Inquisition 21
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Operation Ore News and evidence
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The collapse of Operation Ore and its fallout
Examples of fraud in Operation Ore
At a recent Operation Ore trial, the defendant, (whom we shall call Oree here) was charged with inciting or attempting to incite Thomas Reedy and/or others to distribute indecent images of children (Thomas Reedy was the American imprisoned in the Landslide case). In spite of convincing alibi evidence, Oree was found guilty of two charges of incitement and three of attempted incitement. Sentencing was deferred for reports to be prepared.
During the trial, evidence was presented by amongst others, Michael Mead (a US Postal Inspection Service officer), WDC Sharon Girling (an officer in the National Crime Squad) and Dr. Samantha Type (the prosecution expert). Mead testified (via video link from Texas) that he had only seen the infamous 'Click Here Child Porn' banner during the end of April 1999 and not after 1st May 1999. He further admitted that not all the computers involved had been seized.
Girling testified that she, Webber and Underhill (expert witnesses) collected copies of the Landslide computers on 4th October 2002. It was established that the copying procedure used a program called 'DITU' which was co-written by Type. The accuracy and reliability of this program was not established and there appeared to be questions concerning the evidential continuity of the Landslide material between September 1999 and October 2002.
In her written evidence, Type had stated that she ‘copied selective data from the [Landslide] hard drives onto CD-ROM’ and subsequently sealed these in evidence bags. One of these exhibits was NCS/1008, described as the ‘Links database in Access format’. It was shown by the defence and eventually admitted by Type that this exhibit contained references to her own simulation web-sites 'Spitfire Heaven' and 'Hurricane Heaven', both of which were created well after the Landslide material had been seized. Additionally, an entry with a password of 'yourenicked' and an address of 'Letsby Avenue' was noticed by the defence and not denied by Type. This peculiarly English humour suggests tampering by someone with a UK police background and it therefore appears that this key exhibit and Type’s description of its origin were wrong.
Girling confirmed that she had copied a quantity of email documents from the material seized at Landslide and it was also confirmed that many more were present on one or more of the Landslide computers. These emails complained of charges made by Landslide for services not purchased by the complainants. An email dated August 1999, from Thomas Reedy to the webmasters stating that he was concerned about the level of chargebacks was also presented. It indicated that he was investigating the possibility of fraud and would be withholding their payments until he had completed this enquiry.
Under cross-examination, Type confirmed her assertion that she had not found any evidence of fraud. However, when she was asked if she had actually looked for any, she replied ‘No’. She also indicated that in her opinion, theft of the personal data used to subscribe to Landslide would be very difficult and complex. Furthermore, she felt that having gone to such complicated lengths, it was unlikely that the thief would use the information for something as trivial as subscribing to child pornography. It was much more likely, she thought, that he would purchase high-value items like luxury electrical items (for example).
Prosecuting Counsel Mr Bown, in his final address to the jury, placed heavy emphasis on these two points.
Observations
Girling is on record (statement 23/01/03) as having seen and selected many of the documentary emails for possible use in UK prosecutions. While the existence of the emails was disclosed in various exhibits, their nature and content were not. She should therefore have been aware of the possibility of fraud at a very early stage in the operation.
Type's admission that she had not looked for evidence of fraud has been described by a forensics specialist as ‘astounding’. This is in spite of the existence of many emails (number unknown, but possibly thousands) complaining about charges/renewals made without the cardholder's permission, now known to be present in both documentary and electronic form. This vital information came too late for the defence to react to and open new lines of enquiry based upon the possibility of massive fraud either by Landslide themselves or by their webmasters.
Type's assertion that theft of personal data would be difficult and complex is simply not true. In fact it is alarmingly easy and this can be demonstrated. Her opinion on how a thief would be likely to use such information is unsupported speculation, and has been seen by some to be apparently framed to support the prosecution case that no fraud occurred.
These are the cracks in the Operation Ore fiasco that successive defence teams have been looking for.
Let's now assemble some facts:
1. It is known that certain websites showed extraordinary increases in income in an incredibly short time.
2. It is known that the credit card processing facility was withdrawn from Landslide for ‘excessive chargebacks’.
3. It is known that chargebacks generally reflect fraudulent use of credit card information.
4. It is known that Thomas Reedy himself suspected fraud. Probably amongst his webmasters.
5. It is known that there were hundreds and possibly thousand of dissatisfied customers.
6. It is known that the customer complaints included a) charges for services not purchased, b) unauthorised renewals and c) subscriptions to AVS which had been redirected to and charged as KEYZ.
7. It seems that Girling had seen these complaints and yet had not disclosed their nature to the defence. This is in direct contravention of disclosure provisions in the Criminal Procedures and Investigation Act 1996, and as case officer she would be culpable if this is so.
