the powers that be were so minded. Used
to be said that the paedophile voyeur’s object of choice was the Mothercare
catalogue and boys in shorts. So I don’t know where that would leave us.

Ian B August 6, 2013 at 23:29

@Margaret Jervis

Goatse and 2 Girls 1 Cup are both well known internet memes with
write-ups on Wikipedia, which somebody with an even cursory knowedge of
internet culture would have recognised from my descriptions. And that’s my
point. It seems the average basement dwelling onanist has a far greater
understanding of the subject matter than anybody declaring expertise,
because if you’re too scared to look anywhere that just might be
risky you aren’t going to see very much.

I have “active research forays” open in other browser tabs right now. I
look for “pornographic” content most days, because I draw it for a living.
I’ve even declared it against taxes. I am not claiming any expertise. What
I can say, as I’ve said repeatedly, is that I’ve never experienced anybody
leading me into Kiddie Porn, despite falling into all the old pitfalls of
the naive like pop-up hell, blind thumbs, redirects, and all the rest of
the things you think are sinister. I have stated very clearly that I don’t
believe Fed-Up’s narrative, but I’m not entirely convinced either that
there are many people with “accidental” kiddie porn in their browser
caches. I’m not saying it’s never happened. But it must be pretty
rare.

It’s like, if somebody says that tigers prowl the streets of Putney,
and I’ve spent fhe past 15 years walking around Putney and never seen a
tiger, either I am very lucky or the Putney tiger problem is being
overstated, and on that basis I wouldn’t tell people to never go to Putney
in case they get eaten by a tiger.

Adult webmasters are just trying to sell porn. They do everything they
can to shuffle as much traffic in their direction as they can. Much of
that is annoying, and frequently descends into misleading (e.g. blind
thumbs and redirects). But anyone running a TGP is going to want 2257
statements and all the rest, so that that the FBI doesn’t descend on them.
Anyone adult doing anything illegal loses their merchant account, no
appeal, dead in the water. And I just don’t think that telling people that
if they look at (still, so far) legal adult porn they’re going to get
child abuse images secreted on their hard drives is very helpful.
Especially by someone who’s too scared of tigers to even go to Putney and
have a look for them.

Hundres of thousands of people in the UK are looking at porn right now.
I am deeply disturbed that apparently none of the experts are among
them.

Moor Larkin August 7, 2013 at 09:26

@Ian B
That old 2001 Nws of the World piece I posted has George
Bush and Tony Blair supposedly saying they are declaring war on the
*Porn Barons* who are filling the internet with child porn. Was it
perhaps that back in the late 90′s the “anything goes” culture meant
that the porn merchants were allowing it’s inclusion along with the
horses etc. and their reputation has never been recovered?

I was reading up on Operation Wonderland, which seems the grand-daddy
of all this and it is quite plain that even then, this type of material
was being exchanged rather than sold and there never was a profit
motive.

This report lists all the men in Britain arrested and prosecuted.
Only one of them seems to have been an actual abuser, the rest were
watchers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1167879.stm

There was a media outcry when the sentences for all the watchers were
only about three years, although the abuser received over ten (but he is
not mentioned in this reportage)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1169457.stm

All the rest seems to have flowed from that because the government
brought in much heavier sentencing after that outcry.

ZeroIntelligence
August 6, 2013 at 22:04

For the full ‘Appalling Vista’.

Of numerous victims of bent-Brit Cops & FBI ‘Whores Of Operations Ore
& Avalanche’, including many child victims losing adult relatives.

Check ‘Inquisition 21st Century’ and many links including to the brave
Chris Saltrese, Duncan Campbell and other worthies, including some sadly
innocents deceased through the ‘Whores Of Operations Ore & Avalanche’.

http://www.inquisition21.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=91

http://www.inquisition21.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=15&MMN_position=16:16

ivan August 6, 2013 at 21:27

Reading through Fed_Up’s posts again I get the distinct impression that he
is batting for the status quo. In fact it is almost as if Mark Williams-Thomas
or one of his cronies are trying to defend their actions without drawing
attention to themselves posting.

Anna
Raccoon August 7, 2013 at 03:55

The thought crossed my mind too. It was the response to my ‘what did you
have for breakfast’ that did it, it was ‘tabloidesque’ rather than the
measured response of a policeman.

Paul August 7, 2013 at 13:46

And the “thousands of images” …. there simply aren’t thousands of
images. It’s hyperbole.

Ho Hum August 6, 2013 at 20:17

@ Margaret Jervis August 6, 2013 at 19:27

Thank you for the original article and the follow up. It’s good to be
reminded just how mendacious our moral authoritarians can be in their pursuit
of whatever righteousness they wish to impose on everyone else, even where the
aim seems to be unquestionably good, to the extent that they will justify to
themselves and others, without any apparent qualm, any sort of dubious
practices if the ‘end justifies the means’

As an aside, the Flannery O’Connor quote is about as good an explanation of
Tony Blair as I have ever read

Moor
Larkin August 6, 2013 at 21:48

@ about as good an explanation of Tony Blair as I have ever read
@
What Blair might have done next, if things had been different.

STRIKE ON PORN KINGS
Tony Blair and George Bush are to lead a global
crusade against the internet perverts who peddle child porn.

The new initiative comes after the News of the World launched a campaign
against the internet barons who allow paedophiles to post horrendous images
of child abuse on the Net. The Prime Minister and the President sealed the
deal during late night talks over dinner at Camp David at the end of their
two-day summit………… The demands drawn up by leading children’s organisations
– National Children’s Homes, Childline and the NSPCC – include measures to
ensure that all internet users are clearly identified and closer supervision
of chatrooms.

Mr Blair raised the question of Internet child porn during dinner with
President Bush. He told the President he was determined to take a lead in
the global battle against internet porn after Operation Wonderland, a
two-year investigation which uncovered the true shocking extent of
paedophilia online.

Under the combined US/British operation, National Crime Squad detectives
will work alongside US agents. Extra cash will be committed by both sides to
lead the joint operation. After the deal was struck, the two men pledged to
forge a “high-tech anti-crime union” against internet sex crime. Mr Blair
told Mr Bush the co-operation between British detectives and US Federal
agents in Operation Wonderland must be a “starting point” for future
initiatives.
News of the World (UK) February 25, 2001
http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/were-coming-for-you.html

Ho Hum August 6, 2013 at 20:08

Please note, folks, as seen before, we have again reached the point where
replies are not associated with the original comments

Margaret Jervis
August 6, 2013 at 19:27

Well here I am in reply. Yes it’s me, my name and identity and
affiliations. What’s yours ‘fedup’?

Do I have an ‘agenda’ well, yes, if you want to put it like that – it’s
called truth and justice. What’s yours ‘fedup’?

Still I have have no reason to disbelieve your bona fides even while you
smear those of others, under cover.

But I do have an innate distrust of emotional manipulation -call me
old-fashioned -stiff upper lip or whatnot. On this I can do no better than
quote Flannery O’Connor – yes she was a catholic so you may think she had an
agenda fedup, but she was a fearless crusader for the truth
nevertheless::
“If the average Catholic reader could be tracked down
through the swamps of letters-to-the-editor and other places where he
momentarily reveals himself, he would be found to be something of a Manichean.
By separating nature and grace as much as possible, he has reduced his
conception of the supernatural to pious cliche and has become able to
recognize nature in literature in only two forms, the sentimental and the
obscene. He would seem to prefer the former, while being more of an authority
on the latter, but the similarity between the two generally escapes him. He
forgets that sentimentality is an excess, a distortion of sentiment, usually
in the direction of an overemphasis on innocence; and that innocence, whenever
it is overemphasized in the ordinary human condition, tends by some natural
law to become its opposite.”

But enough of good literature and back to bad graphics.

It is, as fedup suggests, a curious offence. “Child abuse stuff is freely
available on the net” – but almost no-one comes across it by accident, or is
“referred” to it against their will – or without their knowledge.

In this ideal world, the core point escapes mention.

The fact is that the software-package used by the police in these
investigations chugs through the memory of a suspect’s computer
indiscriminately. This programme is set up to “recognise” illegal images
stored in its own library, and, when it does, the person on whose computer
such an image is found can be charged. It has only recently come to light that
this software identifies all illegal images on a suspect’s computer, whether
seen or unseen, irrespective of whether they were viewed, irrespective of
whether they were selected or enlarged, irrespective of whether they were
seen, irrespective of whether they were solicited, and irrespective of whether
the suspect ever asked to visit the site in question. That image is still
“made”: criminality flows. An unenlarged level 1 illegal thumbnail on the
front page of site containing 99 other legal thumbnails still counts as
illegal image – even if the suspect neither selected the image or entered the
site.

One might have thought this worth mentioning. Similarly, readers might
welcome the information that other other judicatures have spared the innocent
by declining to criminalise the supposed “making” of unseen illegal images
that can flow only too easily from legitimate access to adult pornography
sites. As a historical footnote, our information is that the concept of
“making” was an afterthought. It made it into the pre-internet Protection of
Children Act 1978 via an antique concern that one did not have to “take” an
image to be culpable. It could be “made” – by sticking two bits of paper
together.

This idea has run riot in the digital age – where an illegal pictures are
now deemed “made” the moment the digital information is rendered in screen, or
elsewhere – as above, irrespective of whether that image was seen, wanted,
selected, noticed etc etc.

More astute judicatures are genuinely amazed at the concept. The idea of
criminality without deliberate viewing is an apparent abomination. Our
American correspondent writes, ” In the US the charges typically range — in
order of seriousness — from viewing, possessing, and manufacturing, to
distribution of “depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct”.
Initially I would have assumed that your “making” is analogous to our
“manufacturing”, but I have not seen any USA case in which a person “making”
an image in their cache was charged with manufacturing.”

No such luck here. Moving on

(i) Fed-Up takes offence at the reference to the “secretive” nature of
child pornography research. He is absolutely right. “Almost non-existent”
would be a better term. Whether that is because of secrecy is for the reader
to judge.

Responsible academic articles about how the pornographic sector of the
internet works, and how traffic is redirected from one site to another, and
how a user can be trapped in a redirection chain, is at an absolute premium.
Click fraud and traffic brokers are terms that are largely unknown. The severe
limitations on published research may arise from disinterest or distaste.

