Inquisition 21
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Operation Ore News and evidence
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The collapse of Operation Ore and its fallout
We dispute the above and present the new evidence
We have summarized the evidence for the fraud, deceit and mistakes made in the carrying out of Operation Ore. In our opinion there is enough evidence here
- to clear most Orees already convicted
-to clear all those awaiting trial
-to support those taking actions for raids and false proceedings by the police and prosecutors
- to support enquiries into the corrupt behaviour of certain police, prosecutors and so-called ‘expert witnesses’ for the prosecution in the carrying out of Operation Ore. This behaviour includes the making of false public statements known to be false.
Summary
Operation Ore was deeply flawed as it was carried out on a number of wrong assumptions. In the first instance it was based on the US Landslide case, which was itself so deeply flawed that when the US investigators recognized this only 100 individuals were caught up in it in the US whereas in the UK to which the US authorities passed the Landslide information thousands were subjected to investigation and there were many suicides.
Here are the main points:
UK police and prosecutors claimed that all Landslide subscribers were presented with a banner advertisement saying ‘Click here Child Porn’ and therefore willingly entered child porn web sites. Most subscribers to Landslide never saw such a banner and no such banner existed in the way it was presented by the police, whatever about it possibly appearing briefly somewhere and relating to very few sites in the many that Landslide was a gateway to.
Most of the sites accessible through Landslide were legal adult sites, not child porn sites as declared by the police and prosecutors.
Where the police pointed in triumph in credit cards being used to access illegal sites, they took no account of the massive credit card fraud and identity theft being carried out on web sites related to Landslide. This fraud tended to take place on ‘extreme’ adult web sites, the kind that no-one wants to admit visiting, thus making it easier for the fraudsters to get away with their theft. However extreme (urinating and bondage perhaps) these were neither child porn nor illegal web sites. It is interesting that the UK authorities are now trying to make extreme sex web sites illegal.
A number of senior police officers and ‘expert witnesses’ in the UK made statements and gave evidence that was knowingly false.
A number of very senior police officers gave statements to the media and Parliament that were both knowingly false and an incitement to hatred against and possible attack on innocent individuals by members of the public. Some of these statements resulted in tabloid witch hunts. Both the police and other interested parties used these knowingly false statements to raise money and to obtain prosecution business.
When a few individuals attempted to expose these facts and to identify the false statements they came under attack in a number of ways: in a web site supported or informally operated by them, and through tabloid publications, and in a campaign of bombardment of their PCs by viruses, diallers, and Trojans. Most serious, some of the key individuals began to receive emailed child pornography. As only the police have access to such material, it is reasonable to assume that police or their allies were trying to plant illegal material on the PCs of their critics to then catch and prosecute them in raids. And equally serious, two of the few, if not the only, computer forensics experts who act for the defence came under attack in the form of attempts to discredit them.
One of the individuals in the campaign to expose the police corruption made formal complaints to both the Serious Crimes Squad, where some of the officers named worked and to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. That is a separate story told elsewhere on this web site, but the individual who is called ‘Messenger’ was given what is usually called a ‘run-around’, despite the police accepting and commencing the carrying out of investigations into two senior police officers. The UK media refused to carry news stories about these investigations, still going on at the time this is written.
The detailed evidence
UK forensics expert Jim Bates, who is unusual in that he works for the defence (for which he has been castigated), has been trying to help us understand the errors made by the police and prosecution in their analyses of the images seized in Operation Ore. We say ‘trying’, as the problem is all ours, so complex is the matter, but the lesson for all of us is that most of the time neither the court nor its prosecutors and police understand the complexities either, so the potential for corrupt ‘expert witnesses’ to put forward false witness to aid the prosecution is dangerously real. In what follows we are indebted to Jim Bates for being able to access and copy information from his web site at Computer Investigations.
In the heady rush to carry out dawn raids, seize computers and convict, usually through intimidation and leaks to the media, proper investigation was a major casualty. The police wanted results, so the standard police procedure now appeared to have been:
1. Seize and examine the machine(s) - usually using EnCase.
2. Search live and unallocated space for JPG images and bookmark them.
3. (Sometimes) Search live indices for evidence of internet access. Note any that seem to refer to underage sites.
4. Categorise any indecent images* and present them en masse in an indictment.
5. Print an EnCase ‘report’ showing the images in question.
6. Write a statement confirming the continuity of the evidence and reliability of the examination results.
7. Pass the information to the Case Officer and move on to the next case.
* Note any indecent images. The existence of indecent images on an individual’s computer whether illegal or not may be sufficient to frighten him into an acceptance of some guilt and soften him up for plea bargaining.
One of the key poor practices in all this was known as ‘the automatic categorisation of images’.
Here is how this technical but critically important (for justice) procedure works. Every image is made up of bits of binary information – that is numbers. A program does not see an image of a naked woman but a certain representation of bits of numbers that make up the image that we humans see. It is possible to add all those numbers together and manipulate them into a single ‘hash’ total that is unique to that image.
One must remember that most of the child porn images on the Internet are the same images recycled again and again since they were first scanned in from 1970s magazines. Let’ say that in the extensive files of child porn held by the police there is an image called Julie-01, in which a naked 13 year old girl poses suggestively. The hash number for that image is 18. When the police scan a seized computer they find that the hard drive contains 50 images of hash 18 and other illegal hash numbers. By this time they have seen Julie’s images so often they don’t bother to look to see if the hash numbers actually do match real Julie images, and they are also very busy and anyway the PC already clearly has traces of pornography on it.
What this procedure overlooks however is that webmasters may have done things to images which change their hash values, such as the generation of particular sized thumbnails, the addition of logos, the reduction of screen definition by increasing compression ratios and incomplete downloading, all altering the unique hash value used for identification and classification. So, even if the software works as it should, its use is severely restricted and only as reliable as the hash generation facility and database maintenance procedures. Jim Bates has found three recent cases that if their results are anything to go by, the hash procedure it simply does not work properly.
Jim has sent us examples, too technical for us to reproduce here but they can be seen on his web site above. His conclusion is that the police investigators needed serious re-education concerning such technicalities as age, gender, indecency and even what constitutes a human being – as the hash numbers used produced things far from erotic nude posing, some of them no more than advertising banners.
He concluded: “I know it is difficult to believe, but images similar to these really did form a significant part of the indictment in at least three cases. These attempts to automate such an essential part of the investigative process are doomed to failure and serve only to further destroy the credibility of the police and CPS in cases of this type.”
Reasons for the closure of Operation Ore
Jim Bates
Some evidence revealed during this recent incitement trial may provide more likely reasons for the closure of ORE. The information here may be verified by reference to the trial transcript.
Evidence of fraud?
In one of her statements prosecution expert Dr. Sam Type reported that she had found no evidence of fraud on the Landslide machines. Under cross-examination she was asked if she had looked for any - she replied “No.” This extraordinary admission came in spite of the fact that copious evidence of complaint emails had been found on at least one of the Landslide machines. These complaints included suggestions that unauthorised charges had been made to clients' credit cards and also that legitimate subscriptions to adult pornographic sites had been re-routed to sites dealing in child pornography. These alone suggest the possibility of fraud and Type had missed it simply because she hadn't looked. She also indicated that she could think of no way in which individual webmasters could have gained access to client's credit card details.