8. It has been suggested that in her statement of 05/06/03, Type was not correct when she said that she had ‘copied selective data from the hard drives’.
9. It can be demonstrated that Type’s assertion that electronic identity theft was difficult and complex is not true.
10. It is known that the National Crime Squad have strenuously resisted even the simplest disclosure of non-sensitive information from the Landslide computers.
11. It can be demonstrated that theft of the personal information found on the Landslide database is so easy that it can be accomplished from scratch within minutes.
From 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 above it seems likely that some sort of fraud was being perpetrated on Landslide customers. If so, this would instantly explain 1 above.
If a webmaster stole the information by spoofing the AVS sign-up page and then used it to subscribe to his KEYZ site, the results would be exactly as described above.
Complaints that subscribers were given KEYZ access after what they thought were AVS subscriptions are suggestive of a slightly different method of fraud.
Regardless of how it was done, Girling must now explain why she did not disclose the nature of the email material and Type needs to answer this and the other questions about what she apparently knew.
The refusal by the NCS to disclose even the most basic of information (for example a simple list of files and folders with respective dates, times and permissions) suggests that more senior officers were also aware that there was something to hide.
We can produce a PowerPoint presentation illustrating the two methods of identity theft mentioned above; however, such publication could lay us open to charges that we are showing people how to steal information. This is another example of how our hands are tied in trying to clear the names of innocent people wrongly accused, and especially in trying to publish evidence of police and prosecution corruption. The laws themselves are framed to suppress certain truths.
It will be interesting to see what the prosecution will make of all this at the next Operation Ore. We now offer it to Orees and their defence lawyers and we have much more on the way. Now that we know that Type did not look for evidence of fraud and Girling appears to have been blind to it, it seems that not only is Operation Ore finished, but there could be considerable repercussions for those involved.
Another recent Ore case analysed
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burke
One of our Operation Ore analysts was himself wrongfully accused under Operation Ore, but escaped as the evidence against him collapsed when the police found nothing illegal with which to convict him. He still had his life virtually ruined by the police and their actions. Instead of going into hiding like most, he has been fighting back and helping others wrongfully accused. Here he analyses a recent case with which he was not directly involved.
He chooses, not one of the more outrageous examples of a miscarriage of justice but one where where the evidence against the accused appeared overwhelming and he still took it to pieces.
Two takes on one story
By an Oree
Take 1 - the original story
A Llanidloes (Wales) man has been jailed for eight months after he was convicted by a jury of possessing and making 90 indecent images of children, by downloading them off the internet. Judge John Rogers QC, sitting at Mold Crown Court, told defendant James Ansell that he had been convicted on overwhelming evidence, and that despite this he had fought the case to the bitter end. In addition to the jail sentence, Ansell was ordered to report to the police as a sex offender for the next ten years. The judge said that such offences were extremely serious and provided a market for children to be subjected to sexual abuse so that such photographs could be taken.
"If it was not for people like you, children would not be made to take part in such indecent acts with adults and even animals," he said. "The purpose of the law is to protect children from such abuse." He added that it was clear that Ansell had persistently engaged in such behaviour and went on to download the indecent images even after a friend had expressed disapproval. "Only a prison sentence is appropriate," he said. He said that he would not adjourn the case for a pre-sentence report but would immediately proceed to sentence when the jury returned with their unanimous verdicts on four sample charges of making indecent images and five charges of possessing indecent images.
Prosecuting barrister, Andrew Thomas, told how the defendant's then girlfriend was upset to find child porn images on his computer when she went to switch it off one night and called the police. Student, Emma Roberts, who has since had his child, had spent the evening with him at his then home in Picton Street, Llanidloes, listening to music on the computer. Ansell (29) had some wine and went to bed, and she then went to switch off the computer, but came across the images. She left the house without confronting him, and, after speaking to a friend, reported what she had seen to the police.
Officers went around to his home in Llanidloes the following day, in April of 2004, and arrested him. They found 90 indecent images of children on the computer - 40 level one showing named children in sexual poses, 11 level two showing children touching themselves or each other; 23 level three showing children being touched sexually by adults; 15 level four showing adults in penetrative sex acts with children, and one level five, the most serious, involving a degree of sadism towards a child. Ansell, of Gwaelod y Bryn, Llanidloes, denied all charges and said that while he looked at adult porn on his computer, out of boredom, he knew nothing about the child porn images. Either someone else had downloaded them, or it had been caused by a computer virus, he claimed. He told defending barrister Simon Mills that he had not surfed the net looking for indecent images, had not created the file in which they were kept, and did not even know that they were there. But Mr Thomas said that it was the prosecution case that Ansell lived alone, and had a password for his computer which meant that only he could use it. He said that it was significant that an expert who examined the computer found that some of the pornographic images had been accessed on the day of his arrest, when it was the prosecution case that he would have been alone at home.