On the evidence, it seems likely that it also flows directly from secrecy.
In our experience, defence witnesses in this UK are content to close their
eyes to the actuality of what “comes through the door” from the adult web.
Experience shows that as a rule they are not prepared to look at examples of
illegal CP imagery on mainstream sites – for fear it may incriminate them.
They are similarly not prepared to investigate the results of clicking on
mainstream images of adult porn for fear that they may be redirected. To do so
might be construed as “searching for child porn”. This means that the
profession at large is unable to fulfill its role of providing expert advice
to the Court. Their hands are tied. Whether limited, or secret, or unnaturally
constrained, the courts are not well served. The standard terms used in the
original article, like redirections, may be familiar to the population at
large, but they do not feature in the expert reports we see. Even the concept
of unenlarged thumbnails is a stranger to expert reports. This universally
acknowledged phenomenon cannot be advanced by experts who have not been on the
net to see how adult porn sites work.

Yes, it is good to know that those who want to to “start” on researching
illegal images can refer to the papers published by the Copine project from
the University of Cork. This masterly work, from the 1990s, says that images
of child porn can be of different types. Some are worse than others. There are
five levels of seriousness. This is not quite the same as investigating how
internet technology works, and how it has been developed, so that sites can
send pictures in their thousand that they may not want and have not seen.
Doubtless this will come later. More serious researchers are referred to http://weis2010.econinfosec.org/papers/session2/weis2010_wondracek.pdf.
If anyone has further or better information, its receipt would be appreciated.
For the record, we mention that even the well worn assertion that the bulk of
internet traffic is pornography is an unwarranted guess.

(ii) Fed Up takes issue with the suggestion that the prosecution expert may
be police trained. This is true. Fed-Up’s own list of credentials, including
his IT certification, is commendable. We are not aware of a standardised
‘qualification’ nor can we see how it could come about on the present state of
knowledge.

(iii) Fed Up objects to “A defence ‘expert’ will be allowed to consider the
product, but not the source.”

Perhaps the meaning of this sentence escaped him. The static image of the
hard drive will be available to the expert. To do this he will have to sign a
Memorandum of Understanding protecting him from prosecution under Section 46
of the Act. He may allow the lawyers and even the defendant under some
circumstances to view the ‘images’. But only under supervision. What he won’t
be allowed to do is any independent research on the net, because then he might
be prosecuted.

The ‘other side’ if that is where fedup resides, may have this authority –
though whether this devolves to local police forces we don’t know. Certainly a
prosecution ‘expert’ who is on the same footing as the defence would be
similarly hamstrung. But what can be said is that the police, in casting their
software nets, go no further than fishing within the static pool of
‘unallocated clusters’ and suggestive website names and search terms that may
have no contextual relevance to the images.

(iii) intention
It is of course difficult to demonstrate intention from
deleted data strings – but the term ‘pop-up’ is a misnomer from olden times on
the net. These days there are pop-unders, pop-behinds, pre-caches and
drive-bys and other artifacts of internet evolution to consider in addition to
the menus of of unwanted thumbnails stored.
But for the record we have come
across police prosecution ‘experts’ who maintain that ‘pop-ups’ can’t be
implicated because they are too large of JPGs. This is false.

However, intention, when we are dealing with deleted images of unknown
provenance ( this is the major part of small-scale free-to-view prosecutions,
encrypted file-sharing among those with a criminal propensity for this stuff
is something else and if generally linked to the odious boastful chatrooms of
the sort that Philip Jenkins was able to research because he filtered out
images (no good for free-to-view porn – would be a total blackout) may be
inferred.

It may be inferred from search terms – even if they are ambiguous or may
have been automatically generated; the detritus of an url name without content
(ditto) and other unrelated matters.

Even so this is second stage. It occurs when the suspect defends the
charge. Suspects confronted in police interview with evidence are routinely
told in terms that they must have intentionally downloaded the images and some
people, be they ever so trusting in the police, relent. They must have done it
even if they can’t remember doing so and wouldn’t if they had known they were
doing it and so the police offer guidance – to counselling of choice. There
they may be persuaded that such was their addiction to legal porn surfing that
they may have entered a hypnotic or dissociated state where they didn’t
remember doing what they intended to do.

These are the people who may succumb to a caution or guilty plea -only to
realise later they’ve been conned. No easy way back from this though. Of
course there are those who are flagrantly guilty and may attempt to wing it
(and I’m not talking about the file sharers), but many genuinely guilty people
do own-up and often do want help, and not for sleep-walking.

Joe Public
August 7, 2013 at 11:05

Thank you for that additional explanatory information.

Does this mean that if someone prepared a microdot of an offending image,
included it within an e-mail & sent it to the Lord Chief Justice, and he
simply opened that e-mail, he’d be liable for prosecution?

Margaret
Jervis August 7, 2013 at 11:19

It’s an interesting thought. But I think you’re OK if it’s just an
email. It’s the wild west or more likely east of the free-to-view sites
with their indiscriminate menus and redirection that are the real risk.
But I can’t quantify what risk that is. On second thoughts though, it is
understood to be an email scam that gave rise to the farcical Operation
Himmel sting (re-named ‘hot air’) in Germany. I say farcical because that
was the verdict in Germany. Here its victims were not so blessed. I have a
German court ruling on Himmel somewhere. You may find references to its
rise and fall on the web in English.

mandrake August 8, 2013 at 02:57

In my case I imported a car from Japan via a specialist car sourcing
service. Silly thing to do but it was much cheaper although the process was
far more complicated than I realised.

I had to make certain annoying modifications to get to pass legally to
drive on UK roads.

One was to have proper ch**d safety seatbelts : i researched ‘ch**d
restraints” ch**d seatbelts” and so on, on the net to find info and garages
that could do the work.

A year later I was questioned for a good 2 hours by police on why I was
using the term ‘ch**d restraints”. An innocent everyday incident became a
demoralising factor in my case. I felt I was staring into the abyss and
inside a Kafka style nightmare. It was then I formulated suicide plans- why
put myself and family through this nightmare?. I survived, many don’t. And
many who don;t are entirely innocent.

Engineer August 6, 2013 at 17:54

Serious stuff.

One thing that worries me about all this is that we seem to have lost some
sense of proportion.

Nobody (beyond a few very sick people) regard child abuse or it’s portrayal
on the internet (or any other means) as in any way acceptable. Children are
not sexual beings, so cannot give informed consent. There is a slightly greyer
area between the age of puberty and the legal age at which they may be
regarded as sexual beings, but I think the vast majority of people would
regard it as our duty to protect the young as they grow up, come to terms with
and understand their sexuality, so would regard their appearing in sexual
images as extremely distateful at the very least. Most people, I think, do not
wish to see images of pubescent or pre-pubescent boys or girls for their
sexual gratification. I think we could all agree on that.

Adult sexuality is a different matter. It is a broad and complex subject,
and still one with many taboos. In some respects, we are still very Victorian
in our attitudes to sexuality, in that publicly acceptable prudishness is
often matched by private curiosity. Hence the success of books like ‘Fifty
Shades of Grey’ and readily accessible legal internet pornography. Provided
the activities portrayed are consensual and legal, we should probably regard
internet pornography as (mostly) harmless adult fun, a way for curious adults
to understand and explore sexuality, and an outlet for the frustrated. I do
recognise that there are problems – not all the portrayals are as consensual
as they should be, and some does not portray women with the respect they
deserve. That may well confuse those with little sexual maturity. However,
sexuality is something we are not totally comfortable with in modern society,
and the internet has it’s place in helping us to become more informed. Some
pornography (not all) can help in this.

There are, of course, limits. One of those limits, quite rightly, is the
portrayal of children in any sexual context, and laws made must be properly
enforced if they are to have beneficial effect for society as a whole – in
this case, the protection of children and young teenagers.

Perhaps we have our enforcement priorities a tad skewed. Maybe our first
priority should be the arrest of anyone making indecent images though not the
persecution of people taking innocent family snaps. It should be easy enough
to tell the difference between a pervert collecting images (or one intending
to use them for commercial gain), and the innocent family snap, though the
Julia Somerville case might suggest otherwise. Our second target should be
anyone uploading such images to the internet for commercial gain or to share
with others. Again, it should be easy enough to tell the difference between
mass uploadings and an innocent Facebook entry. Thirdly, we should target
those knowingly hosting such images on the web. I’m not expert enough to know
whether it’s possible for innocent hosting services to be hoodwinked by
criminals, so I’ll leave that one for those who do understand the internet and
it’s operation.

Then, lastly, there’s the computer owner who downloads images. It seems to
me that if someone downloads many images over a period of time, then they are
deliberately seeking them out. If someone has briefly accessed one or two
images, and bailed out, then they are unlikely to be seeking such images, and
unlikely to pose a menace to society. Spending many thousands of pounds of
public money prosecuting such people seems a waste of time and effort. Much
better to concentrate on finding the sources and taking them down. I recognise
that finding the sources isn’t easy, and they may well (given the global
nature of the web) be in different legal jurisdictions, but there is such a
thing as Interpol and diplomatic channels.

We recently heard that in one of the grooming ring cases, a public official
had decreed that the girls being groomed had ‘made a lifestyle choice’. The
girls were as young as 13. There seems to be a priority gulf between law
enforcement in this field, and enforcement in the field of internet
images.

I think we need to get our priorities in order. That needs doing at Home
Office level, or perhaps at Government/Parliament level. Public debate should
play it’s part, though it seems difficult to discuss this sort of matter in a
level-headed manner without witch-hunts developing instantly.

In summary, I don’t think it helps much to spend so much time and effort
targeting and prosecuting people who might happen to have one or two images on
their computer. If they have several hundred images, that may be a different
matter, especially if they are sharing those images with others. If they are
genuinely abusing children, such as the recently reported grooming rings, then
that most definitely IS a different matter – they should be prosecuted with
the full force of the law. Thirteen-year-olds do not make lifestyle choices to
be gang raped.

Jonathan Mason
August 6, 2013 at 16:22

The morals are obvious:

Don’t hire any prostitute, because she might turn out to be trafficked or
underage, even if she says otherwise.

Don’t go on Facebook or similar in case someone tells you to kill
yourself.