There is in fact a way so simple that I cannot publish the method on this site because anyone with a little knowledge of web site operation could do it and publication could justifiably be seen as assisting internet fraud. Anyone with real experience of computer forensics would have been aware of this virtually since the internet came into general use.
Type’s admission was paralleled by WDC Sharon Girling OBE, when it became apparent that amongst her exhibits was a (large?) quantity of printed emails, apparently in similar vein. In the exhibit list these were simply listed as 'emails' and these had been overlooked by defence experts in the welter of confusion generated by the prosecution's refusal to allow proper access to the Landslide material. For clarity it may be noted that in Section 9 (2)(a) of the Criminal Procedures and Investigation Act 1996, ‘The prosecutor must keep under review the question whether at any given time there is prosecution material which - (a) in his opinion might undermine the case for the prosecution against the accused’. These emails certainly did that but were not disclosed in this context - they simply existed on the exhibits lists as 'emails'.
Other Evidence
In a short statement dated 5th June 2003, and dealing with the integrity of the image restore processes on the Landslide computers, Type wrote, "During the course of these examinations, I copied selective data from the hard drives (NCS/001 to NCS/011) onto CD-ROM. I subsequently sealed those CD-ROMs in bags ..." These sealed bags were given various exhibit numbers and listed. Included in these was exhibit NCS/1008, noted as ‘Links Database in Access format’.
This exhibit was allegedly a database of webmaster information containing details of both the webmasters and the sites they maintained. Note again that this was said to have been copied from the Landslide hard drives onto CD-ROM and then sealed. When this exhibit was examined by the defence it was found to contain details of two websites - 'Spitfire Heaven' and 'Hurricane Heaven' - which did not exist when the Landslide machines were seized. It is self-evident therefore that they could not have been on the original Landslide computers. They were in fact created by Type in 2003, allegedly to enable testing of the Landslide subscription system.
Under cross-examination, Type was unable to account for these entries in this exhibit and from the evidence presented it is difficult to see how such a fundamental mistake could have been made. One further point raised during cross-examination was that one of the defence experts had reported that during his examination of the main Landslide database at NCS headquarters he had noted and commented upon a record indicating a subscription by an unknown person where the address had been entered as '999, Letsby Avenue' and had given a password of 'yourenicked'. When asked about this, Type responded that she didn't remember the incident but she 'couldn't deny it’. No other information (as to dates, times, success of subscription, site involved etc.) was available but the peculiarly English humour leads to suspicions that this version of the database may have been altered in the U.K.
How could this happen?
It may be recalled that in the article in the Sunday Times on 3rd July 2005, the CPS responded to criticism by revealing that an internal inquiry into the evidence of Brian Underhill in a case which had collapsed had revealed doubts which would subsequently be revealed to defence teams in ORE cases. Thereafter, no evidence from Underhill was presented in ORE cases.
However, his involvement in the ORE investigation cannot be so easily expunged. The TYPE statement noted above (5th June 2003) was duplicated exactly (except for the introductory sentence) by Underhill. Note that this said "I copied . . ." and "I subsequently sealed . . ." the relevant data. WDC Sharon Girling OBE reported that she had received this exhibit from Brian Underhill on 5th June 2003.
So, both Type and Underhill claimed to have copied this exhibit (and others). We'll probably never know who actually did the work but if it was Underhill, then Type should have checked all his work when his evidence was pulled. That she did not do so seriously damages her credibility. If it was Type that did the copying then her evidence revealed a fundamental error and was discredited under cross-examination at the trial. Remember also that Underhill was a Director of Celt Ltd. (and thus was Type's boss) when all these shenanigans began. (Celt is a private organization working for the police and prosecution.)
Observations
I have used the word 'shambles' to describe the conduct of Operation Ore and these latest developments appear to confirm that observation. As various cases have been brought to trial, little snippets of evidence have emerged and latterly accumulated until the full extent of the mess is becoming apparent. It is interesting that the evidence of the contamination of NCS/1008 only came to light as a result of the defence freely browsing the contents looking for general information. This would certainly not have taken place if the original restrictions on defence access to the material had applied. The prosecution claim that 'you can have access to everything' was clearly a sham. When I asked for a simple file listing from each machine I was told that I could look at it but I couldn't take it away. These were likely to be lists containing tens of thousands of items requiring detailed study and analysis. Access at NCS premises, under their control was obviously unacceptable. In my case that would have meant complete disruption of my normal working practices and a round trip of over 220 miles every day. The costs alone would have been astronomical and would certainly not have been authorised by the Legal Services Commission.
It seems that this investigation survived the discrediting of Brian Underhill, but cannot survive that of Sam Type. (Some may believe*) that her evidence amounts to perjury. Others may feel that the people involved in this should answer charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Complaints have been filed about the activities of some of the senior officers involved and these are apparently under current investigation. *Words changed here for legal reasons.
In the light of all this, it is difficult to see how any further trials could have been conducted without the risk of still more damning revelations. It seems that the end of Operation Ore is much more likely to be the result of these considerations than the rather thin suggestion that the remaining suspects ‘would be unlikely to be convicted’. Their names were on the database - that's all that was required for the many incitement prosecutions - so what's the difference? What is more, how can any hint of fairness be maintained for those who have been convicted (or accepted a caution) on the basis of nothing but the database evidence when 1,400 go free?
I am delighted to see the end of this shameful investigation but I suspect that we haven't heard the last of this by a long way.
Editorial note
As this was so complex and technical we submitted it to another UK colleague. He replied thus:
“From the investigative point of view, a system using hashes would not be comprehensive unless it was updated assiduously: if a webmaster updates an image so that it contains his own logo, that image's calculated hash will not be found in the database of known images, even though the ‘interesting’ parts of the image might well be included in the database (with many other hash values?)
Jim's selection of weird images (seen on his web site) might be intended to serve as illustration of the fact that Hash values are only of use in creating a set of candidates - more stringent criteria must then be applied to select those items that actually are what you want.
So I think Jim is saying - a database of hash values is of little use because
a) it can give false negatives - it has to be kept totally up to date (i.e. it is no substitute for the police looking at the images anyway) and
b) it gives false positives - i.e. a match on hash values
Hope that helps some.
From another UK supporter
“I am aware that the police are trying to avoid a challenge in court as they know they have been rumbled by recent evidence that has come to light, and they are dropping out of Ore and other cases, trying to sabotage cases scheduled for court.
“As you have people contacting you for help, I thought it appropriate to add my own comments to those of (our defence expert above). He is one of the DE masters, examining the provenance of the evidence.
“I think it is important to analyse the issues from the position of a defence manager. You have a defence expert and a barrister, but there is something missing as these are not trials. The mere mention of images is used as if this is demon evidence.
“(Our defence expert above) is diligently and expertly not only examining the evidence, but he is doing the work the prosecution should have done in the first place. I therefore add full weight to his latter advice.