A total of 51 images had been deliberately saved in a folder named 'crap' and such titles as 'paedo child lover' and 'lolita' had been given to them. Others were found in files in the computer's memory. The expert could also show that certain web sites had been visited and search words, including 'US lolitas' and 'local teenies' had been used. It was the prosecution case that an old school friend of the defendant had previously been on the computer with the defendant on an earlier occasion, looking for Star Trek files using a shared files software system. The friend, Mr Bailey, went to look at the Star Trek files that had been downloaded, saw some child porn images, but the defendant told him that they were there by mistake. But when it happened a second time Mr Bailey insisted that the defendant should kill them off. He had not told the police at that stage but Miss Roberts, who found the images later, had gone to the police. The court heard that at the time in April the defendant had no previous convictions, but that he had since been convicted of drink driving and driving while disqualified.
Take 2 - with comments inline
Text
A Llanidloes man has been jailed for eight months after he was convicted by a jury of possessing and making 90 indecent images of children, by downloading them off the internet. Judge John Rogers QC, sitting at Mold Crown Court, told defendant James Ansell that had he had been convicted on overwhelming evidence, and that he had fought the case to the bitter end.
Comment
It is a common myth that everyone pleads innocent. Generally, that is not so at all. In these cases, one is very likely to plead guilty when innocent, and that is likely to be the legal advice. Fighting to the bitter end is a very strong indication of innocence. If this case goes to appeal, and he gets a real defence expert, I fully expect a different picture to emerge. In the present climate, he would be hard-pressed to get an appeal. From what is presented in the article, the evidence is not apparent: but indeed it also points towards innocence.
Text
In addition to the jail sentence, Ansell was ordered to report to the police as a sex offender for the next ten years.
Comment
This will limit his ability to obtain justice, and, from experience, if he raises a challenge, he could even be recalled to prison. For example, one Oree I have spoken to, someone falsely convicted without question, was classified as dangerous on assessments because he was researching Operation Ore to clear his name. He is in big trouble for life, but potentially in much more trouble if he contests.
Text
The judge said that such offences were extremely serious and provided a market for children to be subjected to sexual abuse so that such photographs could be taken. "If it was not for people like you, children would not be made to take part in such indecent acts with adults and even animals," he said.
Comment
This in part follows on from the propaganda from Operation Ore. The argument was that credit card people were paying and therefore promoting abuse. As it happens, only a very small number did so, as the National Crime Squad knows, but the facts, i.e. the truth, should not be ignored, no matter how difficult the subject. The images on the small number of such sites that hooked into Landslide were scooped up from Usenet, i.e. the public domain. No one was abused because of Landslide subscribers. Horrific things for many to discuss at all, but justice is not served hot. There is no general pattern of people being abused to satisfy commercial subscribers - that is prosecution propaganda, and I have only come across one instance of this in two years of extensive research. It is a ploy used by the FBI to gain convictions; it was used in Operation Ore, but in practice it is a myth. People who are abusers often have an interest in imagery, and, via the Internet, images are exchanged in a group, from where they often end up spreading out into the public domain. Even the true story of Wonderland is of academic value and illuminating for those that have a real interest in truth. The primary commercial value of such material is as scam material, used by rogue webmasters and rogue law enforcement agencies, the former being the case I believe in relation to this story.
Text
"The purpose of the law is to protect children from such abuse."
Comment
Having misdefined what is really happening, this is a very ignorant statement. The law is not there to protect children from abuse; in fact, the very dramatic statements and fear created by such emotive statements are encouraging child abuse. Most abuse occurs by people within the extended family or the childcare system. Here we are talking about a computer surfer. To suggest someone who had such imagery on their computers was a child abuser is a thoroughly ignorant statement. Operation Ore in Scotland is now finished. 700 people were hit there, and out of the Landslide subscribers there wasn't a single case of abuse. Quite a large empirical dataset, but even the NSPCC, who have abandoned child support to work with the police, have research that concurs with the judgement I put here. Police spokespeople have asserted one in five were abusers, Jim Gamble has gone far further. All evidentially lies. I will add a little twist by way of example. For some time, where I knew people's character and was repairing their computers, I had a quick examination of their surfing trends by subject. A large proportion of men looked at homosexual websites. It is a facet of human nature to look at things they have no inclination to do, just as people crash in their cars while observing a previous car accident. I was actually surprised at the results, as I thought I was just a male of the species, but did not share this inclination. That is human nature, the gool factor if you like. I should think people at the IPCC would want to watch the shooting videos from the London underground murder, for reasons which are not investigative. Curiosity is natural, though my own experiments had in effect, evidenced, that to analyse someone's mind by what was on the computer is about as stupid a thing as you could do.