Don’t look at online pornography, because you might pick up a child-porn
virus.

Anna
Raccoon August 6, 2013 at 16:50

Don’t go on Twitter – you might offend someone.

Don’t pick up a lost and crying child – you might be abusing them.

Don’t ask a girl out for dinner – you might be being sexist.

Any more?

Ho Hum August 6, 2013 at 17:38

Don’t bother making any jokes – you might have to explain them
later

The
OSC August 6, 2013 at 13:27

The valuable and useful myths, still continue …

http://therealosc.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Bing

The OSC

Anna
Raccoon August 6, 2013 at 14:44

That link would be hilarious if this wasn’t such a serious subject. Eye
opening!

The
OSC August 6, 2013 at 15:02

We thank you.

The OSC

Margaret
Jervis August 6, 2013 at 21:35

Did you know that BingBox was originally a dodgy social networking
site aimed at the 13-24 year old group hosted from the Netherlands I
think. It became a bit of a magnet for online groomers. I don’t know the
connection between this and the microsoft edition but I see they have
closed down their own BingBox. Stranger than fiction!

The
OSC August 6, 2013 at 22:20

There are other such ironies about Bing vs Google, presently.

Thank you for the informative piece.

The OSC

rabbitaway August 6, 2013 at 13:09

Anna – you said that you had not heard of ‘landslide’ before, neither had I
and I didn’t know much about Operation Ore until I came across this on the BMJ
site

http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/30/operation-ore

BTW – I started looking after reading the post by ‘Totally Confused’ !

rabbitaway August 6, 2013 at 12:28

So – the point of the story is that people can be stitched up ! It is the
duty of the CPS to decide whether to prosecute, and, like I said, last night,
they are supposed to be impartial and not just looking to prosecute. Something
obviously goes wrong at the ‘evidential’ stage of the case, the CPS can only
deal with what it is fed. I was always under the impression that folk got
caught because they used credit cards on these sites. Surely the police
consider the possibilty of re direction etc etc and if they do not, the CPS
must. I am totally not internet savvy, I know nothing about these matters, but
I still find the article interesting. Maybe the voice on the recording alleged
to be Jimmy Savile had a point about NOT keeping a PC, there has and always
will be, the problem of planted ‘evidence’, a little like FALSE or
REDISCOVERED MEMORY I suppose

Paul August 6, 2013 at 18:41

They don’t bother looking for credit card misuse.

Even though it’s obvious. In Ore, for example, the supposed “Porn
viewers” would sign up for sites, one after the other (at $10-$20 a time).
But the odd thing is that none of them ever looked at the sites. You’d think
if you shelled out a few quid to access a porn site the first thing you
would do would be to go have a look surely ?

But no. Now, yes, maybe once, you could be disturbed while ‘viewing’. But
ten times in a row ? Isn’t that ever so indicative of someone trying to get
money out of a credit card ? (With Landslide you could charge them back to
cash)

You’d think the preponderance of people based in places like Indonesia
would give them a clue, but apparently not.

The problem is juries are stupid and believe ‘experts’ who say things
like ‘there’s no other way it could have got on the computer’.

They also go for manufacturing rather than viewing on the ludicrous
premise that in viewing an image on the PC you ‘manufacture’ a copy. Of
course, if you view anything you manufacture a copy on the back of your eye
– equally silly. The manufacturing was (obviously) designed for those who
are printing the stuff, not simply watching, but when there is PR, money and
promotion to be have the Police do not give a f**k how many people they fit
up. (They know they are doing it as well)

mandrake August 8, 2013 at 02:40

planted evidence ? If I was of such a mind I could easily send you an
innocent photos which had a 100 ‘child porn’ pics embedded within it and you
would never ever know.

I could send you a virus that implanted pics in the furtherest corner of
your computer.

Like Savile I no longer own a computer-I use internet shops

suspicious August 6, 2013 at 12:24

I find your blog very interesting Anna and come here on a regular basis,
since it is always an informative and entertaining read. The comments only
serve to add to it, rather than distract from it. Please keep up the hard
work!

My opinion is that this whole Savile saga, including Operation Ore, Yewtree
and whatever else the establishment drag up, has been manufactured on purpose
to bring about the New World Order, Globalisation, The One World Government,
or whatever you want to call it, with some secretive group such as the
Bilderbergers wholly in charge. CallmeDave seems to be ‘one of them.’

I note with interest that Milliband is going down in the popularity stakes.
A new leader for the labour party will almost certainly be voted in soon.
Since Ed Balls was invited to the last Bilderberger meeting and seems to be
enjoying a surge in popularity in the MSM, my money’s on him. I think they
have chosen him already, with little say from the rest of us. I can’t be the
only one who has noticed that a new world leader never comes to pass, unless
he/she has been vetted by the secretive group.

And we think we live in a democracy?

TotallyConfused
August 6, 2013 at 11:32

Try and talk about this with the FAMILIES who survived Operation Ore.
(built on a mountain of lies)
http://www.obu-investigators.com/media/showphoto.php/photo/33/cat/501
The
first woman to speak out. We will ignore the suicides of those
cleared.
TC

Ho Hum August 6, 2013 at 10:44

Following up on Fed_Up’s points, fairly valid as they are, if we look at
other techies’ take on this, amongst all the tin foil hat stuff and some plain
rubbish, there is a little reasonably credible comment to be found here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/05/iwf_business_sites_hacked_to_host_images/

Some of the conjecture as to why this is appearing now is interesting, and
not too dissimilar from comments here.

Some of the ways that innocent hardware installations can be infiltrated
are interesting, but if you read any of the stuff from the Black Hat USA 2013,
that just seems to be chickenfeed in comparison to what seriously real baddies
can probably do.

Otherwise, while not too well expressed, someone also raises the issue of
the ‘strict liability’ pertaining to the relevant legislation. Basically, the
law as written allows no-one any defence. There seems to be mission creep in
that regard, as more of our recent law, probably not unsurprisingly in the
personal relationships fields, is being written in that form, It’s almost as
if there were some group in the DoJ and the Home Office, where much of it
seems to emanate from, saying ‘if we don’t like you, we’ll make sure we can
get you’. Anyway, when the law is written in ‘strict liability’ format, it’s
got a very different intent from that shown in the guidelines quoted, as
complemented by the developments in case law re mens rea mentioned above,
which seem to be (are?) designed to allow prosecution at the CPS’ ‘whim’. I
can’t see that ending up with a consistent approach to who will, and who will
not be prosecuted. You could almost argue that it’s crafted in such a way as
to deliberately circumvent the fundamental principle that citizens should know
what acts are and which are not legal

Looking longer term, the implications of the broadening application of the
latter principle, as well as how it might be applied to in the technical field
by the more ignorant of our legislators, or as driven by those with an agenda,
is probably the most worrying. Not that the impact will be felt now. Think on
5 to 10 years down the road

Moor
Larkin August 6, 2013 at 11:15

@ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/05/iwf_business_sites_hacked_to_host_images/
@

Difficult to see where profit lies in this. It sounds more like
anarchists having a craic.
I half-picked up a prog on Radio Five with
Nicky Campbell interviewing officers from IFAW/CEOPS and they were earnestly
describing their personal traumas of looking at this stuff and classifying
it and how they tried to be objective but felt it important to remain upset
to keep them in touch with their “humanity”. It all sounded dreadful
touchy-feely stuff and seemed to have no bearing whatsoever on the capture
of whoever was MAKING this stuff. I have read that much of the most
offensive stuff emanates from the Wild East.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/15/science/physical/15FACE.shtml
“Dr.
John Philip Jenkins, a professor of history at Penn State and author of
“Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet,” said child
pornography photos were unlikely to lead investigators to the children
involved. A child victim’s identity, he said, “is only likely to come to
light if the child comes up in an abuse case.” Many of the images, he added,
now flow from the former Soviet Union, where lax enforcement allowed the
trade to flourish. There, he said “police corruption is going to limit the
effectiveness of any attempt to use this technology” successfully.

Ian B August 6, 2013 at 11:35

I wish I could remember who it was specifically, but not so long ago
one of the senior police figures described how the videos have “haunting
music” and sound so terrible “they’ve had to soundproof the doors”.
Because apparently police training doesn’t involve how to use a volume
control on your PC speakers.

Anna
Raccoon August 6, 2013 at
11:47

Do you mean haunting music like the latest Red Cross advert ‘I am a
crisis’? All hoodies with alsatians and promise of instant armageddon –
unless you send £2 a month of course….

Chris August 6, 2013 at 17:46

Beware of Nicholas Andrew Argyll Campbell – he’s sold what soul he
had to his mate/co-presenter Mark Williams-Thomas

The one-time “Radio One Intellectual” and Top Of The Pops host is
prepared to sell everyone and everything down the river in order to
stay “relevant” and stay on the box – and is about as popular as
Gambaccini amongst his former colleagues, most of whom half-expect a
knife in the back as he seeks to endear himself to his new pals.

Ian B August 6, 2013 at 09:47

The funny thing is this. I’m an “adult webmaster” (I draw rude cartoons). I
run a paysite. I’ve spent the past decade and a half routinely wandering
around these terrible places on the internets, getting trapped in pop-up hell
(doesn’t happen much these days, that was very Web 1.0) and even have an
affiliate program or two, and I’ve never seen any child
pornography.

The sum total of such is a set or two posted to the Usenet. On the web?
Bugger all. Am I just very lucky, or is somebody conjuring up a panic out of
thin air? I think we have a right to know.

I mean. I’ve seen men splaying their anuses, a man fucked to death by a
horse, girls eating poo, all sorts. But no kiddies. Not a solitary infant. Not
one.

And this baffles me-

“In a rare piece of available research carried out into legal pornography
sites it was found that these problems were endemic to the subject matter –
and used as a fraudulent means of skimming income on a massive scale by
claiming a few cents off every ‘hit’ to a commercial site and maximising the
receipts by circular means.”

I read the report. So far as I can tell, Ms Jervis is just describing
affiliate marketing here, in which people who run ads or host links get paid a
proportion by the content owner of every sale. I am having trouble seeing what
is wrong with saying “If you send me a visitor who converts, I’ll give you a
percentage”.