“In the case I represented, challenges to the police pre-trial simply caused the prosecution position to manoeuvre. Although there are rules for disclosure, the police have not followed those rules, and as the case highlighted (the one that gave rise to this discussion) shows this also includes not even investigating to be in a position to disclose.
“I take the view, where the prosecution case is flawed, let that be aired in court. If there were just one or two cases, then one could approach the police and discuss the evidence, but in a general inquisition, this fails completely. There will be perhaps residual images which cannot be accounted for, and the law says you are guilty unless you can prove otherwise (illegal by Human Rights Act, so the balance must be recaptured).
“My tactics would doubtless be to put the prosecution on trial in court. In the case mentioned, I would have tried the prosecution for every one of those 1200 images. As they formed a basis of a charge, the prosecution were guilty of malice or criminal negligent, and were liable for damages on each and every count.
“In the case I represented, we asked the prosecution to drop the nonsense twice. It was the strongest case they had had, and they refused. We therefore gave them their day in court, and when they completed their case, their barrister stood up and begged the judge to halt the trial. The defence had not even started and that was their strongest case.
“It is a dangerous game to go to court. But actually, it is the safest place to do battle with the inquisition, just about the only place at this time. The same tactics in court, no fear, no mercy - the prosecution must be utterly exposed and destroyed, the fact is, it then won't be necessary as they will destroy themselves and I have told (a certain UK police force) if I see their hired gun again in court, I will lawfully arrest him for perjury and perverting the course of justice. It was in court, it is in the transcripts - he is jail bait.
“I am not legally empowered to give legal advice, but the advice is, tell them nothing and go to court, and then sue for compensation. Then the case is won and the inquisition is over.”
USC2257 disclaimers
Many of the web sites they were charged with viewing bore the new US adult certification, known as USC2257 disclaimers. These records are required pursuant to 18 U.S.C 2257 and C.F.R. 7 5 and are kept by Funs Studio. C Copyright 2005 FUNS Studio. All Rights Reserved.
In one recent case, where over 1200 images were presented in the indictment, most were found to be provably subject to USC2257 disclaimers. When the prosecution were told about these, they simply pulled all these images out of the charge list.
The defence were not then allowed to introduce this evidence and the jury would have been unaware of the prosecution mistakes, and of the USC2257 disclaimers. Fortunately, at the eleventh hour, two further images, left in by mistake, were recognised (by reference to another case containing bigger and more complete pictures) and USC2257 evidence was introduced for these. The whole lot were then thrown out by the court although the defendant was convicted of possessing 2 images on a CD. Even one of these was later shown to be over age and an appeal is currently in play.
Our UK defence adviser says, “It may be a dangerous game to play but where such material is discredited via USC2257, it may be worth getting a solicitor to request relevant information from the 2257 custodian of records and, if it is forthcoming, then wait until the trial before presenting it.”
The ongoing complaint against senior police officers
Here we publish extracts from the material submitted by Messenger in which there are allegations of fraud against several senior police officers. This is just the beginning. More will follow. Had he been treated well in the initial interview, we would not have published this material, but unless the course of the so-called ‘investigations’ changes we will have to publish all of the evidence. There is more which we cannot yet use as it is coming up in some future civil actions.
Statement by Trevor Pearce examined
“This operation started when, in 2001, the details of 7,272 British suspects who had accessed child abuse images on a US website with their credit cards were passed to UK authorities.” (Trevor Pearce)
This evidentially false statement was made in December 2004 as written evidence to Parliament, and as such was also a public statement. Clearly, Trevor Pearce, Director General of the National Crime Squad, had a duty as a police officer and in his role in providing written evidence to parliament, to report the truth. He did not, neither did he seek to do so, and what he said and what he did not say is critical when compared to the truth. This had a potential legal bearing on all those who had been hit by Operation Ore, including in relation to those pending trial, those who had been falsely convicted, those who had been coerced into pleading guilty when they were not, those who sort legal redress for what was done to them and those who had lost loved ones and might seek legal redress if the truth was known. The statement clearly sought to incriminate the entire subscriber list of 7,272 credit card identities and infer involvement in child abuse.
Operation Ore started publicly in May 2002. The original allegation was that all Landslide Keyz subscribers were guilty of accessing illegal by age material, but the evidence and the truth do not support this allegation. The most critical incriminating evidence, as it subverted the public and therefore the courts, was an alleged 'click here child porn' banner shown by BBC television on police computer screens on several occasions, suggesting everyone who visited Landslide, saw a click here child porn banner and therefore had knowledge child pornography was there. I was on the Landslide subscriber list, I didn't know illegal by age imagery was in the public domain at the time of arrest, let alone at the time of the transactions on my credit card. I now know many did, as those in newsgroups and peer to peer software for example, were quite likely to get it unsolicited and independent experts have since run tests to evidence this fact - indeed also that LEA activity since that time has included world wide distribution of illegal by age imagery.
This evidence in relation to the 'click here child porn' banner, presented to the national media was false, and staged by the police in an attempt to incriminate the accused. The National Crime Squad collected archives of some of the actual Landslide sites early October 2002, providing evidence that destroyed the US testimony that was also used in Operation Ore trials, specifically that of Michael Mead (USPIS), Steven Nelson (Dallas Police) and David Cruz (Landslide). Sworn statements by Michael Mead (USPIS), Steven Nelson (Dallas Police) and David Cruz (Landslide) were now evidentially false, indeed they never stood up to close examination compared to the facts in the first place.
Sharon Girling (National Crime Squad) collected various exhibits from the American law enforcement officials, and referred to related exhibits as the child porn front page - exhibit SAG/11, or the front screen child porn click here - exhibit SAN/1 recorded as MM/1.
Steven Nelson claimed to have only seen the banner advertising child pornography once during their investigations on the home page of Landslide and originally Michael Mead backed up the story. The intimation was that everyone had seen this banner, and therefore had some connection to child pornography. I have seen no evidence this banner ever appeared, and as the banners were databased, such evidence would have been available. It should be noted, that evidentially, Steven Nelson, Michael Mead and David Cruz wilfully supplied false statements, though in the case of David Cruz, as a former Landslide employee, this statement was no doubt made under duress. If required, I can supply evidential support that the US testimony mentioned was false, and to the extend it destroys the credibility of the authors of said testimony.
People were accused of being guilty of accessing child pornography via the Keyz payment system, which was a separate website, which did not have any banners at all, indeed, subscribers who had actually visited Keyz would have done so from outside to make a credit card submission or to gain access. These screens were entirely functional, without any adult images, and the Landslide name was barely noticeable to the casual observer. The click here banner was actually alleged to have appeared on an entirely different site, at Landslide avs.landslide.com/avs/index.html, as opposed to www.keyz.com/signup?sitename (where sitename changes depending on the site used to access keyz).
This killer evidence, the 'click here child porn', was the foundation of Operation Ore, was part of the false evidence used to convict Thomas Reedy of Landslide. It was paraded in the national media, specially staged on police computer screens, shown in police interviews and to the wives of the accused, in police Operation Ore manuals, and used in court as evidence to convict people. Faced with such compelling or emotive evidence, albeit false evidence, people pleaded guilty when they were not and most considered or undertook self harm.
