Major UK Child Porn Investigation Flawed 372
Oxygen99 writes "The Guardian (UK) is carrying a story on Operation Ore, a major police investigation aimed at catching online pedophiles. This has resulted in several high-profile arrests, such as those of Pete Townshend and Robert Del Naja (both falsely accused), while attracting significant press attention. Yet, the reality of the investigation is one of stolen credit cards, wrongful accusations, and ignorance leading to a significant number of the 7,292 people on the list being wrongfully accused of a very emotionally charged crime. There have been 39 suicides and a number of other people on the list will probably never be investigated. It seems to me this case highlights flaws inherent in the way law enforcement agencies handle evidence that only a small minority of front-line officers fully understand."
Related Cases (Score:5, Informative)
The inquest into his death heard that computer equipment and a camera memory chip belonging to Commodore White had yielded no evidence that he downloaded child pornography, and a letter was written by Ministry of Defence police to Naval Command on 5 January this year indicating that there were "no substantive criminal offences" to warrant pressing charges. But the Second Sea Lord, Sir James Burnell-Nugent, feared that the media would report the case and on 7 January removed him from his post anyway
In one case at Hull Crown Court last year, a distinguished hospital consultant was acquitted after it emerged that hackers had used his credit card on Landslide. The judge dismissed some police evidence as "utter nonsense".
careful in your replies folks (Score:3, Informative)
it doesn't mean that law enforcement should stop hunting child pornographers
you would think this is an obvious difference, but you watch the kinds of comments these sad events conjure here
the problem, of course, is shoddy law enforcement. but whenever something like this happens- the police bungle it big time, people come out with comments pointed against the very concept of law enforcement itself
IIRC... (Score:5, Informative)
There could certainly have been developments in this since however many years ago that it happened, but didn't Pete Townshend acknowledge having sought out and downloaded child pornography, claiming it was "research"? Whether or not you believe that, he certainly wasn't "falsely accused" in the sense used in the story.
Re:Pat Benatar said it best (Score:2, Informative)
Typical of Britain (Score:4, Informative)
The way they try to fix this is to create new agencies in between agencies.. all this creates is more paper work that never finds its way into the correct hands and causes more problems and tax pounds which could be better put elsewhere.
Britain is essentially becoming a broken beurocractic piss hole.
Re:Police are stunned! (Score:3, Informative)
You have to give us (Americans) credit though. We don't even bother with spurious or weak evidence, our officers just make shit up wholesale and abuse/intimidate 4 year old girls into saying whatever their sick psyche's want to hear...
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_care_sexual_abus
The Wenatchee sex ring in Wenatchee, Washington in 1994 and 1995 where police and state social workers undertook what was then called the nation's most extensive child sex-abuse investigation. Forty-three adults were arrested on 29,726 charges of child sex abuse involving 60 children. Parents, Sunday school teachers and a pastor were charged and many were convicted of abusing their own children or the children of others in the community. Courts ultimately determined the charges were entirely untrue. Police coerced children into giving false statements, and false testimony in court. Dr. Phillip Esplin, a forensic psychologist for the National Institutes of Health's Child Witness Project commented that "Wenatchee may be the worst example ever of mental health services being abused by a state
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Re:Credit card? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why yes... "Research"... That's it... (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, Pete (who has a parallel career as a writer) posted an article on child pornography on his web site before the charges arose [wikipedia.org].
Re:But it gets the votes! (Score:5, Informative)
The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people.
As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children,
the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.
"
-- Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, Publ. Houghton Miflin, 1943, Page 403
captcha: are you swayed by these arguments yet?
I was one of the ones arrested (Score:1, Informative)
I was of course found innocent, but not until I'd been arrested, my house turned over completely, my possessions destroyed, then jailed, interogated and put on bail for 3 months while they went through all my hard drives, CDs, DVDs etc. I, like many others, never got most of this equipment back.
I never got an apology. All I got was a note on my intelligence file that I was a potential child abuser and a note on my criminal record that I was once arrested for downloading child pornography.
The police on the day of my arrest were basically insinuating that it would be better if I would just commit suicide to save everyone a lot of trouble.
I later, with the use of sites such as archive.org, helped bring a stop to several other cases where the people in question had quite obviously only accessed legal sites.
Thanks British Government, you bunch of faschist cunts.
If you want any questions answered, ask below. I'm posting this in Coward mode, as I don't particularly want everyone in the world to know, even though I'm innocent.
Re:I was one of the ones arrested (Score:1, Informative)
Re:But it gets the votes! (Score:3, Informative)
Not sure about Florida, but in many states, if a daycare, school, bus-stop, playground, mall, etc. is built near the home of a sex offender, then the sex offender has to move.