And here’s a general point; yes, the adult promotional web can be a
minefield. But a large part of the reason for that is the inability to promote
via more mainstream advertising. Once you’re considered “adult” (like my fun
raunchy sci-fi comics) you’re on your own. Hence, the adult industry has
created its own ecosystem. Honestly, speaking personally, I’d like to
advertise on the Daily Telegraph or somewhere like that to people who aren’t
specifically porno-fans but might like a rude comic to read. But I can’t.
Because of the sexual hysteria that continues to engulf our society, which
means that anything adult has to be kept away form decent folks otherwise, I
dunno, civilisation will collapse apparently.

And,

Having seeen bugger all kiddie porn myself, despite being an eeeevil
pornmonger who hangs around the disereputable underbelly of the internets, I
am highly, highly suspicious of what all this content the IWF are finding is,
and who is reporting it. You see, I think what is happening is that people are
looking at a picture and saying, “hmmm, she looks underage to me” and
presuming it is. Just like when you get to a certain age and police officers
all look about twelve. I believe that the chance of anyone “accidentally”
finding genuine child porn is ludicrously low. But I think there are a lot of
people who are porno-naive, and they see a site that mentions “teens” or
“barely legal” and, unaware that those are euphemisms for “18 and 19 year
olds” believe they’re seeing child pornography. That’s what I think.

Moor
Larkin August 6, 2013 at 10:34

@Ian B
Your comment has the ring-of-truth to my experience. I too have
never come across pre-pubescents in this form of imagery even in thumbnail.
The only image in this way that I an remember seeing on a google-search once
was what looked like a very young man/boy engaged in fornication with a
clearly much older woman, but I quickly clicked away – just in case. That
was some years ago when I first realised quite what was available on the
web… I was quite amazed and naturally curious.

Back when I had a dial-up modem my line was captured somehow by an
organisation that claimed I had clicked to accept their control of my line
and they were blocking all my internet access until I paid my bill. I also
got two charges on my then-BT bill for £30-plus for a call lasting seconds.
I complained to ICTIS about all these matters and they wrote back to me and
said there was nothing they could do and it was my problem. I ended up
paying the BT-bill because they threatened to cut me off if I didn’t, but
solved the problem for the future by having a Premium Line Block put on my
telephone line.

The company that was blocking my internet access turned out to be based
in Leeds! After reading up a little on another computer about this scam I
found a number to phone and after a bit of bluster from them about my being
obliged to pay them their £50, I used the tactic the forums had advised and
told them that my under-age daughter had in fact inadvertently clicked on
their pop-up and I would report them to the police for allowing her access
to their filth……. They back-pedalled immediately and said that my ISP (which
they controlled by this time) would be barred from their sites. I said
“Bloody good! I have no wish to see your filth anyway!” ……. I did wonder if
nothing would then change and I had been further shafted but to my relief,
the next day, the internet block was gone.

Since going over to broadband and using all the google and such-like
pop-up blockers I have had no troubles at all. I can guess new users can
still be unaware of the pop-up peril however.

Paul August 6, 2013 at 11:08

Ian, I think you are entirely correct. There are probably hundreds of
sites claiming to be “teens” which of course includes legal ages. If I ever
look at my spam there’s quite a few.

Where I think you are wrong is thinking they are naive. I think they know
exactly what they are doing, and they are being malicious and lazy. It is
empire building.

Ian B August 6, 2013 at 11:13

Paul, I was really referring to ordinary people who report imaginary
child porn to the IWF, police etc. There are clearly many ordinary people
in our society who think they have seen it, most of whom seem to be women
with no other experience of porn, who have either blundered into some on
the web or, even worse, their DS or DD or DH has been caught with it, and
they come to a judgement that it is “child porn” when it isn’t.

I don’t want to get into the motives of the personalities in the Abuse
Industry, because Anna would have to bar me from the site for writing an
entire comment consisting of nothing but the most grotesque
expletives.

Woman on a
Raft August 6, 2013 at 12:23

I think I blundered in to some once, but it was a malicious link –
sometime late last year, I think.

I was checking details for Ann Cryer, the ex-MP who was protesting
about forced marriage and grooming gangs not being taken seriously by
West Yorkshire police years before the current cases. She has enemies
and I suppose it was these who hacked her website and replaced links. I
was not watching out carefully enough, so clicked through and found I
was being offered material which I would not have wanted. Rookie error,
I suppose, but from the way the page attempted to capture me, I’m
guessing this was planted specifically to discredit Cryer. There may not
have been any actual material beyond one embarrassing screen’s worth,
but I didn’t hang around to find out. I think the hacker’s purpose was
to deter people from reading Cryer, using pornography to hamper freedom
of expression. The material I saw would fit with your assertion, however
it would be reasonable to think it was pornography based around
under-age models since that is what it presented itself as.

What Fed-Up fails to grasp is that being a lady of a certain age and
very unlikely to be into KP will not help me at all. The damage is done
long before he is given anything to pontificate about. If – or perhaps
when – I am arrested on suspicion of possession of unlawful images,
that’s the fix. An arrest is disclosable regardless of whether I’m
eventually charged and then there is the grindingly-slow rate of
investigation which produces months of inconvenience while computers are
impounded and fishing trips undertaken so the police can guard their
backs in case they have to defend a claim for wrongful arrest. I’m also
quite likely to be convicted if we are now saying that Ovenden’s
pictures are indecent because I have a number of them and also some of
the early photographs from Victorian artists on which Ovenden’s work can
be read as a post-modern commentary.

If the police are really determined to get me, they can probably go
back through umpteen decades of film photography, including the
negatives which didn’t work out, and there is bound to be something
incriminating in there. I think I’ve got some naked toddlers on the
beach in 1982.

Ian B
August 6, 2013 at 12:30

WOAR-

Obviously what I said above wouldn’t apply to a malcious hacking.
There certainly is *some* child pornography in existence. What I was
challenging is the idea that there are signficiant quantities of it
floating around the adult web.

I agree with your comment in general. What Fed_Up hasn’t addressed
is that the process is the punishment. An acquittal is a pyrrhic
victory after the process you describe, and the taint will never go
away.

mandrake August 8, 2013 at 02:29

Ian B you need to be realistic as does everyone who uses the
internet.

it is like leaving the doors of your house and all your windows wide open
24 hours of the day , 7 days of the week.

It is an invitation to anyone to throw something illegal, something
stolen inside your front door- something that the police can trace to your
house and bust you for.

Joe Public August 6, 2013 at 09:17

Journalist & Computer Forensics Investigator Duncan Campbell
investigated allegations from Operation Ore. [Which had striking similarities
with the Yewtree farce – whereby the police & MSN whipped up public
opinion on a salacious & emotive subject.] By the time of Campbell’s
intervention, the repercussions of public hatred were far worse than anything
from Yewtree. There were a number of suicides:

“In 2002, the UK police were given a list containing the names of over
seven-thousand British citizens suspected of accessing child pornography. The
evidence was provided by the FBI and had been seized following the trial of
two Texas-based pornographers operating a website, Landslide Inc. Thousands
were arrested and charged in Britain, including high-profile musicians, Pete
Townshend and Robert Del Naja. The evidence, however, was seriously
flawed. Campbell was employed to analyse the computers of suspected
offenders and found that most were guilty of little more than accessing legal
pornography, or were victims of credit card fraud.”

For further reading, I recommend

http://www.duncancampbell.org/content/operation-ore

Paul August 6, 2013 at 11:04

Indeed, the Police claimed there was no credit card fraud, which means
they either lied or couldn’t be bothered to look for it. It was laughably
obvious, it didn’t require technical skills to find it just basic common
sense. The Police used Ore for empire building. Yewtree is the same.

Landslide Inc. wasn’t a porn website either, it was a gateway with
pay-to-enter locks.

Anna
Raccoon August 6, 2013 at 11:14

Er, excuse me Mister, what’s ‘Landslide’ please, haven’t heard that one
before?

Ian B August 6, 2013 at 11:31

Landslide were the AVS company transformed by a zealous DA and the
FBI into a “child porn ring”, from which Operation Ore got their list of
imaginary paedos. AVS companies were a fashion in adult during Web 1.0,
in which the AVS- “adult verification service” did the billing and the
webmasters provided them with galleries, which were generally just a
basic promotional gallery seeking an upsell. I tried it myself for
promotion, but it all seemed a bit shit and seedy and did’t get me any
sales anyway, so didn’t pursue it.

So, the AVS was doing the billing, and the webmasters provided the
content. This was in the early days of the web when responsibility for
legality of content was still a matter of debate. So, some Russian
webmasters uplodaded a few underage galleries to Landslide’s system, the
owner notified the FBI, the FBI told him they were outside US
jurisdiction but keep them informed… and then a crusadin’ DA decided she
wanted a big child porn takedown for re-election, and combined with the
same FBI with whom the owner had been cooperating to do that most
infamous American invention, the “raid”.

At this point, everyone who had ever been billed by Landslide (mostly
looking for adult porn) instantly became a paedo in the eyes of the law,
and hence the Operation Ore fiasco. Landslide’s boss was sent to jail
for about 1000 years and has been rotting there ever since.

Anna
Raccoon August 6, 2013 at
11:44

Thank you Ian. All I can say is Jesus wept! I knew of Operation
Ore, but didn’t really know the background. So what you’re saying is
it wasn’t really super sleuthing – but the web site owner handing
him/herself over on a plate?

The hare
August 6, 2013 at 11:56

I have it on very good authority that some of landslides credit
card sales that where in the database where for CDs purchased from a
web based record store.

Ian B
August 6, 2013 at 11:57

Anna-

Well basically yes. It was a long story and my above account misses
some details because I’m too lazy to look them up, but that’s the jist
of it, it was a stitch-up. Hence, you may remember at the time news
reports talking of how this “child porn ring” was so blase as to be
openly advertising. That was because they weren’t actually a “child
porn ring” and thought they were just a normal adult billing
company.

There is a lot going on during this moral panic which, at some
future time when calmer heads have returned, will be looked back on
with a horrified, “how could that happen?!”, I think.