DC Sharon Girling OBE, of the National Crime Squad circulated a new witness statement and produced what was a real front page for Landslide, on 05/02/2003, an innocuous mountain scene, long before the statement by Trevor Pearce. As it happens, the flaws in the evidence were more serious than was disclosed. The banner location in question was way off screen at the bottom of the AVS page, and just as Thomas Reedy had protested from prison, the banner shown as part of the American evidence, was not a fixed banner provided by his site, but was a rotating banner system which he did not control, i.e. a new image would appear each time the page was loaded. Worse still, a home page, or front page, is what normally appears by default in the root of a domain, i.e. www.landslide.com. However, a default page was not viewable at Landslide, which is common for fraudsters, indeed the fact Landslide did not capture IP addresses in the client database and interrogate country fields provides further indications of fraud by design.
I know that no default Landslide home page was available, as when I received my credit card statement with a splattering of charges I had not authorised with the name Landslide present, I tried to find out who had stolen my money. Typing in 'landslide.com' into the browser was the first thing I tried and no site came up so I had to phone the fraud department at Access.
It would of course be rather odd, if Trevor Pearce was unaware that the killer evidence, which did kill people, convict them and coerce guilty pleas, was false. It is noticeable that no police spokesman has sought to correct the false story in the media used to such devastating effect to demonise and convict the accused. The 'click here child porn' is still printed indelibly on the public perception of Operation Ore, the public that form the juries, judges and legal representatives in court. I am a member of the public and to my perception, the 'click here' banner was Operation Ore.
Simply ‘credit card’, ‘click here child porn’ or ‘Operation Ore’ were enough to coerce guilty please or turn a jury. However, that is not how Landslide operated, people came to the Keyz system from outside, there was not a menu of sites at Keyz. As the alleged 'click here child porn' banner related to the AVS page, it is notable perhaps that Nelson provided sworn testimony in relation to AVS (to the AVS page?) to Sharon Girling stating 'it did not contain child pornography.' One moment the American evidence has some value, the next it does not, and so NCS prosecution experts come up with a new story.
It is reasonable to presume that Trevor Pearce knew something about Operation Ore. He was the direct superior to Jim Gamble who was effectively the operations manager of Operation Ore, he reported on it to parliament in the form of written evidence, and to ACPO. Yet the statement submitted as written evidence to parliament, made by Trevor Pearce, is false, misleading and highly emotive.
The boss of Trevor Pearce, Bill Hughes, now DG SOCA, made a public statement as follows:
'I would like to reassure the public that the police approach has been to identify suspects and categorise them in respect of the potential risk that they pose to children. This has been a painstaking process, as we are aware that accurate reporting is vital, as incorrect allegations could ruin a person's life or damage the prospects of a fair trial.
Such hysteria as it exists is being fuelled by ill-informed and speculative reporting among the less responsible sections of the media.'
The facts are very clear, false information was being presented directly by the National Crime Squad, ACPO spokesman Stuart Hyde and written evidence by Trevor Pearce to Parliament is a valid example of the deception in play, all this when the National Crime Squad had and were of evidence that destroyed their own public statements.
It is appropriate to consider further some broad facts about Landslide. It was estimated that some 5,700 websites used the Landslide payment systems, principally adult sites, but NCS had evidence that only 12 sites were illegal. To make the statement that Trevor Pearce made, one would have to assume that all subscribers ignored the adult sites, popped in their credit cards and dived into the child pornography. It is clearly not a viable assertion.
The Landslide client database stored the referring site against the credit cards for sign ups or attempted signups, and so the client database evidentially cleared subscribers of involvement in child pornography. This did not stop the National Crime Squad from incriminating people and seeing they were arrested and destroyed, indeed my own Landslide transaction, although self evidentially credit card fraud (5 monthly signups to the same site in the same month), related to a website that even the National Crime Squad considered was entirely lawful, and my transactions were far from unique.
Further, most adult payment systems were clearing banks for credit card fraud at the time, especially if extreme material is used as that is why it is used, and the Landslide archives clearly indicate this fact. Contrary to assertions made in relation to foreign webmasters at the trial of Thomas Reedy, the webmasters did not solely use Landslide for credit clearance, and a list of specific merchant accounts they had used at the time or since is available on request, as evidence the fraud is still in play.
The National Crime Squad had credit card information before Operation Ore even started, with 12% of the cards reported stolen. It is reasonable to suppose, that actual fraud is considerably higher than the reported fraud and indeed this fact is evidenced by the archives. Results were of course coming in from the forces early on. Kent police reported identity theft at 20% for example. Landslide had ceased trading for weeks as it had lost its merchant account following excessive charge backs, a clear fraud indicator. As it had lost two merchant accounts, had not charged anyone for over a month it is likely Landslide had been finished by excessive fraud. Landslide undertook a number of actions to mitigate the charge backs and reported fraud, but this was not enough and it is unlikely they would have obtained another merchant account in time.
At the time of Trevor Pearce's statement, Operation Ore had been rolling for some two and a half years. Despite the well publicised operation and Jim Gamble announcing publicly in December 2002 that everyone would get a knock at the door, people were not taking their computers to the waste dump on mass, so they were clearly shocked by visits from what were typically police knock over squads, and the police admitted they were not finding much Landslide evidence, even where people still had computers from the time in question.
Trevor Pearce made a statement that was highly incriminating and dangerous, yet it was untrue, and it is I would submit, beyond doubt, that this statement was a lie as any reasonable knowledge about the operation would prevent such a statement being honestly made. Regardless, Trevor Pearce misled the House of Commons, and evidentially did not attempt to represent the truth. Here it is and it is worthy of closer inspection: “7,272 British suspects who had accessed child abuse images on a US website.”
Firstly, the majority of the sites were lawful adult sites. As is common with adult sites, names often tend to infer young, through the use of terms such as teen, Lolita and others. Many lawful sites today use such names and descriptions; however, evidentially, the sites were predominantly adult, though I note for the record, from examination of the NCS Keyz list, that site descriptions had been altered to make them sound incriminating when they were not.
Child abuse is a highly emotive term, and to use it can lead to a breach of the peace, and as a consequence of such terms as used by Trevor Pearce, the peace was breached. People who were investigated as part of Operation Ore were assaulted and even murdered. This was, however, another statement which does not marry with the facts. The majority of the contentious age images on the Internet are innocent images, that is, there is no victim, and this is reflected in the imagery in relation to the illegal sites that used Landslide.
Taking 'blackcat' for example, a site that used Landslide Keyz, these were nudist images. No child was abused; indeed children at nudist camps were on holiday and had every reason to be happy and smile at the cameras. The use of the term child abuse was therefore highly misleading, no child was abused for the benefit of Landslide and it should be remembered, Thomas Reedy had a daughter and she was a real victim of the scam in the US, as many were of the scam in the UK.
