PC PRO REVEALS FALSE CLAIMS USED IN CHILD PORN INVESTIGATION
Sharon | 26.09.2005 13:46
Tuesday, June 21, 2005: The UK’s biggest ever crackdown on Internet paedophiles has been driven by misleading intelligence, causing dozens of innocent people to be falsely accused, according to PC Pro magazine.
PC Pro Press Release
Writing exclusively in the new issue of PC Pro, Duncan Campbell (an expert witness in the defence of Operation Ore suspects) says prosecutions against many of the UK’s 7,272 Operation Ore suspects were based on flawed evidence received from US officials.
The high-profile investigation began in 2002 when US investigators handed UK police the credit card details of people they claimed had subscribed to child porn. But Campbell says the list also included people who subscribed to legal sites, leading to prosecutions against computer users who had never possessed an offending picture.
“The most critical computer evidence produced in Operation Ore, I have found, was flawed,” says Campbell. “The mistakes meant huge quantities of police, technical and social work resources were misdirected to some futile and ill-founded investigations. But the worse result was damage to innocent lives, and the welfare of families and children.”
Some prosecutions have centred on what’s been claimed in court to be the front page of an adult website which prosecutors said was dominated by a direct link to child pornography.
But new evidence revealed in PC Pro shows that many subscribers could not have seen the page, while US investigators had only seen the link to the child pornography on one occasion.
The report also criticises the media witch-hunt that’s increased the pressure on UK police to get results against huge numbers of British
computer users.
“Until now, Operation Ore has been widely publicised as an indisputable breakthrough in the fight against child porn, but the computer evidence is flawed,’ says Paul Trotter, news and features editor of PC Pro.
“Computer forensics shows that the illegal websites could not be reached from the front page of the legal websites many people subscribed to, and this puts question marks over a number of prosecutions.”
For more information, see the August issue of PC Pro, available in shops from 23rd June.
UK Corporate Website: www.dennis.co.uk,
email:
theboard@dennis.co.uk
USA Corporate Website: www.dennispublishing.com
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You can find more information about Operation Ore in Inquisition21 :
http://www.inquisition21.com
Writing exclusively in the new issue of PC Pro, Duncan Campbell (an expert witness in the defence of Operation Ore suspects) says prosecutions against many of the UK’s 7,272 Operation Ore suspects were based on flawed evidence received from US officials.
The high-profile investigation began in 2002 when US investigators handed UK police the credit card details of people they claimed had subscribed to child porn. But Campbell says the list also included people who subscribed to legal sites, leading to prosecutions against computer users who had never possessed an offending picture.
“The most critical computer evidence produced in Operation Ore, I have found, was flawed,” says Campbell. “The mistakes meant huge quantities of police, technical and social work resources were misdirected to some futile and ill-founded investigations. But the worse result was damage to innocent lives, and the welfare of families and children.”
Some prosecutions have centred on what’s been claimed in court to be the front page of an adult website which prosecutors said was dominated by a direct link to child pornography.
But new evidence revealed in PC Pro shows that many subscribers could not have seen the page, while US investigators had only seen the link to the child pornography on one occasion.
The report also criticises the media witch-hunt that’s increased the pressure on UK police to get results against huge numbers of British
computer users.
“Until now, Operation Ore has been widely publicised as an indisputable breakthrough in the fight against child porn, but the computer evidence is flawed,’ says Paul Trotter, news and features editor of PC Pro.
“Computer forensics shows that the illegal websites could not be reached from the front page of the legal websites many people subscribed to, and this puts question marks over a number of prosecutions.”
For more information, see the August issue of PC Pro, available in shops from 23rd June.
UK Corporate Website: www.dennis.co.uk,
email:
theboard@dennis.co.uk USA Corporate Website: www.dennispublishing.com
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You can find more information about Operation Ore in Inquisition21 :
http://www.inquisition21.com
Sharon
Comments
Hide the following 3 comments
the nature of evidence and prosecution
27.09.2005 17:03
If you have any evidence that individuals were prosecuted and convicted soley on the basis of their credit card details having been used to register with a web site, but where no evidence to support any further involvement on their behalf or access to materials of this nature, then i challenge you to name the court cases.
Mad Hatter
evidence of mismanagement
28.09.2005 14:43
The article makes it clear that some people were guilty, but not all the +7000 people whose name was on the list which granted and automatic early morning raid with total disregard to the damage to persorn's reputation, specially important in public profile people.
Would you be happy seeing your name on the newspaper being charged with that even if acquitted a year later?
The whole point is, the British police took a different approach than the police in the USA, the approach they took is "everyone guilty until proven innocent", exactly the contrary view from what British laws say.
They were entitled to investigate everyone but not with early morning raids and the way they did.
Wills
Evidence? Really?
28.09.2005 19:39
Boab