The USA has a major structural problem caused by (a) elected
officials who need “big splash” cases to get re-elected and (b) a
salvationist policing approach defined during the Progressive Era, one
which we have now sadly imported. The result is that you get DAs
prowling around looking for Big Evils to bring down. As another
example, Janet Reno famously made her name prosecuting ludicrous
Satanic Ritual Abuse cases.

mandrake
August 8, 2013 at 02:25

Duncan Campbell also spoke at the House of Lords as did the empire
building cop that oversaw Ore. The Lords expressed their worries about the
possibility of so many innocents being swept up in the hysteria.

I can tell you now: it isn’t just being charged for a crime that is the
problem- it’s the total disconnect and savage way you are treated by the
media, teh police and the courts.
I had to keep getting my case (or my
lawyers did) bumped up to a higher court as my lawyers advised magistrates
were terrified of going against the police in these cases.

Police lied during Operation Ore and claimed there was no credit card
fraud when many who were charged had the same credit card charge debited
to their card up to ten times a day.

And let this be a warning to all readers on here (and NEVER NEVER put
your freedom in the hands of so-called ‘experts like Fed-Up who must have
sinister reasons to be flaming on here) : DO NOT EVER USE A CREDIT CARD ON
THE INTERNET FOR ANY PURCHASE AT ANY TIME NO MATTER HOW RESPECTABLE THE
SELLER IS. That is what happened to me. It cost me my house and
family.

Joe Public
August 6, 2013 at 15:20

The other issue with Ore / Landslide, is that thousands of credit card
details were obtained by criminals, who jhad ‘mates’ with servers.

They then ‘bought’ £hundreds of thousands access and shared the
‘revenue’.

The first the victims knew, was an entry on their credit card bill. The
second, was the 04:00 knock on their door.

Duncan Campbell proved that in the vast majority of cases, the ‘CC
victims’ had either not visited the sites they were supposed to have paid
for, or, closed an offending page within about a minute of discovering its
content. Not the plausible actions of a KP punter.

Moor
Larkin August 6, 2013 at 08:56

I imagine that the authorities involved will also feel free to range far
and wide through the person’s hard drive, checking through their emails and
such-like, seeing who they know, what those people have said, a complete
opening-up of the can of worms that can constitute the life of a person. In
the course of the quite proper inquiries by the authorities I would guess it
would seem perfectly reasonable for the authorities to begin to contact all of
those friends and contacts – who knows what other evil is lurking out there?
Suddenly the person whose computer is now the subject of dissection is going
to find they have very few friends.

Fed_Up August 6, 2013 at 09:20

No Moor Larkin…it ISN’T like that at all, but I get the distinct
impression that there is little interest in what it really is like.
It’s
ironic, you have the article author claiming that the Police pre-judge these
matters, yet the commentators here demonstrate that they are more than happy
to pre-judge the Police. The truth, which I’m sure is going to be somewhere
in between, counts for very little….

Moor Larkin August 6, 2013 at 09:45

@ The truth, which I’m sure is going to be somewhere in between, counts
for very little…. @

You gave me the impression in your impressive opening comment that you
KNEW the truth.
Now it is somewhere in between?
In between the devil
and deep blue sea perhaps.

Fed_Up
August 6, 2013 at 10:04

Who knows where the truth is, looks like there is little thirst to
find out or discuss it. You can only get to the truth once you have
listened to their case, the original article is riddled with
inaccuracies, but that doesn’t mean to say the author of the piece
hasn’t got any valid points or legit concerns that I haven’t previously
considered. That’s where the truth will be found…but doesn’t look like
we’ll get anywhere near it. I don’t have a problem with anyone being
ignorant of the issues, but seemingly wanted to maintain their ignorance
by focussing on minor mistakes not connected to the central issue is a
bit galling….

Moor Larkin August 6, 2013 at 10:11

@fed-up
You need to be patient and wait for the author to
respond. She seemed to know what she was talking about. You sounded as
if you did too. The rest of us can only speak as we find.

Anna Raccoon August 6, 2013 at 10:24

Seconded!

She has gone to work and will be on-line later.

Fed_Up August
8, 2013 at 09:56

“Given that the only evidence that the public get to see has
been manipulated – by the media, by charities, by the police –
then surely you can understand that the public are becoming
sceptical as to the scale of the problem.”

I was completely unaware of the degree of scepticism, TBH…am
struggling to come to terms with it. It just doesn’t reflect my
experience at all.
Saville enquiry? Waste of time and money in
my own personal opinion, but then the ALLEGED victims will say
otherwise. The media-fanned allegations of “BBC Cover Up” make it
virtually impossible for Law Enforcement to ignore the
allegations. Op Ore? I can’t judge on the info out there on blogs,
will reserve judgement until/if public enquiry gives access to all
sides of the story. I didn’t know anything of the Ovendon case
until this morning!

Ummm…am completely stumped here, I won’t reveal anything
sensitive or confidential, anonymously or otherwise. I am at a
loss to know what I can say to convey the scale of the problem
without breaching confidences (which I will NEVER do). I’ll have a
go….

In terms of the images available. Understand that LE does NOT
decide what constitutes an illegal image, only a court can do
that. LE put forward images/movies that they believe are IIOC, the
OIC, prosecution, defence, Judge (and occasionally jury) all get
the same opportunity to confirm/refute the assertion that the
movies/images are IIOC. My experience is that defence will (quite
rightly) robustly challenge where there is any doubt about age of
person in the image. Therefore, we only adduce images/movies where
there is NO DOUBT that the individuals are children. In most cases
it is obvious, that they are young children. The images range from
babies, infants etc being raped to young teen girls posing
erotically.

Bearing in mind the above, I will just link to this article
from just a couple of weeks ago without further comment.
http://bit.ly/13ZcTjj

Moor Larkin August 8, 2013 at 10:04

@ The media-fanned allegations of “BBC Cover Up” make it
virtually impossible for Law Enforcement to ignore the
allegations. @
The media-fanner being an ex-policeman of
course is irrelevant………

“Most people seem to believe that the process of the stories
about Jimmy Savile breaking into the mainstream press is a tale
of brave Investigative Journalists battling against the
oppressive barriers of the BBC. But it turns out that this is
not really the case. Not only was the process of revealing
Savile to be a paedophile nothing of the sort, it was actually a
Conspiracy!! It’s okay – no need for Tin hats, it was a good
Conspiracy. I don’t need to make the case for this, the partners
in this are quite happy to tell you all about it themselves.
‘Peter Watt, NSPCC Director of Child Protection Advice &
Awareness, discusses his role working alongside police on the
report into allegations of sexual abuse made against Jimmy
Savile: I first became involved in Operation Yewtree when ACPO
and ITV contacted the NSPCC in October last year. This was in
advance of the airing of the documentary “Exposure – The Other
Side of Jimmy Savile”. ‘ So, all those of you who thought this
was a brave piece of journalism, take a seat at the back of the
class. All the important people in the room, step forward to the
front. All those of you who thought Operation Yewtree began on
October 9th like the Metropolitan Police told us, had best leave
the room because you’re only going to be a bloody
nuisance.”
http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/is-that-tin-hat.html

Margaret
Jervis August 8, 2013 at
10:22

Thank you for that. Hideous. But where is the mention of
free-to-view sites that we are concerned with? I’ve already
distinguished the chat-rooms and encrypted files sharers.

And on another point fed-up if you want (others) to see how
intention may be inferred see http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2007/2976.html.
And in a later case it was held that search terms were
admissible as bad character evidence to support intention. We
had a case where the prosecution wanted to adduce a couple of
automatically generated suggestive search terms at trial without
any images at all – in support of a historic allegation of
sexual assault completely unrelated in time and place. And while
we on this topic, you may remember that the Ore evidence was not
the appalling images you have to trawl through. It was was
evidence of credit card transactions to suggestively named
websites. These sites – as happens with this material – had
mostly disappeared in a puff of smoke. And we may never know
what was on them, if anything at all. But linking a fraudulent
credit-card transaction to a suggestively named site is very
useful to the criminally minded. Because it stops the victims
from complaining.

Moor Larkin August 8, 2013 at 10:34

@ linking a fraudulent credit-card transaction to a
suggestively named site is very useful to the criminally
minded. Because it stops the victims from complaining.
@
There used to be a neat Urban Legend from the past, when
mail-order was the way to get “dirty pictures”. The story went
that if you changed your mind and returned the goods and asked
for a refund (as advertised – to meet mail order regulations)
you would get by return a cheque with the most unedifying
company name printed on it, such that the mug-punter would be
too embarrassed to pay it into his local bank and no longer
had the “dirty pictures” either……….

Margaret Jervis August 8, 2013 at 10:47

Legend? You may be on to something there.

Margaret
Jervis August 8, 2013 at
10:43

My last post was intended as a response to Fed-up’s link http://bit.ly/13ZcTjj (see above Moor’s
intervening comment) for the avoidance of doubt.

Fed_Up August 8, 2013 at 11:45

” But where is the mention of free-to-view sites that we
are concerned with? I’ve already distinguished the chat-rooms
and encrypted files sharers.”

Well, it is very much a cases of cases involved the web as
the vector for IIOC are massively in the minority, in my
experience. Ian B makes the point that IIOC on the web is very
rare. I can only think of one case where the intention was
both denied and could not be established – the guy was not
charged/cautioned. You have a situation where men found with
IIOC on computer claiming that they had no idea how the images
got there (as most suspects do). You then find that despite
extensive efforts you can find no expert who can confirm that
this is likely or happened. Is that a fair summation of the
facts?

“And on another point fed-up if you want (others) to see
how intentions may be inferred see http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2007/2976.html.
And in a later case it was held that search terms were
admissible as bad character evidence to support
intention.”

Umm…so LE followed the correct legal procedures and their
actions were later found to be sound in an appeal? The court
rule in the prosecutions favour, yet your contention is that
it is LE forensic investigators who are the problem? Not sure
I follow your point here, your tone is that LE computer crime
labs are dodgy, but you put forward cases where the contrary
is shown????

“We had a case where the prosecution wanted to adduce a
couple of automatically generated suggestive search terms at
trial without any images at all – in support of a historic
allegation of sexual assault completely unrelated in time and
place.

So the correct procedures were again followed? Was it, by
any chance, the prosecutions case that the “suggestive search
terms” were not automatically generated but actually input by
the suspect and thus extremely relevant to the case?

“And while we on this topic, you may remember that the Ore
evidence was not the appalling images you have to trawl
through. It was was evidence of credit card transactions to
suggestively named websites.”