Text
It was clear that Ansell had persistently engaged in such behaviour and went on to download the indecent images even after a friend had expressed disapproval. "Only a prison sentence is appropriate," he said.
Comment
I have been called out to repair computers several times in one day. I often turn up at someone's house to find husband and wife arguing. The computer breaks down because adult sites are often loaded with malice and the wife didn't even know that the husband looked at adult sites until they needed the computer repaired. It is part of the female psyche to treat the issue of the husband surfing porn as if it were a threat. That trend is changing, because women are now increasingly surfing adult sites. Disapproval is a small issue. I have arrived in the middle of marriage breaking arguments and spent as much time on marriage counselling as on fixing the computers. Human psychology is something we can all understand. If I was in a pub and a good-looking woman came in, I would know straightaway. All the women would look at her also, as it is often the primitive territorial protective mechanism that kicks in. A good looking woman is a threat. In reality, of course, it is nonsense. I have seen women that would have massive appeal, but I love the people I love regardless of their shape or size, hair colour or whatever. In fact, one girlfriend walked kind of strange, and I loved her for that too. It is a big point not to confuse cyberspace with real life.
Text
The judge said that he would not adjourn the case for a pre-sentence report, but would immediately proceed to sentence when the jury returned with their unanimous verdicts on four sample charges of making indecent images and five charges of possessing indecent images.
Comment
Operation Ore and the lies that went with it have ruled out the likelihood of a fair trial. I have looked at numerous cases where people had professional and competent defence, and their innocence had quite literally been proven in court, and the judge had clearly even believed it likely the man was innocent, but the poison of images being shown to a jury on top of the history of these cases led to a guilty verdict popping out of a nowhere. Again, human psychology is being abused. You show an obscene image of this kind, and it is likely to disgust to such a level on first exposure - it is an emotional catharsis to blame someone for it, and close to hand is of course the accused. Clearly, juries should either be educated before going into court, or they should not be allowed to view things which are not relevant to the case. How the images got there is the only relevant fact.
Text
Prosecuting barrister, Andrew Thomas, told how the defendant's then girlfriend was upset to find child porn images on his computer when she went to switch it off one night, and then called the police. Student Emma Roberts, who has since had his child, had spent the evening with him at his then home in Picton Street, Llanidloes, listening to music on the computer.
Comment
Such is the fanfare that an image of this kind is like a nuclear weapon. It terrifies people. Fact is that you couldn't even estimate how many of such images are on the Internet at a specific point in time. What is on the Internet will end up on people's computers whether they request it or not and Operation Ore provides huge evidence of that fact, a fact that the police are very well aware of, though they have told very different stories to the media and to court. Who is to presume the man would not have been upset to find the images on the computer? As adult surfing is still generally a male preserve, a woman is likely to be far more upset.
I should mention how dangerous ignorance is. Two years ago, the two letters, 'CP', terrified me. Now I don't care if I have no such images, or a thousand on my computer. That would shock a lot of people, but the context is that I am not someone who has an entertainment interest in any such images, but I am on the Internet on a permanent broadband connection. If someone wanted to put such imagery on my computer, it is not beyond the wit of man to do such a thing and it happens rather a lot. BT say they are getting dialler reports at the rate of 300 per day. Imagine how often it really happens, and diallers typically deposit extreme material.
Text
Ansell (29) had some wine and went to bed. She went to switch off the computer, but came across the images. She left the house without confronting him, and, after speaking to a friend, reported what she had seen to the police. Officers went around to his home in Llanidloes the following day, in April of last year, and arrested him. They found 90 indecent images of children on the computer - 40 level one showing named children in sexual poses, 11 level two showing children touching themselves or each other; 23 level three showing children being touched sexually by adults; 15 level four showing adults in penetrative sex acts with children, and one level five, the most serious involving a degree of sadism towards a child.
Comment
The levels are part of sentencing guidelines, and of course the police love referring to the most extreme images. Broadly speaking, this is nonsense in relation to a computer user. If you go to a web page, you will get what is on the page, and typically you won't know what that is in advance. Simple nudist pictures are the most common, the extreme imagery much more rare, so the distribution just stated largely conforms to statistical likelihood, i.e. mathematical probability rather than choice. If someone wanted to have 500 level 5 images, they would probably have far more level 1 images than this chap. The sentencing guidelines are a product of vested interests, i.e. commercial gain. Three people click a link, one finds a picture of the Queen, one a level one image, and one finds a level 5 image. People should not be guilty by degree by dint of what they have when their actions were the same. There could of course be 50 thumbnails on one page. Of course, it suits the vested interests to create this environment: the more you had the worse you are, the worse you had the more of a danger you are. Remember, what I have just said does not for a moment indicate guilt at all.