We then have the term 'on a US website'. Again we find Trevor Pearce supplying false evidence, and this narrative was submitted as evidence. Landslide was a payment / access gateway, not a host for these websites. Webmasters were located around the globe. The sites were often hosted in America, but that was nothing to do with Landslide. The continuous attempts by the National Crime Squad to create a 'folk demon' out of the Landslide site and 'folk demons' out of all subscribers, in the media and in the courts, were very successful, but not true and I include the actual page below for comparison with what the police presented to the public.
It is clear that had the truth been presented to the media as the false evidence had, Orees would be going to their solicitors to seek justice and recompense for having their lives destroyed. The fact is that some police officers did not tell the truth, acted to pervert the course of justice, with cases running for long after his statement was made not to mention preventing justice for those falsely accused.
Taking Trevor Pearce's statement as a whole, as there was clearly no attempt to represent the truth - indeed what he said was misleading and false and (words removed here) justice was perverted en masse in Operation Ore, due to exactly this kind of false statement. The emotive use of the term ‘child abuse’ is misleading, inflammatory and placed those accused as part of Operation Ore in danger and at risk of death, a risk that did materialise, and served to deprive the accused of justice. Clearly many children lost their fathers to the feeding frenzy of Operation Ore, which was used by the police to make repeated requests for money and by other vested interests. The false statements by senior police operatives turned Operation Ore into a which hunt, but those children who lost their fathers deserve to know who took their father's lives and why, and quoting images on a computer or the chance that there might have been some is no answer.
Operation Ore exploited children, exploited people's fears to the point that juries sought to convict the innocent rather than risk letting someone guilty go free, when it would be ridiculous to presume that someone who had illegal by age imagery on their computers was a danger to children. To suggest all Landslide subscribers had accessed child abuse images was criminal.
Of course, the notion of 'child' itself has been distorted by the police and, through Operation Ore, by the law. It would not be an issue of contention were a 17 year old child to have sex, it would not be an issue of contention were they to take a photograph of said act, but if it was on someone's computer, the law says they are guilty unless they can prove otherwise. As this would constitute a Level 3 image, the recommendation on sentencing would be custodial, with potentially 10 years in prison, life on the sex offenders register, a lifetime of harassment by the police and social services, and social exclusion, and potentially to have one’s children forcibly removed. Trevor Pearce brings in the inference of child abuse, when this is a gross distortion of the truth.
This statement should not be examined in isolation, as it fitted in to a criminal conspiracy, which included false and misleading statements being made by (the names of four senior police officers removed here), and each of these is subject to complaint. It was evident that a criminal conspiracy operated to pervert the course of justice, and the course of justice was perverted.
Landslide was a payment gateway, primarily used by adult webmasters. Two payment systems were provided, AVS allowed for payment to access a range of websites, Keyz provide payment on a per website basis. There was nothing unique about Landslide and US law enforcement alleged that the majority of websites who used the Landslide charging systems were legal adult sites.
A range of credit card fraud mechanisms were in play, both within Landslide and by some of the webmasters that used it. This was normal on the adult Internet at the time, AVS systems were used as clearing banks for credit card fraud and extreme material is the prime scam as incriminating the victim helps to mitigate complaint and charge backs.
The generic term of contentious age imagery is 'innocent images' in America. The term used by UK law enforcement is 'child pornography', yet Trevor Pearce chose to repeatedly refer to child abuse imagery, when it was subversive to do so. If he was not trying to mislead, falsely inflame and influence parliament, the opposite is evidenced and I extract some of the emotive words used in the order they were written: 'paedophilia, paedophile, paedophilia, child abuse, child abuse, child abuse, abusers, child abuse, abuse.'
In the context presented, this was clearly false incrimination by smear. It would appear that he was trying to copy the tactics used by one of the authors of the fraudulent testimony used in Operation Ore trials, Michael Mead of USPIS, who used the following terms in his original sworn statement to Sharon Girling.
child pornography, Child Pornography, Exploited Children, Crimes against Children, images of children, sexual abuse, children being subjected to sexual abuse, Child Pornography, Child Abuse Images, Child Pornography, images of children being abused, Child Pornography, paedophilic images, paedophilic images, images of child abuse, Child Pornography, Child Porn, images of children being subjected to abuse, child pornography, Child Pornographic web sites
Although the emotive term 'child pornography' is used by the police, and in Trevor Pearce's case, 'child abuse images', the public are not in general aware of what this is - indeed the investigating officer DS Peter Suggett admitted during the initial meeting over the complaints that he had been in possession and had looked at child pornography, and clearly had no problem with it. (This is the meeting to do with the investigations into the police officers)
Child pornography in the Sunday Times was reported to DS Peter Suggett in the meeting over this complaint, and he smiled and declined to investigate. Using the vocabulary of Trevor Pearce, this would be offline child abuse. The terminology of Trevor Pearce, online child abuse, is a divisive term as viewing images is not illegal, regardless, there is a clear difference to law enforcement. (as viewing images is not illegal is this true?),
Included within the websites that were illegal that used the Landslide payment system were websites that included imagery that documented criminal activity. On the adult Internet, in the context of commercial sites, this is a prime indicator of credit card fraud as extreme material is often used to incriminate the subscriber to mitigate charge backs or complaint. That happened at Landslide.
To substantiate this claim, I make reference to the Nympho website, which was a site featuring activity that was itself illegal. This was the site that Sharon Girling testified about, in the now discredited trial in Texas of Thomas Reedy.
The Nympho site had only a single subscription during its first month of operation charged through the Landslide credit clearance system, quite likely to be the webmaster testing the account. In general, people would not be interested in such material, or be willing to connect themselves evidentially with such material; hence it is a potent weapon for credit card fraud and other commercial Internet scams.
On the second month of operation, Nympho generated a webmaster income of $95,428.94. That is not a believable income stream when examined in the context of Landslide at all, indeed, this account was being used for massive credit card fraud as anyone familiar with the relevant issues would realise, indeed, Thomas Reedy himself noticed it, and supporting evidence is in the Landslide archives. (This is very confusing – it had no subscribers but a big revenue)
Is it incriminating to use the BT Internet website when a number of Landslide websites were hosted there and, more importantly, child pornography has been hosted there? I assert no. (But it was according to Jim Gamble and Trevor Pearce, apparently incriminating to view the Landslide website when the illegal imagery people were accused of accessing was NOT hosted there and the page they referred to is shown above).
Is it incriminating to have a credit card, when credit cards have been involved in crime? I would assert no.
Is credit card fraud something that is of considerable interest to police? I would assert no, and DS Peter Suggett said 'nothing to do with us' during our meeting when this issue was put to him.
To quote a victim of such fraud:
'I have just been scammed for $21500 I live in the UK and the Police are a total waste of space, they are not interested in the slightest. What the hell do you have to do in order for someone to take notice and try to help you in finding these lying cheating thieving scumbags? I have IP addresses, IP providers. internet headers, all the stuff to trace this low life back to his house, but the police don't give a dam!’
Clearly DS Peter Suggett was right.
Is it incriminating to have visited the websites owned and operated by Landslide? I would assert no and would be prepared to evidence the fact in court.