Oh rats! I didn’t realise that your original article was
about events from 15 years ago, events that I have no
knowledge of. I think we have been at cross purposes here.

Margaret Jervis August 8, 2013 at 12:16

Oh dear. It’s almost impossible to respond to such an
excitable techie as fedup on his day off. But the Courts are
beholden to LE and the experts in these matters. For the
record the prosecution withdrew their evidence on the search
terms when it was demonstrated that they were, in all
probability on the evidence, automatic. That bit cost the
client a few grand. And no returns either for any of his
costs when he was acquitted on the substantive charge by the
jury. The defendant’s costs order has been abolished by
statute. It is reward enough to clear your name. If it is
‘cleared’ in practice.

But I’m grateful that you use the term ‘LE’. It now
includes the NSPCC and who knows who as ‘front line
investigators’. Plod has had his chance and been found
wanting. We need the professionals!

Paul August 6, 2013 at 11:02

They do prejudge the matter. Police “Child Protection” units exist, as
does much of Child Protection to create their own little empires.
“Experts” who do not come to the right conclusions do not get used again.
The Police will often lose inconvenient evidence, disclosure is a
notorious joke. I know of someone who was let out of prison because a
document was discovered through a mixture of hard work and sheer dumb luck
(written by the Police investigating) stating “if the defence get hold of
documents A,B and C we have no case”. Needless to say neither that nor A,B
or C were disclosed, and nothing ever happens to Police who behave like
this.

The basic problem is Police are ‘scored’ by successful prosecutions,
not being accurate. This makes them behave like American Prosecutors.

It is a matter of seconds to create an image which can be downloaded
into the cache which you don’t know is there. The simplest way is to embed
an image into a web page, and resize it to 1×1 pixel. It looks like a full
stop, or a mark on the screen. But it will download the whole image. Some
browsers, attempting to be helpful, preload links further on so that if
you click on them the page loads faster.

The definition of ‘child porn’ is also extremely loose and has been
used for American stuff featuring girls who are demonstrably in their 20s
dressed up in school uniforms. Or Julia Somerville.

Duncan
Disorderly August 6, 2013 at
11:33

You may be interested in this:
http://artist-on-trial.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/what-her-majestys-attorney-general_15.html
“Her
interview together with Emily Ovenden in the documentary “For the Sake
of the Children,” showed throughout the U.K., confirms her earlier
statements. Only in 2009, after the police came knocking yet again, did
Mr. Hewes change her mind and decide that she shouldn’t have been
photographed. No one pressured Maud Hewes to defend Graham Ovenden in
the 1990s. To the contrary, she was under pressure to denounce Mr.
Ovenden for 20 years.

At Mr. Ovenden’s trial, police testified that they “lost” Ms. Hewes’s
two sworn statements to the police in 1993 that would have put the lie
to at least three of the charges and undermined two other charges
related to another model. Conveniently, the police and Ms. Hewes
testified that although they knew she had been supportive of Mr.
Ovenden, they didn’t remember the specifics of what she said, and thus
her statements that are reprinted here from secondary sources were
inadmissible as evidence. Judge Cottle ruled that there was no harm and
no foul.”

If that is true, that is an extraordinary glimpse inside the Criminal
Justice System sausage factory.

Paul August 7, 2013 at 13:39

I’m not ‘prejudging’ the Police, I (anyway) am operating from direct
knowledge.

Yes, they yatter on about how fair, straight and honest they are, it’s
b/s.

mandrake August 8, 2013 at 02:17

We should all question why Fed_Up is posting this stuff.

It bears no relation to reality. You all know anecdotally that what I say
is true and what Fed_Up says is basically bullshit. I can tell you now : get
hauled into court (after a police raid that destroys your sanity and family
life-terrifies your children) : my neighbours thought a terrorists cell was
being busted- the cops at the station look at you and treat you like a
serial killer has been caught.

The attempts to mentally destroy you begin with the raid and just get
worse. get a normal lawyer and it’s like they are part of the police- they
have little sympathy. You have to get the top and most experienced. All that
will change now that legal aid is being stripped.

Fed_Up August 6, 2013 at 08:53

Whoops!

The source of the piece is right there! Sorry Anna, I obviously was
directing my criticism in the wrong direction!!!!

Fat Steve August 6, 2013 at 08:57

Well ‘fed up; for all your academic brilliance it appears you can jump to
(wrong) conclusions

Fed_Up August 6, 2013 at 09:03

Well, I was a bit busy dealing with all the legal inaccuracies in the
piece..would have hoped someone from the legal profession would have
spotted them, they are obvious, right?

Fat Steve
August 6, 2013 at 09:08

In fairness though ‘fed up’ you do make some hugely good legal points
and I do sense real commitment by you to your profession and a genuine
wish for just outcomes in these cases. As in many things just one small
mistake on detail can weaken an otherwise sound argument.

Fed_Up
August 6, 2013 at 09:13

Thanks. I hope that the “one small mistake” principle will be applied
to the main article, as it is riddled with inaccuracies.

Anna
Raccoon August 6, 2013 at 09:34

“it appears you can jump”
Even with several pellets in his foot. I
have to admit I am impressed….

Fed_Up
August 6, 2013 at 09:43

Well, I think everyone can see how you are swerving – using a small
error (committed, spotted and corrected by me) to avoid actually
engaging in the substantive issues. No, absolutely no agenda here at
all….

Anna
Raccoon August 6, 2013 at
09:48

Why on earth would you accuse me of ‘swerving’ – I know nothing
whatsoever about the issues Margaret raised – you really want me to
‘engage in a substantive issue’ about which I know zilch?

Anna
Raccoon August 6, 2013 at 09:02

Incidents of shotgun pellets in the foot should be logged in the health
and safety records, available on request from the bar staff.

Fed_Up August 6, 2013 at 09:05

Ah, thus CONTENT of my post can be safely ignored….no hidden agenda
here….

Fat Steve
August 6, 2013 at 09:23

fed up I spotted the difference in style from Anna’s in the post
immediately —and I only got a little way into your (actually rather
good) comment before thinking if he can’t note the author of a piece is
this comment worth reading.? Yes I persevered and some of your points do
appear sound but I think you imagine all defence lawyers are better at
the law than they really are and so outcomes are bound to be just —-the
law is sometimes (often?) little more than a game played by lawyers with
peoples lives as the wager —-but I speculate if individuals such as
yourself and the author were put together rather than against each other
to address facts of a case outcomes would be better than they currently
appear to be

Fat Steve
August 6, 2013 at 09:32

Should have commented ‘…..all defence lawyers are better at the law
than they really are AND ALL POLICEMEN AND CPS ARE MINDFUL THAT ITS
PEOPLES LIVES THAT ARE AT STAKE.

mandrake
August 8, 2013 at 02:10

Piss-off fed_up.
As someone who was falsely accused of
possessing child porn, your posts are utter crap.

My defense cost me my house and family. I was found innocent when
the judge directed the jury to find me so. The mortgage I had to take
out on my house broke up the family and set me back financially about
25 years.

If I had taken the first lawyers advice I went to, I would be in
jail now. Their advice was to fight the case would be virtually
impossible. They were correct. That’s why I spent my entire life’s
work in saving my wages and buying a house on hiring the toughest
London criminal lawyers going.

What is your agenda fed_up ?.

Anna
Raccoon August 6, 2013 at
09:32

Not at all Sir, but I would not dream of defending Margaret’s article
for her – she is more than capable of speaking for herself.

However, on the issue of you ‘assuming’ that the landlady must have a
hidden agenda and ‘hidden’ connections to a particular firm of
solicitors – not so Sir.

Fed_Up
August 6, 2013 at 09:51

Your eagerness to to poison the well in respect of my comments are
strongly indicative of some sort of agenda. An honest broker would
recognise that my mistake has little or no bearing on the points
raised in the original article and my subsequent comments…playing the
player rather than the ball is a sure sign that someone is on
manoeuvres, in my experience. (Yes I recognise I am now playing the
player with that last comment…but it’s not me setting the worrisome
tone here, is it?)

Anna Raccoon August 6, 2013 at 09:55

‘Worrisome tone’- ‘dishonest broker’, blimey, I shall be a
‘government disinformation agent’ in a minute.

I hosted an article that I found interesting. I commented on you
playing the player rather than the ball with your suggestion that I
had a ‘hidden agenda’ – now I am poisoning the well!

As a matter of interest, what did you have for breakfast?

Fat
Steve August 6, 2013 at
11:04

Come on Anna I believe you to be a more generous spirited and
confident Raccoon than you appear to be in respect of ‘fed up’ —he
is no Vera Baird of the world—-just tetchy that really important
issues are at stake that need correct measurement and precision
—-and he appears to have spent some time at the sharp end of this
issue much as I believe you have done in the Court of Protection
and fed up’s comments are no more definitive and no less valuable
than much comment on this site unless he wants to contend
otherwise which doesn’t appear to be the case —-but unkindness to
Raccoons isn’t an admirable trait I concede.

Anna Raccoon August 6, 2013 at 11:12

On the contrary Steve – I welcome his comments, I don’t
welcome being taken to task because I haven’t jumped in to argue
the points in another poster’s article on a subject of which I
know zilch.
For Heavens sake – I put hours into this blog
every day simply because I do love watching debates unfold and
learn so much from you all – I spend half my time googling
different terms to figure out what it is that you are talking
about – it’s an ongoing education for me. I wouldn’t have it any
other way.
It would appear that Fed-up is someone who works
on the sharp end of discovering such images for prosecution.
Margaret is someone who works on the sharp end of defending
those so accused – I couldn’t be happier than to host a debate
between them and those who wish to add their six penn’rth.
I
shall learn something and maybe next time the subject comes up,
I shall have a small opinion of my own – but I don’t wish to
spout off about something I know naff all about. OK?

Fat
Steve August 6, 2013 at
11:33

Anna your commitment to open and intelligent debate is a
given in a facile world —equally your elegant wit, good humour
and generosity of spirit are as much a certainty against a
generally grey and shallow world —and I noted an
uncharacteristic ever so small slippage in that wit and
humour—I appreciated the health and safety/ shotgun pellets to
the foot witticism but clearly fed up feels as strongly on
this issue as you do on some things. fed up has some knowledge
on this topic —shame he led on the wrong foot by
misidentifying the author —I was the one who picked him up on
the point.
In reply to your final question OK!