Text
Ansell of Gwaelod y Bryn, Llanid-loes, denied all charges and said that while he looked at adult porn on his computer out of boredom, he knew nothing about the child porn images. Either someone else had downloaded them, or it had been caused by a computer virus, he claimed.
Comment
Most people admitted to things they were not guilty of. You are punished in court for not pleading guilty, and to plead innocent is very dangerous, regardless of whether you are, during Operation Ore or afterwards. You are unlikely to have the prospect of a fair trial, and you are treated as if you are in denial by not claiming ownership of what is on your computer. Complete nonsense of course, but that is the world that has now been created and prosecutors in the US, UK, Canada and Australia just love this stuff and some of them are pumping it round.
Text
He told defending barrister Simon Mills that he had not surfed the net looking for indecent images, had not created the file in which they were kept, and did not even know that they were there.
Comment
That would be true in most instances. A folder doesn't just appear, so the most likely cause would be malicious code. Often when I visit a case, by the time the computer has broken down, there are all kinds of malicious code on it. Strangely, that has saved quite a few people in the States. If a keylogger has been installed to steal your credit card details, it can also evidence your innocence. Police forensics in the UK is typically based on a pessimistic evaluation of the pictures. If anyone suggests to the contrary, I have evidence of far worse practices.
Text
But Mr Thomas said that it was the prosecution case that Ansell lived alone, and had a password for his computer which meant that only he could use it.
Comment
He lived alone? Nice touch. Atmospherics, but this is of course a court case.
Only an idiot or a liar would say such things. If you are on the Internet, courtesy of the programming prowess of Microsoft, anyone can use your computer. A young kid even penetrated the top American defence computers - literally child's play. Some people do it for fun, some for malice and some for profit. Often malice uses an exploit (a software vulnerability), but quite often it cons the user. I always find it embarrassing to see what people have done as it seems so stupid, but you don't expect to be attacked by your own computer. Pop ups can appear, even after the recent Microsoft fixes, and unless you click OK, you can't close the things. You click OK and that is it, you have allowed malicious code onto your computer and the code is in control, not you. Microsoft Windows has never ever been secure. Mr Thomas was not therefore telling the truth. We could probably have put some images on your computer while you read this, but we have no such malicious intentions.
It is perhaps appropriate to blow away some popular myths. Computer Forensics is not an exact science. It doesn't promise you a history of the code that was running on the computer. For example, I could run a program on a computer that incriminates the user in such a way that Encase would not detect how it really happened. Some may say otherwise, but I urge caution to them, for programming is my field, and I used to bypass or repair parts of the OS to solve problems for clients or deliver functionality that wasn't available, and, if I was so inclined, I could actually damage the hardware via software control. The reality is that in programming you can do more than the user can do, not less. Fiddling forensics is not a serious challenge.
Text
It was significant that an expert who examined the computer found that some of the pornographic images had been accessed on the day of his arrest, when it was the prosecution case that he would have been alone at home.
Comment
To those who don't know about computing and forensics, that sounds incriminating. What is reported is of no significance at all. The access date on a file is a hair trigger, and it is very interesting that the prosecutor said what he said. Opening Explorer with the history up, would automatically change the access dates, though I would of course like to know the times, to be sure that this happened when the accused had the computer. Very telling is the word pornographic. A jury might assume this is incriminating: pornography is generally viewed as entirely legal. Switching the computer on will modify access dates, so nothing was really said of value. This appears to be an attempt to mislead the court. So easy to assume the chap was looking at cp, but actually this says nothing at all.
Text
A total of 51 images had been deliberately saved in a folder named 'crap' and such titles as 'paedo child lover' and 'lolita' had been given to them. Others were found in files in the computer¡¯s memory.
Comment
That might sound a lot. It is typical of scams to use expressive file names. If malicious code is involved, it is common to create folders. Dialler scams for example tend to seek to incriminate the user to stop him complaining. You will often see this in Internet Dumping for example.
Text
The expert could also show that certain web sites had been visited and search words, including 'US lolitas' and 'local teenies' had been used.
Comment
That is very interesting. No mention of how those search terms were used, and I doubt they were. It is a typical prosecution ploy to misrepresent such facts. What is critical is the images had not been tied to the websites, so the prosecution has not made a case. A case requires knowing how it happened, and who was responsible. Saying the man was alone at home sounds good evidence to some no doubt, but he was online with a few million other users at the time.
Text
It was the prosecution case that an old school friend of the defendant had previously been on the computer with the defendant on an earlier occasion, looking for Star Trek files using a shared files software system. Mr Bailey went to look at the Star Trek files that had been downloaded, saw some child porn images, and the defendant told him that it had been a mistake.