Conclusion
Trevor Pearce presented written evidence that was emotive, political, incriminating and false, clearly without intent to represent the truth. Articles exposed some of these issues in the media, in PC Pro and in the Sunday Times for example, articles based on verifiable evidence, including a read only archive that had captured the real Landslide website from where the above image was taken. If Trevor Pearce did not intend to deceive parliament, the public and the courts, why has he not now submitted the truth to parliament and to the public?
I have only touched on the issues, as it is for the investigators to have the Landslide archives independently examined by an investigator agreed with the complainant. In view of the evidence of a conspiracy, I assert it would be criminally negligent if the investigators did not secure the archives as a matter of urgency, and commence a thorough investigation, so the evidence concealed from the public and the courts is secured.
Trevor Pearce is Director General of the National Crime Squad, direct superior to Jim Gamble. He is accountable for his own actions, those of his subordinates and to the law. The public and courts were not told that people's credit cards were defrauded en masse, indeed expert for the prosecution Sam Type said in court she found no evidence of credit card fraud. How can this be when there were emails on the server that evidenced Thomas Reedy was aware of the fraud, subscribers were aware of the fraud, subscribers were redirected to child pornography when they had paid for normal legal adult access. The facts are it cannot be.
Further, as Operation Ore included false evidence, false evidence provided to the mass media, something Trevor Pearce had to be aware of, trials and guilty pleas are now unreliable. Therefore, the statistics provided at the end of the report by Trevor Pearce are just numbers. A thorough investigation would be required to establish, if even possible, the truth.
In terms of the remit, Trevor Pearce provided false testimony to the House of Commons, he knows he has been subject to a complaint for so doing for some time, and still he has not told the truth.
Were these allegations not to be false:
Why did South Wales Police fight so hard to obstruct them and refuse to investigate itself properly when this was complained about? (Where the attempts to submit the complaints began)
Why did the IPCC fight so hard to obstruct these complaints, indeed try to delay or destroy them when it had a statutory duty to investigate in the circumstances presented to them, and fail to investigate itself properly when this was complained about, indeed fail to uphold its own procedures and the law?
Why did the Service Authority to the National Crime Squad allow the remit to be so restrictive when compared to the allegations, and to be worded so divisively?
Why were what was formerly the discredited ghost squad appointed to investigate these complaints?
Why were investigating officers appointed who did not have the knowledge and technical capability of investigating the issues that are within the remit of the investigation?
Why did the case officers investigating the complaints spend much of the five hour discussion trying to destroy the remit that had already been agreed to?
Why did USPIS withdraw its claim to being in charge of Landslide after the truth started to leak out on the Internet?
Why has evidence been disappearing and why have people been attacked by various means when putting forward the truth? And are still being attacked.
Why, after I put some evidence on a discussion thread at the Daily Mail, did the whole discussion group suddenly get removed and how come that was the newspaper that carried in certain editions the sudden and premature end of Operation Ore with no mention of National Crime Squad officer's names?
Why did someone purporting to be from a daily paper phone threatening to publish an article relating to things I had not done?
Why am I regularly receiving child and animal pornography emails when this had not happened before? (I am not the only one receiving these emails).
Why are attempts being made to have defence experts excluded from court that provided exposure of the truth in relation to Landslide, with direct participation of the Metropolitan Police Service?
Complaints were in, the ringleaders of the criminal conspiracy were named, and the information that NCS had presented is false. That is verifiable fact.
No crime in the UK has left such death and destruction in its wake, though even the true death count has been concealed by the National Crime Squad.
This was hidden under the emotive heading of child abuse and protecting children. Children were often stolen in the US and the UK as part of these investigations; however, even if one presumed that children that were stolen had been abused, the head of the US side of investigations into Landslide stated explicitly that, from all their investigations, children considered at risk represented 0.004 of their investigations by proportion and no one was charged with child abuse in Operation Avalanche, the US counterpart to Operation Ore, despite that fact that in Operation Avalanche US investigators only targeted those where there was reliable evidence that they had an interest in imagery involving minors ( Only 100 people were arrested in the whole of America as part of Operation Avalanche).
Creating a witch hunt and a moral panic in concert with the NSPCC, NCH, John Carr, Childline, British Telecom, Phoenix Survivors and other partners of convenience, knowing that the welfare of the public would be destroyed, large numbers of the public corrupted and depraved, and the consequences would include death, child protection was clearly never an aim, simply a cover, indeed child protection suffered as a direct consequence of Operation Ore, the NSPCC closed down its centres as more money was available in the Operation Ore food chain for example. Police forces were overwhelmed and serious criminal offences, including rape had to be set aside. Diligent child care workers, who did care about children, within the police service and the real child care community were exasperated, as the system had changed to ignore real child abuse.
Further, Trevor Pearce uses misleading terminology. He mentions that the investigations related to online paedophilia. A paedophile is not a criminal. By classical definition, paedophile used to relate to those who are primarily or exclusively attracted to pre-pubescent children, however, effectively law enforcement had redefined the English language, now even the law has effectively changed the definition of a paedophile to the extent it includes every normal adult. I mention again, child pornography was shown to DS Peter Suggett during the interview, to do so lawfully it was presented as a crime report. He smiled and refused to investigate.
Even if one looks at the small proportion of websites that used the Landslide charging system that were illegal, this definition does not apply, as by law any image deemed erotic and deemed U18 is criminalised by the law, such imagery regularly appearing on television, in newspapers, from the Sun to the Sunday Times, despite the fact that law enforcement could place you at risk of 10 years in jail, life on the sex offenders register, losing your home, losing your children or loosing your life as a product of how these investigations are conducted. Quite a lot for something which is evidentially normal.
UK law enforcement was unprepared for the sheer volume and proliferation of child abuse images on the net, which resulted in the NCS being asked to review Operation ORE on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Home Office and the wider UK law enforcement community. Trevor Pearce
This was a highly political and emotive statement, it was entirely misleading and, perhaps most relevant of all, dangerous. Lives were lost to such inflammatory statements, even murdered. It is also relevant to mention, had a real review taken place as Trevor Pearce asserted, then it would not have been necessary to enter these complaints. No question, the treatment of Orees, amounted to torture - psychological torture is internationally recognised and illegal by UK law and International convention. False statements such as these were part of that torture and psychological torture is generally recognised as more potent, the real death count in Operation Ore evidence of that fact.
In terms of contentious age imagery, the majority of such imagery does not contain a victim or abuse. Extreme material on an Internet subscription site is normally related to credit card fraud, as it was at Landslide. Vertical interest groups involved in illegal by age imagery, as the law applies in the UK, tend to operate in closed groups, using stealth and encryption. They would laugh at the thought of using a pay per view system, and would simply view it as a way to lose your money. The private comments were researched and endorse this statement.
Operation Ore even changed the law, literally criminalising life when the SOA 2003 was introduced by David Blunkett, automatically classifying newspapers and television stations as child pornographers, all men as paedophiles, and all those accused by the National Crime Squad presumed guilty, in direct contravention of the HRA.
An awful lot of damage, all hidden behind lies and false statements. Trevor Pearce played a key role, had the most senior responsibility (excluding Bill Hughes who is subject to a complaint currently on appeal at the IPCC). It is the task of investigators to evidence the truth, report on part (b) of the remit, and act and report on any criminality that is evidenced or found as appropriate.
It should of course be noted, that trials are still outstanding, including incitement, where charges are proffered despite the lack of evidence of an offence, other than a credit card transaction and the false information presented to the mass media and the courts. It is a legal technicality which is perhaps beyond the scope of this remit, however, the incitement charge itself is fundamentally flawed. As most cases were based on imagery which was the result of incidental download, following the announcement of a pending law (now active), the SOA 2003, incitement was used to provide an incriminating link to Landslide and thus Operation Ore. It appears doubtful that such a charge can be legitimately made, but due to the fury of a manufactured witch hunt, numerous legal issues were overlooked as people tend to believe the police know something and tell the truth. Operation Ore proves otherwise.
Incitement flaw
Arthur Blair
In R v Bowden (1999), the Court of Appeal held that copying a file containing data that represented an indecent photograph of a child is sufficient to amount to the offence of "making an indecent photograph". The words "to make" were held to have their everyday meaning of "to cause to exist" and were held to apply to "copies of photographs" as well as "data stored on computer disk".
This meant that copying a computer file (i.e. locally on the same computer, or from a remote computer to one's own - i.e. downloading) was sufficient to commit the s.1(1)(a) "making" offence.
This had the unfortunate implication that the police committed the offence when they copied a suspect’s hard drive. Parliament recognised this "deficiency" and enacted an amendment in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 that created a defence.
If, by downloading a file from a webpage to my computer screen, I commit the offence of "making an indecent photograph", then I commit the same offence if I upload the file to the web server hosting that page. Since the email system works in exactly the same way as the web (BSD Unix-derived sockets & TCP/IP), if I send an email with such a file attached, I perform the same actions and therefore commit the same offence. I MAKE rather than DISTRIBUTE.
Therefore, it was not possible for anyone at Landslide to DISTRIBUTE OR SHOW indecent images of children (unless, of course, we posit that Landslide subscribers upped and went to Texas to observe a screen at Landslide's offices, or be handed a CD).
If they transferred any images to their subscribers, they would have been guilty of MAKING.
In Fitzmaurice [1983] QB 1083, the Court of Appeal stated obiter that the principles in Haughton v Smith [1975] AC 476 and DPP v Nock [1978] AC 979, should apply to incitement so that where an offence is factually impossible a person will not be liable for incitement to commit it - if X incites Y to kill Z, but Z is already dead, X will not be guilty of incitement to murder (Sirat (1985) 83 Cr App R 41).
To be guilty of incitement, the accused must intend that THE OFFENCE INCITED be committed (by the persons incited!) and that any consequence in the actus rea (guilty act) result.
The actus reus of distribution is that a person parts with possession of an indecent photograph to, or exposes or offers it for acquisition by another person.
"Exposes or offers for acquisition by another person" is a technical term and does not mean "show" or "advertise" (since those acts are covered by other words in the act). However, it MIGHT be argued that placing an indecent photograph in a place where another person can collect it amounts to "exposing it for acquisition", in which case a person placing the image on a website might be said to be distributing. This would be very arguable, since it means that such a person commits two offences - MAKING and DISTRIBUTION, where the less serious offence is dependant solely on the existence of a guilty mind, i.e. where an image has been uploaded to a website the offence of MAKING has been committed, but if that person uploaded with the INTENTION that others download (also MAKING!), he commits a further offence. This would be punishing merely the "guilty mind" of intending that others see the photograph. It would then be a matter of the discretion of the prosecutor whether to prosecute for MAKING or DISTRIBUTING - and such discretion is a fine thing... BUT where it is exercised solely to avoid the unfavourable consequence created by the existence of another crime, that could (very?) arguably be said to be acting against the will of Parliament. A person uploading an image to a web server has definitely committed the offence of MAKING, but the prosecutor chooses NOT to press that charge because it is inconvenient. "Justice" should not be a matter of convenience.
We are back to the situation where a person uploading a file to a website commits the making offence (of course, this has itself to be argued, but the courts should be graceful enough to accept one result of a decision even where the result is not quite what was intended, when it accepted another result the same decision because that WAS convenient).
In Fitzmaurice, the Court of Appeal held that incitement to commit an offence could not be committed where it was impossible to commit the offence alleged to have been incited. Accordingly, it was necessary to analyse the evidence to decide the precise offence which the defendant was alleged to have incited and whether it was possible to commit that offence.
IF I communicate with Landslide and ask them to send me pictures, then I incite MAKING.
IF I subscribe to their website, I do NOT INTEND THAT THEY DISTRIBUTE. To be guilty of inciting distribution, I MUST INTEND that they will receive my communication and that my communication will cause them to DISTRIBUTE images. I fully expect that I will be given a password and that I MYSELF will then connect to the appropriate websites and download the images MYSELF (thereby committing the MAKING offence).
Therefore I do not have the requisite intention to be guilty of incitement.
The gloss on the decision in R (On the application of O) v Coventry Magistrates’ Court [2004] is that the applicant had incited the operators of Landslide in that his subscription had the effect of encouraging those behind the website to continue their business.
This is to treat incitement as an absolute offence, which it certainly is NOT. Incitement is an offence purely and absolutely of intent. The prosecution must prove that the accused contacted the person said to be incited, and that he intended that person to commit the offence which it is alleged he incited. It is not sufficient to show that some action of the accused might have encouraged someone to continue to operate a business. That is not the same thing. Furthermore, to be guilty of incitement, the communication must have come to the attention of the person said to be incited. Whether they ACT or not (i.e. whether they commit the offence you INTEND them to commit) is irrelevant (but remember we have (I think!) a good argument that says they cannot commit the offence we are said to incite - as long as we are accused of inciting distribution!). If I put money into your bank account via an automated system, it is NOT PROVED that my "communication" came to your attention.
This line of argument is apparently agreed with in the commentary in [2004] Crim LR 948.
And this is without the court being presented with the argument that Landslide were not operating the websites that are ALLEGED to have contained indecent images!
Jim Bates responds
Hi all,
I am aware of the ongoing debate about the question of incitement within Operation ORE cases, with particular relevance to the vexed question of 'distribution'.
Since 'to distribute' is a transitive verb implying direct action to send copies of material/goods/services to others such that they then have possession of it, it plainly cannot be applied in its simple form to the placing of picture on a website. After all, if no one visits the site then no distribution has taken place.
However, it may be argued that by placing pictures on a website for people to view (and thereby collect) the effect is the same.
With the Landslide operation, the subscription service was not involved in manipulating images for distribution but simply in facilitating access to the images for money.
Strictly speaking the Landslide subscription service had not, could not and did not distribute images. A subscription was not a request to distribute images and could not therefore be interpreted as an incitement to do so.
Looked at from the webmasters' point of view, they appeared to be guilty of a) possession and b) making, but not distribution. Their incentive was money and they possessed/made the images in such a way as to make them available for others to see. This may be described as 'possession for show'.
Each webmaster was incited to do this by the money coming from Landslide - so Landslide were guilty of 'incitement to possess for show'. It is then a simple step to argue that subscribers were inciting Landslide to incite the webmasters to 'possess for show'.
To a jury this would seem extremely convoluted and so the prosecuting authorities sought to simplify the charge to the technical unsupportable 'incitement to distribute'.
I understand that incitement per se is a common law offence (i.e. not statutory) and as such it means whatever the prosecution says it means. This careless manipulation of the English language in the face of technicalities which the judiciary clearly cannot grasp is only one of the crimes they have committed throughout this shameful operation.
Attempting to base criminal charges on nothing more than the use of credit card information (which is unbelievably easy to steal) is Orwellian in the extreme!
XXX's comments about the attempted disqualification of AAA and BBB highlight the current methods by which the prosecution are attempting to defend the indefensible. Attacking the messenger because you do not like the message is the action of a scoundrel and a cheat.
I do have a PowerPoint presentation showing exactly how easy it would have been for the webmasters to steal ALL of the relevant details of subscribers (The Editor also has a copy). I am happy to make this available to any genuine defence team facing incitement charges.
One final point did occur to me though - since both Sam Type and Sharon Girling are now shown to have lied about the evidence in this case (proof and relevant statements on file), maybe the defence to apply to have them excluded as witnesses of any sort, expert or otherwise. It happened with (another witness – name removed) and similar rules should apply.
Hope this helps.
Jim Bates
Reply from Arthur Blair
Hello everyone,
I am still unhappy about the use of the incitement charges. Incitement is NOT a crime of strict liability, but it is being used as if it were. If it were such a crime, to be guilty of it, it would be sufficient to make any communication with Landslide that could be said to be an encouragement for them to continue their business.
But the important element of incitement is what the person doing the inciting intends will happen as a result.
Jim Bates wrote: Since 'to distribute' is a transitive verb implying direct action to send copies of material/goods/services to others such that they then have possession of it, it plainly cannot be applied in its simple form to the placing of picture on a website. After all, if no one visits the site then no distribution has taken place.
Section 1(2) of the Protection of Children Act 1978 provides that "a person is to be regarded as distributing an indecent photograph if he parts with possession of it to, or exposes or offers it for acquisition by another person."
This has always bothered me because I have not found an adequate explanation of it in any of the glosses and it superficially appears that "exposes for acquisition" appears to mean reveal (or show) and "offer for acquisition" appears to mean "do you want to have this?" The former would be covered by s.1(1)(b) but the latter would appear to be insufficient to constitute an advertisement. However, the mischief would definitely be covered by section 1(1)(c) ("possession with intent to distribute or show") and it is hardly the case that a loophole has been revealed.
The only sensible explanation I have found for this subsection is that it is there to overcome the situation of "offers to treat".
However, very similar wording is used in other Acts - for example the City of Westminster Act 1999, which provides that "trading only as a news vendor" is not to be considered as street trading so long as "the only articles sold, exposed or offered for sale are current newspapers or periodicals".
This gives us an idea that an item "exposed for acquisition" is one placed in a place (shelf?) from which it can be taken, and an item "offered for acquisition" is possibly behind a counter and not immediately available.
Jim Bates wrote: However, it may be argued that by placing pictures on a website for people to view (and thereby collect) the effect is the same.
The order is really "collect (and thereby view)" - but it is important to remember that, by the Court of Appeal's own logic, the act of downloading is an act of "causing to exist".
So uploading to a website would appear to be "exposing for acquisition", i.e. making available for someone to acquire. This might be thought of as being the same as placing an indecent photograph in an agreed place so that another person can collect it.
However, uploading to a web server consists of precisely the same actions as downloading from the web server - therefore the offence is "making". Distribution (by uploading) can be distinguished from making (by uploading) since distribution requires the intent that another person will acquire the image. In such event, a person who has uploaded an image to a web server will be guilty of 2 offences - making AND distribution - on the basis of the same facts.
But a person downloading an image from a web server will be guilty of the offence of "making"... The Court of Appeal had the opportunity to confirm that downloading was an act of "taking possession" and it chose not to do so - it held rather that such an act was "making". It may be inferred from this that "making" (by uploading) is NOT distribution since there is NO acquisition of the image by another person. (What of the case where the operator of the web server knows what type of content is being uploaded? The complications and obscurities introduced by this "making" decision appear to be unending!)
Jim Bates wrote: Looked at from the webmasters' point of view, they appeared to be guilty of a) possession and b) making, but not distribution. Their incentive was money and they possessed/made the images in such a way as to make them available for others to see. This may be described as 'possession for show'.
If it is accepted that uploading to a web server is "making (by uploading)" (and I do not see any reason to fault the logic), then the person who uploaded the images cannot be held guilty of a section 1(1)(c) offence of "possession with intent to distribute or show", since no distribution or showing takes place and nor is there any intention to distribute or show.
The above is a rather long-winded way of saying that the offences allegedly incited are not "distribution".
Jim Bates wrote: To a jury this would seem extremely convoluted and so the prosecuting authorities sought to simplify the charge to the technical unsupportable 'incitement to distribute'.
The charge is technically unsupportable AND also linguistically unsupportable. We appear to have reached the stage of saying that juries are not capable of dealing with extremely long and complicated fraud trial, but no one is (yet) saying that juries are too stupid to handle (relatively small) problems of definition and logic.
Jim Bates wrote: Each webmaster was incited to do this by the money coming from Landslide - so Landslide were guilty of 'incitement to possess for show'. It is then a simple step to argue that subscribers were inciting Landslide to incite the webmasters to 'possess for show'.
We are, once again, at the stage of considering the offence of incitement.
Jim Bates wrote: I understand that incitement per se is a common law offence (i.e. not statutory) and as such it means whatever the prosecution says it means.
That incitement is a common law offence does not quite mean that it is whatever the prosecution says it means - it is, rather, what the courts have agreed it means in the past, or can be persuaded that it means now.
The formulation repeated in the report of the Select Committee on Religious Offences in England and Wales is that for there to be incitement there has to be both some form of communication with a person whom it is intended to incite and, in that communication, some attempt to persuade or encourage that person to commit a criminal offence. To be guilty of incitement one must normally intend that the offence that is being incited will be committed.
In exactly the same way that a subscription to Landslide is not a request to distribute images and should not therefore be interpreted as an incitement to do so, nor is payment by Landslide to the webmasters incitement to make, distribute or show. It is payment to the webmaster as a result of the webmasters' use of Landslides' Adult Verification System - further evidence is needed to introduce some element that would show that Landslide intended those webmasters to sell indecent photographs of children. Since the majority of the sites using Landslide's AVS sold only adult pornography, it is not proven that Landslide knew that those sites allegedly selling child images were in fact so doing. This argument has the same formulation as the argument that says that a Landslide subscription was incitement to distribute. It is, however, not backed up by any evidence to support the charge. From the available evidence, Landslide cannot be said to have intended that the webmasters sell child porn. Therefore Landslide did not incite.
Regards
Operation Ore News and evidence
The original false evidence
We dispute the above and present the new evidence
Examples of fraud in Operation Ore
The dirty tricks campaign against the messengers
The complaints and allegations of corruption against the police.
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