TotallyConfused August 6, 2013 at 12:10

How much info about Operation Ore do you want? I survived
(even though I was not the accused) and lost everything but I
am still here and will never let what is left of my life get
F’ed over again. I am still in a personal war against Jim ‘I
am a cop trust me’ Gamble and his right hand man Colin Turner.
Turner has said to my face ‘It is my life’s mission to destroy
you.’ What little Napoleon did not realise was he was dealing
with a highly intellectual, educated woman who was not going
to accept his crap.

I have also engaged via Radio 5(BBC) Jim Gamble. As soon as
he realised who I am, asked for me to be disconnected.
Ask
why Gamble had a tantrum like a 3 year old when he could not
get his way.
I recommend people search for the Appalling
Vista. Very educational.

I personally have zero interest in porn of any kind. (I
like the man I have thank you and he is more than enough ‘to
get my juices flowing’; I don’t require any other
stimuli.)

This post is in dedication to David Stanley; a man who was
fully cleared in Operation Ore but it so destroyed my beloved
friend that on Feb 1, 2012 he killed himself.

TC
*We still have not told our little boy that his
beloved Uncle Dave is gone.

mandrake August 8, 2013 at 03:21

I believe everything you have written is the truth. I
know because I have been there. Someone commented that the
accusation (whether innocent or guilty) is worst than being
accused of murder.
That is the truth and I find that a
real mystery.

I belive society desires Witches to be burnt at the
stake.

Fed_Up August
6, 2013 at 12:10

“I commented on you playing the player rather than the ball
with your suggestion that I had a ‘hidden agenda’ – now I am
poisoning the well!”

You made your snarky comments AFTER I discovered the error,
corrected it and apologised! A somewhat different situation to
when you made a potentially catastrophic error a couple of weeks
ago that could have cost a brilliant copper his job. Despite the
somewhat more egregious nature of the error than mine, I didn’t
make hay when I pointed it out to you, even though to do so may
have drawn attention away from some of the negative impressions
against LE “computer bods” in the article. Now, am prepared to
believe that your “shot in the foot” comments and beyond are not
meant to create a hostile posting environment against someone who
has challenged an article that you hosted. However, until I get
some sort of coherent explanation, I, and everyone else is free to
draw their own conclusions.

In respect of what I had for breakfast: I didn’t have time…I
had to get into work early again to carry on plowing through 10′s
of thousands of images and movies of infants being raped and
tortured in my current case. You might like to create the
impression that we are a bunch of bumbling half-wits who just deal
with a few cases where the computer user only accidentally
stumbled across a couple of thumbnails, by hosting the article
that you have – it’s certainly a comforting thought. Clearly you
are up for undermining anyone who disagrees with that view,
someone who actually knows about it. It’s too bad…but am way too
long in the tooth (and weary and defeated and everything else) to
play along.

Rest easy people, there are no hands on child abusers out there
after all or if there are the Police are too busy targeting wholly
innocent people. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a plain
eejit!

Jon
Blight August 6, 2013 at
12:26

Good to know that such a dedicated officer can take regular
breaks from ploughing through this filth at regular intervals to
scrap with the host of this site. I have to wait for my
lunchtime, since sites such as this are blocked for me at
work.

Moor Larkin August 6, 2013 at 12:45

@ I have to wait for my lunchtime, since sites such as this
are blocked for me at work. @
Our new works firewall blocks
The Sun newspaper nowadays, due it’s identified “bikini” and
“intimate apparel” aspects……

Anna Raccoon August 6, 2013 at 13:01

Anna Raccoon and The Sun – what strange bedfellows…!

Ian
B August 6, 2013 at 12:39

I don’t believe you have “tens of thousands of images and
videos of infants being raped”, and I believe that that’s why
there’s an absolute embargo on anyone, including accredited
journalists, doing independent research and analysis of the
material under discussion.

Moor Larkin August 6, 2013 at 12:48

@fed-up
@ I had to get into work early again to carry on
plowing through 10′s of thousands of images @

Presumably with spellibng like *plowing* you’re doing it from
the USA you fraud.

therealguyfaux August 6, 2013 at 18:56

“Presumably with spellibng[!] like *plowing* you’re doing
it from the USA you fraud.”
Not necessarily.
You
overestimate the orthographical capabilities of Britons born
within the last 50 years.
And the ubiquitousness of
“Yank-spell” spellcheckers.
One would infer from your
clanger “spellibng” that you do not set a whole lot of store
in spellchecking to begin with.

therealguyfaux August 6, 2013 at 18:58

@Moor Larkin at 12:48

Moor Larkin August 6, 2013 at 19:05

@ One would infer from your clanger “spellibng” that you
do not set a whole lot of store in spellchecking to begin
with @
Subtle way of suggesting I aint no spellin’
nasti……..

I very much doubt someone of fed-ep’s evident erudition
needs a spell-check. S/He’s just doin’ wot cums naturally
and nobody in the UK would spell ploughing as plowing.

TotallyConfused August 6, 2013 at 13:08

TELL ME fed up…..what about Ore do you know? Please explain
why Operation Avalanche arrested 100 people in the USA but the
UK did a ‘blanket’ ‘let’s get the paedo’s’ in full knowledge
that the FBI said do not use credit cards or names to arrest but
ignored this?

I am sure you would love having your front door broken down
at 7:02 am and your children locked in a room for 7 to 8 hours
just based on an email account name. Which of course you did in
1999 on a 56K dial up modem…..

Of course you would accept that….because after all it is ‘in
the name of the children’.

Paul August 6, 2013 at 18:46

Probably fed up is a “Special Unit” man. Much easier to sit
fiddling with computers than be a front line Police
Officer.
The claim of ploughing through 10ks of images is
nonsense. Unless you are counting legal porn in that list.

Fed_Up August 6, 2013 at 08:49

Sorry Anna, full on agree with most of your analysis of the child abuse
landscape but this article is grotesquely partial, biased and frequently
non-sensical.
To title this piece “..the hidden FACTS about illegal images”
is selling yourself short, I don’t know where to begin….

Be honest now, where did you get your info from for this piece? Was it by
any chance, the Mr Saltrese? How many of us on the other side of discussion
did you speak to before you published this piece? The errors in your article
are breathtaking:

“That these facts are little publicised may be to do with the secretive
nature of child pornography research.”

Research papers from academic institutions who have researched child abuse
imagery are all over the’net. Start with the Copine project from University of
Cork.

“Should you take the bold step and dispute your culpability you will be
faced with the evidence of the ‘expert’. This is usually a police officer who
has been taught to use software which picks up illegal image data and
reconstructs the images.”

Incorrect. Both I and the guy I work opposite have Master’s Degrees in
Computer forensics and cybercrime. I hold several professional I.T
certifications, and have attended about additional training courses, most of
which end with an exam under University exam conditions. Only a tiny
proportion of my training involves vendor courses where I learn to “push the
buttons” for their software, the vast majority of courses are theory
based.

“A defence ‘expert’ will be allowed to consider the product, but not the
source.”

Incorrect. Defence has access to EVERYTHING, if they want the original
computer, they get the original computer. As it is defence experts normally
accept the image of the hard drive, but they will get the original computer
every time if that’s what they ask for. Your assertion is so worryingly
wrong…am beginning to wander what the agenda is here, it doesn’t seem to
involve an impartial reporting of the facts as the title of your piece
asserts.

“vestigial evidence of illegal images that have left a footprint on the
hard drive may be ‘recovered’ – reconstructed from the base data ”

..eh? Maybe you’re right and I am a “push button forensics” jockey, because
that sentence is tortuous and nonsensical beyond belief! What “footprint” do
these images leave behind (apart from themselves) and what is this vestigial
evidence that arises from these “footprints”? The “base data” I kinda get if
you are talking about the binary data, but “reconstructing” the “vestigial
evidence” from the “footprint”…get out of here!!

“For years it has been the opinion of criminal justice personnel and the
Court of Appeal that such images cannot be unknowingly downloaded:”

Incorrect Here is what is says on the cps.gov.uk site:
“The defendant
may suggest that he was looking at adult pornography sites, or even sites not
connected with pornography at all, when child pornography sites popped up on
the screen uninvited. In order to refute such a defence your expert witness
can show how often the defendant visited such sites and whether he saved the
indecent images.”

So if a defendant alleges pop-ups we have to actively refute it,,if the
such evidence is available. This unambiguously shows that the “pop-up” defence
is valid, and refutes your bewildering assertion that illegal images “cannot
unknowingly be downloaded”. This claim is so far wrong that am now convinced
that there is some hidden agenda to your piece. Once I have recovered the
images, my task is to figure out how they got to be on the disk, if they were
pop-ups then I tell the OIC that they were pop-ups and and the suspect walks
free!!! I get several like this a year, this doesn’t include the cases where I
recover illegal images but can’t definitively link the suspect to them (as
maybe the computer was used by multiple people), the suspect remains uncharged
in these cases.

In addition, the case of R v Smith & Jayson (2003) makes it clear that
the prosecution must prove the mens rea element – the defendent intentionally
and deliberately made or possessed child abuse images. That the images were
created as a result of malware or pop-ups is perfectly legitimate defence, it
rarely gets raised though, because we check whether that was the case first
(if it was then no charges are leveled).

“What you won’t be allowed to find out, if it is discoverable, is the
proportion of illegal images within the legal cache, context of browsing and
the properties of the hosting sites and the various pathways from through
legal browsing to unintended illegal dumping.”

Incorrect. Your piece wrongly asserts that the defence don’t get access to
the prosecution material (an assertion that obviously helps whatever unknown
agenda you have). The defence DO get access to everything. If the defence
expert chooses not to get this very simple information then I will (and have)
stepped in to give such info where requested. Do you honestly think if a Judge
asks me to provide the full browsing history I am going to say, “You can do
one, pal…he’s got pictures, he’s a wrongun’”. Any data from the hard drive not
adduced by prosecution can be easily adduced by defence with a simple request
for access to the original data – which I have never know refused. If the
judge asks for any additional data, then unless one wants a trip to the cells,
then the data gets supplied!