Comment
Operation Ore researchers would laugh at this one and I won't bother to explain it in detail. It is a bit like a story started by USPIS when talking to the press. The press wanted to have child abusers, so asked how many people with the images were child abusers. Several officials presented higher and higher numbers and one well known official said something like a third. One reporter actually checked with the police and all the figures were just pure fantasy. Out of some huge number, there had been 14 cases of actual abuse, and this related to pictures traded in the post, not adult websites. A rogue law enforcement unit in Canada saw a Star Trek poster on people's bedroom walls of houses they raided. It suddenly became international news that Star Trek posters were indicative of child abusers. The press, especially the gutter press, love this nonsense, because it is so outrageous it sells. I think that the learned reader will form their own view, but, courtesy of RCMP, Star Trek posters are now incriminating evidence.
We do though now have the truth. If you search for bananas, spoons, syren, flowers, well you name it, by distribution, statistically you have a reasonable chance of pulling in something quite illegal. It isn't really worth further analysis, but Star Trek fans are likely to be people with good imaginations, and I could well imagine such people saying "have you seen this sick picture?", and such imagery spreads for that very reason.
Text
But when it happened a second time, Mr Bailey insisted that the defendant should kill them off. He had not told the police at that stage but Miss Roberts, who found images later, had gone to the police.
Comment
No relevance at all. Some people delete all downloads, track down everything and purge it. There are flaws in doing many methods due to Microsoft programming, but the prosecution has it both ways. If you delete it, you are trying to conceal it, if you don't, you are brazen. Most people's computers are littered with things they don't want and what they don't even know is there. Of course, Encase is likely to find it and you are likely to be busted regardless. Police forensics, is largely about busts: guilt or innocence is a problem for the accused and not a fair problem, far from it.
Text
The court heard that at the time in April the defendant had no previous convictions but he had since been convicted of drink driving and driving while disqualified.
Comment
Clearly it has ruined his life. It is actually typically much harder for someone to cope with injustice rather than justice. That is why so many Orees have so much anger. Most humans have inbuilt justice systems, and therefore the expression 'fair cop' materialised. One chap on these charges killed himself by banging his head against a wall. Strange as it sounds, that is more concurrent with innocence than guilt, particularly if you know the truth of how these cases are handled.
I would very much like to review that man's forensics from the newspaper story quoted here. I suspect it highly likely to be able to evidence innocence in a day, and, with full details, to be able to file criminal charges against the prosecution. That sounds dramatic, but yet that is just what is typical.
Further, I am familiar with the forensic unit who are likely to have examined the computer in question. I have seen what they do. It is not real forensics that they practice, and although I have seen them cheat and lie to falsely convict, on the other side, they are not remotely competent for the task in hand.
Yes, this man's life is clearly ruined. I don't know any more about the exact truth of the case, I just have the news story. What I can say is that if this person was interested in cp material, the evidence screams to the contrary and I expect any honest forensic expert or even adult surfer to agree.
This could only happen in a witch hunt or a very corrupt law enforcement system. I happen to know that both are the case.
Some further more general observations
The Oree continues
Newsgroups
It is important to explain a little more on one issue as newsgroups and peer to peer software raise issues of considerable relevance to the scams in operation by the National Crime Squad in Operation Ore. I am not the best person to explain this, as I have never used newsgroups, but I perhaps owe my life to that fact. I am however familiar with the principles involved.
In principle, newsgroups allow you to pursue an interest. One of the most popular pursuits is adult surfing, though you don't for a moment have to have an adult interest to accumulate illicit material.
There are numerous programs that allow you to access newsgroups and most of them do not allow you to preview imagery, and, back in 1999, I doubt if any could. You might have heard people protesting they did not know what they had, and the police would say, if they had deleted it they were trying to hide it, if they didn't they were collecting it. Truth is, if they weren't to blame, they were innocent, but in Operation Ore you were guilty once you were accused and pleading innocent was a threat on its own. If such truths were of general knowledge, Operation Ore would have come unstuck long ago. Now it is far more perverse, and you can be convicted just for a file name and you are guilty unless you can prove you are innocent. If you are charged with possession, often it cannot be proven how the image got there, so how can you prove you didn't download it on purpose when chances are, you didn't even know it was there? It is a fit up, and now even the law attempts to say so, though David Blunkett's SOA 2003 is illegal according to the Human Rights Act.
Let me take a couple of cases, theoretical but based on the truth. Often you enter a search term, or join specific newsgroups of interest, and pull in material related to the topic in question. That of course is just the theory.
Case 1
A man is interested in boxing so he joins a boxing newsgroup. In come related files, a couple of hundred of them. One of those files is cp. That may sound strange to the initiated, but welcome to the Internet, as happen it did and this was not unusual at all.
Case 2
A man wants to look at adult material. He joins a moderated newsgroup. This is similar to going to an adult website and seeing an entryway where it says that all images are 18 or over. With newsgroups, thousands of images can be posted in a day, and images of every kind circulate newsgroups. That is why virtually all cp hosting was ended in one hit in the UK, when Demon Internet's news servers were closed down.
The chap checks what has come in and there is a file containing illicit thumbnails. The chap simply deletes what he didn't ask for or want. You could say, why didn't he report it to the police? Back then, police didn't have the forensic units, but now that they have them they are mainly just using them to count images and destroy people.
Police
Case 1 and case 2 are based on real convictions under Operation Ore and fit to large numbers of convictions. Both men were innocent by law, but even proving so in court is normally insufficient in a trial where the police had put its case long before in the media, a false case. As the IPCC is aware, (senior officer's name removed here) said to the public, you cannot get this material by accident - an official ACPO statement. The man is a liar, and I have gone on public record saying so. This man's behaviour is as disgusting as I could imagine, and it makes me feel physically sick just hearing this man speak, a killer without a conscience.
Operation Ore
This was no normal police operation: it was an illegal enterprise by design. A small percentage of the subscribers were incriminated by the Landslide data, but as Landslide was principally a credit card scammer, the data wasn't evidential.
The police didn't really have much of an operation to mount at all; however, they saw an opportunity for money and power. Celt Limited, a forensic company, was formed by ex-police officers. Their conduct had been seriously questioned before Operation Ore even started, but Celt Limited hold the raw Landslide data and are the only company which has been allowed to examine the raw archives as a whole and just one of their operatives has worked on some 600 prosecutions.*
To quote Jim Gamble, Sunday Times 03/07/2005: All material seized has been subject to stringent review, details kept in the strictest confidence and in cases where we have moved to prosecution we have sought independent legal assessment.
Celt Limited are not impartial: they are complicit in the crimes of Operation Ore. There is no such thing as a computer expert in the real sense - it is too broad and fast changing a field for such a person to exist. But I have examined the statements of Celt Limited, and, were they serving police officers, the IPCC would have received complaints on them too. Clearly this is an extraordinary position, and quite sinister when examined in detail.
The police told a series of orchestrated lies, in order to be able to target everyone. In order to get away with it at all, they had to get convictions. Case 1 and 2 above were Ore busts. Most of the convictions came from incitement (no evidence), and/or incidental downloads.
Experimental data
A test was recently run by one of the covert investigation units involved in exposing Operation Ore. Simple and normal words like fruit brought back illicit material.
If the IPCC doubts, a demonstration could easily be arranged in short order. Similarly, you can go to any independent computer forensic company that has represented a reasonable number of Ore cases for the defence and ask their advice.
Summary
There is a tendency to support the police, to believe what they say. In court, lawyers and judges were trained long before the Internet, and the police presented to the courts meaningless and false garbage, saying it was evidential and I can send no end of this nonsense by way of evidence, though it no doubt be meaningless to the IPCC without expert advice. The poisonous nature of the wilfully false propaganda, presented from start and to this day, took away anyone's right to a fair trial. Those people are now doubtless on the Violent Sex Offenders Register, an International register, which makes it very hard for them to stand up and seek justice.
I wasn't married, so it was not tactically advantageous to throw me out of my house, but, as the police blocked my income, I had put my house up for rental with nowhere viable to live. I didn't have children, so social services couldn't steal them or use them to ban me from my home. The police I met in my case displayed the most savage and dangerous behaviour I have seen; they all lied to me, every single one of them. I have learnt a lot since the start of 2003, and I now know that it is only by chance that I did not have any imagery of the kind the police were looking for on my computers, and looking at the individuals I met in South Wales Police, I am amazed that when they found out I was innocent they had the decency to tell me so. The damage they caused was massive in my life alone, the fact they did nothing to repair it goes some way to describing what kind of savage behaviour is unleashed when the power at the top goes unchecked. Of course, with all this power, and the IPCC protecting them, things will get continuously worse and they don't have that far to go.
It would be quite a simple thing to stop in principle - it just requires the IPCC to comply with the law.
* Editor No wonder they called it Operation Ore! It was a goldmine for them. One can imagine their glee.
The fight-back against Operation Ore continues
One of the first individuals fighting back against the corruption and injustice used by the police in Operation Ore has been vindicated in court. This is just the beginning.
He calls himself ‘Dave’ for now, and is the first Oree (Operation Ore accused) in Scotland, and one of the first in the UK, to sue the police force for the suffering they caused him and his marriage through their investigation. His story is a mirror image of so many of the stories of the other Orees, stories being used in an assault on the police involved by the individual we call ‘Messenger’ in the story here about the collapse of Operation Ore. In our Operation Ore story we have for some months being predicting a number of cases of individuals seeking justice for the corruption and injustice used against them, in particular the lies told by senior police officers.
Dave, 41, from Glasgow, lost his job and marriage after the police raided his flat in December 2002 and seized his computer equipment, tipping off the media as they did in most of the other cases. Like so many other Orees, Dave contemplated suicide. One of the basic elements in the central assault against the police officers who carried out Operation Ore is that they hid their knowledge that many of the individuals raided had been victims of credit card fraud. A second basic element was their knowingly hiding the fact that the vast majority of Orees had accessed adult pornography and that the story that the ‘Click Here For Child Porn’ banner was on the US site at the centre of Ore was a fraud. The vast majority, if not all, neither saw nor clicked on such a banner. But senior police, seeing the opportunity for political gain in the witch hunt, went public and broadcast the deceptions, ensuring a media circus which destroyed lives and caused suicides.
Speaking to The Scotsman, Dave said, "I was summoned to my boss's office, where two police officers were waiting to inform me that I was accused of accessing an internet site. At first they wouldn't tell me which site. I was escorted from my workplace by four Strathclyde police officers and taken to my home address, where another three or four cars full of police were waiting. They searched my home, every room, and took my computer and peripherals.
"I was then taken to a police station and questioned for three hours about child pornography - something I knew nothing about. They told me my credit card had been used on two occasions to subscribe to Landslide (the US site at the center of the UK’s Operation Ore), which provides access to thousands of adult porn sites. They said it meant I had been looking at child pornography.
"I was suspended from my job as I was subject to a criminal investigation. I had to wait 14 months before the police eventually told me they had found nothing illegal.
"The police showed me a document all about me. It had details of credit card transactions, my name, address, registration of car and a photograph of this internet page that said 'Click here for child porn' (the fraudulent page used by the UK police). I had never seen this before in my life. (The 'Click here for child porn' banner was in fact a fleeting temporary advertisement for another site, which few would have seen but the UK police leapt upon it).
"All my neighbours would have seen the police arriving at my door. They never said anything to my face, but the whispers would probably have been going round. I know there are a lot more people out there whose lives are also in tatters because of this.
“I lost my home, my marriage collapsed - I considered suicide."
Jim Gamble responds
Jim Gamble, deputy director- general of the National Crime Squad, was the chief broadcaster of the Operation Ore moral panic, using megaphone tactics to warn of the 7,000 UK citizens that were going to be pilloried for clicking on the (virtually non-existent) 'Click here for child porn' Landslide banner, delighting the media who participated in the dawn SAS type raids on the homes of innocent families.
What is quite fascinating is to read Gamble’s changing language as Ore collapses around him and his colleagues.
Listen to him when The Scotsman, questioned him about men like Dave.
Yes, he said there had been ‘difficulties’ in the early stages. "Every case has been investigated on its own merits. Some people say there has been a production line approach to Operation Ore, but that isn't the case. Operation Ore came to us in massive numbers. There were over 7,000 people suspected of going on the Landslide site and each one of those had to be investigated." Some one should ask him why there were only hundreds in the US where Landslide was raided by the FBI and if he has forgotten why that was so tell him it was because the FBI knew that he had false information.
He went on: "With these sorts of allegations, it's always going to be difficult. Each police force took extremely seriously the issues in respect of the stigma attached to this type of investigation. It takes months upon months sometimes to examine all the computer hardware involved."
These sorts of allegations!
He added weakly that he sympathised with innocent people who suffered the stigma of being a suspect, following it with the usual ‘for the good of the children' mantra.
It will be interesting to continue to listen to Jim Gamble over the months ahead as more Orees fight back in court. Already his demagogic pronouncements have faded from the media.
Another Oree cleared, but this one is dead
As Operation Ore continues to unravel, the inquest into the death of Commodore David White has just heard that the computer equipment and a camera memory chip belonging to him, seized under Operation Ore, had yielded no evidence that he downloaded child pornography, and that a letter was written by Ministry of Defence police to Naval Command on 5 January this year indicated that there were ‘no substantive criminal offences’ to warrant pressing charges.
Unfortunately, the Second Sea Lord, Sir James Burnell-Nugent, fearing that the media would report the case removed him from his post anyway on January 7. He now joins the growing list of those cleared or about to be cleared but the frauds carried out under Operation Ore ensured that he is not with us to celebrate the exposure of those frauds.
Senior Operation Ore officer drunk and disorderly
The head of Scotland Yard’s unit in charge of Operation Ore, Acting Detective Inspector Neil Thompson, was arrested for being drunk and disorderly after a stag night out in Soho, London on August 20 2005 – information not revealed until early October 2005.
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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