I am kinda ready to give up here, other than the point out the
following:
There have been numerous instances where “interested parties”
have attempted to rubbish L.E attempts to tackle child abuse. They have the
freedom to to rubbish, criticise, mislead and flat-out lie. Those of us on the
other side of the discussion simply don’t have the same freedoms.
After 15
years of dealing with child abuse cases, I can count on the fingers of one
hand the number who turn round and say: “It’s a fair cop, I love looking a
child porn, all the stuff on my computer I went looking for and downloaded
myself”. We all know that the child abuse stuff is available freely on the
‘net and being openly traded. Obviously we are too thick to go after those
people and end up targeting those who manage to get hold of only 5 unsolicited
child abuse images…yeah right. :rolleyes:

Duncan
Disorderly August 6, 2013 at 09:41

I am inclined to agree with your post. The following section in the
posting was rather imprecise:
“But in fact thumbnail menus of thousands
of images of disparate provenance and full screen images may be
automatically downloaded to the hard drive cache and then overwritten with
the hieroglyphic imprint of each thumbnail or full image preserved.

What your computer was doing may be quite outside your control, knowledge
or intention and you may never have seen any of the images, much less
intended that they be there.”

The word ‘may’ crops up too often here for my liking, suggesting lack of
definite knowledge, imprecision and hedging.

ivan August 6, 2013 at 09:45

Fed_Up, you have not attempted to say anything about the secretive nature
of IWF block list – a list that blocked the cover image of a rock record
that had been on sale in shops springs to mind.

If that list is so secret that it must not see the light of day where is
the redress when a legitimate site is on the same IP address (think large
hosting service) is blocked? Such a thing happened in Australia not so long
ago.

You also haven’t explained why, if there are only artifacts of the image
available in the cache, that it is considered that the image was
deliberately downloaded rather than having been pushed there by the site. As
far as I know the police use a commercial software package to ‘find’ these
artifacts but it requires someone to interpret the results and therein lies
the problem. If they have been taught ‘here is an artifact, even if it is
partly overwritten, therefore the owner of this device must have been
downloading abuse images’ rather than ‘here is an artifact but there
is not enough to show it was deliberately downloaded’ then you are
always going to have people working against what you do. Couple this with
the secretive and very closed attitudes of CEOP and the IWF and we have the
mess we see today.

Fed_Up August 6, 2013 at 09:59

Great points Ivan, will do my best to answer them later today…got stuff
to do.

Ian B August 6, 2013 at 11:06

Fed_Up

Since you say you have your nose to the grindstone regarding this, here’s
one genuine question:

If somebody has some pictures of a naked Samantha Fox, aged 16 or 17, in
the 1980s, on their HD, or the equivalent (16 year olds were rotinely
appearing in mens’ mags until the SOA in 2003), is it illegal child
pornography?

mandrake
August 8, 2013 at 03:32

of course it is because of the change of law.

If you had copies of The Sun Page 3 girls under age 18 on your wall you
could be arrested and charged. The Sun destroyed all original
material.

However the producers and distributors of that child porn roam free :
Murdoch, Brooks, the photographers and newsagents.

It’s the one peculiar case where historic abuse doesn’t seem to
matter.

right_writes
August 6, 2013 at 08:45

Excellent piece…

Interesting to note that the author insinuates that the people that we
really have to fear are not so much the pornographers… More the watchers, who
seem to be acting like the “Wreckers” in Jamaica Inn.

Fat Steve August 6, 2013 at 08:27

Stunningly good commentary on a legal issue. Makes me realise what a third
rate lawyer I was

Anna
Raccoon August 6, 2013 at 08:44

“and you may be told that illegal images were found on your computer that
you must have intentionally downloaded.”

I am reminded of the sad history of Adrian Stark, the schoolteacher who
forms the main plank of Mark Williams-Thomas’ claim of ‘extensive police
experience of child protection’.

Mark Williams-Thomas was the newly arrived junior plain clothes police
officer, fresh from his years on the beat, when he was sent out by his
seniors to pick up a suspect – Adrian Stark – who was suspected of having
illegal images on his computer.

We will never know the truth of these allegations, for a scant couple of
days after having his computers impounded, being questioned in the police
station – and ‘someone’ within the force with journalistic ambitions
flogging the details of the heinous crimes of this ‘local school teacher and
paedophile’ to the media, Adrian Stark took his own life.

Mark Williams-Thomas never tires of boasting of how he ‘exposed this
paedophile’. A few months later, he left the force and declared that he now
wanted to be a journalist.

Moor
Larkin August 6, 2013 at 07:42

Dixons of Dock Green…….

Ho Hum August 6, 2013 at 07:59

They’re the Telegraph readers..

Ho Hum August 6, 2013 at 20:05

I am so relieved. I had never considered before that all the terrible
grammar and spelling BTL in the DM was the product of their American readers.
I am equally shocked, though, to realise just how few British people must read
it, given the influence it seems to have here. Still, where Merkins go,
Muppets follow in their wake

JK August 7, 2013 at 10:46

@ Moor Larkin,

I’m not gonna go back up to where I concluded “Fed-Up” was typing from over
here (I’m in Arkansas USA).

Don’t comment much here on Anna’s site – ya’ll are too good with your
commenting. Just wanted to let you know Moor – may I call you Moor? – your
observation of where the commentor originated is near 99.9% certain. The “Fed”
part of the moniker is something I don’t usually see reading in this part of
the world. Never at either JuliaM or Duff’s anyway.

Ho Hum August 6, 2013 at 20:07

as @ Moor Larkin August 6, 2013 at 19:05

I had even clicked again on ‘REPLY’, just to be sure…. LOL

ZeroIntelligence
August 7, 2013 at 10:23

Anna et al.

The HISTORIC & ONGOING FULL FACTS of the MANY TRUE VICTIMS of
Landslide, Avalanche, Ore et al.

Are at “INQUISITION 21st CENTURY – Resisting The Absolutism Of Our Times”.

Including the FACTS of little Russian girl Masha re-victimized/abused BY
the F-B-I still placing imges of her initial sex-abuse online as entrapment !

http://www.inquisition21.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=91

http://www.inquisition21.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=15&MMN_position=16:16

Moor
Larkin August 7, 2013 at 10:51

@JK
He seemed to have a good grasp of his subject but why pretend? Maybe
he’d get in trouble with the Feds for speaking publicly…..
Oops….. sorry
fed-up……

JuliaM August 7,
2013 at 12:01

Amongst the urban yoof over here, ‘da Feds’ is indeed a term for the
police. Must be all those rap videos and reruns of ‘The Wire’…

You won’t hear the term from any adult.

Moor
Larkin August 10, 2013 at 16:03

@Margaret jervis
Aha! Is it that one? Strange, according to a later
piece in the Daily Mail I recall he swore blind he had never named Facebook
and that the Daily Mail inserted this behind his back and defied his
correction attempts.

Sylvia Tidy-Harris, a spokeswoman for Williams-Thomas, said that the
article had been credited to the criminologist but had been edited from a
telephone interview conducted with the former detective by a Mail journalist.
“He has never, ever said it was Facebook. We have told Facebook that Mark
never said in any way shape or form that it was Facebook and it couldn’t be
because you are not able to do that on Facebook. Mark knows the chief security
officer at Facebook, they met in Dallas last year.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/facebook-considers-legal-action-against-daily-mail-over-underage-sex-claims-1919747.html
Shome
mishtake shurely?

Margaret Jervis
August 10, 2013 at 16:27

Interesting. Elementary internet research seems to escape the DM on these
issues, see my post on the gunboats about Chatroulette. Can’t see a single
follow-up on news-feeds.

Moor
Larkin August 10, 2013 at 16:43

Hmmm… Third attempt…
…. click on reply this time………

@Margaret Jervis
Probably best to verbatimise the dialogue on that video
then, before it gets deleted……

Mark Williams-Thomas to camera: “My latest investigation has uncovered
shocking new evidence of how paedophiles are posting horrific images and
videos of child abuse on facebook…..”

Facebook pages out of focus – Voiceover by Mark Williams-Thomas: “At first
glance these could be innocent images of young kids posted by themselves or
their families but a closer examination of their profile page and the friends
linked to them reveal some truly disturbing image of children being sexually
abused along with keywords that direct other paoedophiles to places where they
can find them……… ”
00:04-00:32

Margaret Jervis
August 10, 2013 at 17:10

Maybe you should alert the authorities?
Do you have a twitter account
Moor? Mine is @mscjervis.

rabbitaway August 10, 2013 at 18:35

Download it Moor – here’s how you do it …..
Go to a utube vid …. in the
address bar type in ss after www. – and select – it’s easy – I got this from a
how to video on youtube itself ….. pick an mp4 format from savefrom net ……
simples even i managed

Moor
Larkin August 10, 2013 at 18:35

I’m a bloggerer not a twitterer…..
I
imagine the only people who might care are facebook and they’re moor likely to
sue me for repeating the libel………

rabbitaway August 10, 2013 at 18:43

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXWSrMzU4uk

Easy – just how i like it

Margaret Jervis
August 10, 2013 at 19:27

Oh dear! Head in the sand. The conjugation is ‘tweet’ by the way. Like
birds. Some not so pleasant. But think Messiaen crossed with Stockhausen We’ll
leave out the cruder attempts. It’s all music. Sometimes like Mozart. Soul of
the world.

Moor
Larkin August 10, 2013 at 20:43

@ Download it Moor @
Download a video telling me how to find images of
horrific child abuse on facebook?
Do you think I’m MAD!!! …………….

Margaret Jervis
August 10, 2013 at 21:46

Moor I may be wrong here. But I wouldn’t think such a video would be
allowed on youtube. I’m going to take the plunge.

Margaret Jervis
August 10, 2013 at 21:59

Phew! I couldn’t tell whether there was an incriminating section because it
appeared to be in Russian and unfocused. It seemed to be remote directions on
how to save objects on windows. Basically you click and then save. This was
entirely on the windows menus. So it was a bit boring. There was a L’Oreal ad
opening and some other celeb type pics at the end.

rabbitaway August 10, 2013 at 22:29

That last vid I put up link to is not that good – sorry – this one is
better put it on full screen so you can follow the instructions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzzTKkWPsNM