Poisonous.
patboddy, do you have interest/connection to either Inquisition21 or a law enforcement agency which was involved in Operation Ore?
I might be young and inexperienced but I am not stupid. I see that inquisition are a pedophile supporters club and I am not a member.
If you have taken an enormous leap into deducing that I am involved with the article on register then you are completely wrong. I am nothing to do with those articles. I asked a question about sledgehammer not ore and as far as I can see they are two different cases and are unrelated.
I suppose the only link is that from that register article there seems to be information that has been known to the police that has not been made public and it appears from what has been said here that that there is information about sledghammer that has not been made public but it seems that it might be important for the defence to see that justice is done.
Mr Parsonage has been asked to provide the details but has hidden behind an excuse of disclosure. I guess that there are a lot of police in here that know the contents and have not said anything about it. Are they hiding something or is it they think Mr Parsonage has made a report which is wrong or does not help the defence?
I'm not sure what you think is poisinous is it someone in authority releasing some information that the public should know about or is it hiding information that concerns you? Surely the police work on behalf of the public and we should know what they do so they are accountable. I am disturbed that no police officer here is willing to talk about this sledghammer report or feels unable to talk about it.
I would be intersted to hear from other non police what they think, and police too.
Pat
Blimey, you're a little touchy.
If you seize a computer with no IIC it isn't a moot point.
I don't think the poor sods who get their lives turned upside down on the basis of a very ropey fishing expedition would agree with you.
Read both Register articles.
I take it you are referring to the guy awarded damages?
That's not as a result of bad intelligence, he was charged and convicted, that would have to be a flaw in the evidence, you cant convict someone purely on intelligence.
Without actually examining the computer it would be impossible to know whether they were right or wrong to convict him.Also looking at the flaw in the intelligence which from the article appears to be that a user could enter the site without choosing to look for CP or knowing that CP was there, you couldn't not investigate because some may not have, you need to clear them as much as find the guilty.
At the end of the day all intelligence would get you is a warrant, after that its the responsibility of the investigator to find evidence of or against the case with fairness and impartiality.
Ok, read the register article again, focus on the paragraph
"The finding was based on evidence the court heard from an internal investigation launched after Mr Clifford was formally cleared of all the allegations before trial. It found that Hertfordshire Constabulary’s forensics expert, George Fouhey, had advised against pressing charges."
Mr Parsonage has been asked to provide the details but has hidden behind an excuse of disclosure. I guess that there are a lot of police in here that know the contents and have not said anything about it. Are they hiding something or is it they think Mr Parsonage has made a report which is wrong or does not help the defence?
Pat
I have no particluar objections to disclosing the whole of the report here if I had it however
1) being retired it is in the hands of my ex-force,
2) it is too long for a post and summarising it would not do it justice,
3) it is in the public interest that it is disclosed both from the point of view that the defence should be aware of it in the interests of justice, but also to highlight the systemic failures that allowed this to happen. However that would be better done through some means that would have the issue dealt with properly and this forum will not do that.
To be sure I was correct in my analysis of the initial briefing document I sent my report to reps for each police region's Hi Tech Crime Unit and asked them to challenge me if I was talking rubbish as it has been known. I had no dissenters and a number replied to say yes well spotted. The only people that disagreed were the authors of the initial briefing who after many months were obliged to agree as they obtained an expert opinion which said I was correct in my technical assessment. CPS HQ reviewed the report and agreed it was material that could undermine the prosecution case and should in some cases be disclosed to the defence.
H
If you seize a computer with no IIC it isn't a moot point.
I don't think the poor sods who get their lives turned upside down on the basis of a very ropey fishing expedition would agree with you.
This is absolutely the issue.
In relation to Op Ore there may well have been some flaws in the intelligence that were not properly considered but overall it was 90+% spot on. Our success rate was around 99 out of 100 successful prosecutions. The only acquittal was a travesty of justice which I will not go into here.
For Sledgehammer that is not the case, the culpability of the suspects was inferred from the flawed technical assessment and did not in some cases exist. In some documentation there is a reference to the operation being a success because 50% of the people who had computers seized were found to contain IIOC. I am shocked to think that this is considered to be an indicator of good intelligence.
I was involved in a case which came from the FBI via an early version of CEOP, and a suspect in the US had been committing serious sexual abuse on web cam and taking orders for what people wanted to see via chat. The US suspect was nicked and his chat logs recovered. One suspect lived in our area. He was apparently respectable, with a wife and young children, worked as a nurse with children, just been accepted for a promotion. He had a warrant executed on his house, computers seized, suspended from work, lost the promotion, required to have supervised access to his children, and all the ignominy of being suspected of such a serious offence. We had a big queue several months wait, the man wanted to pay for the computers to be examined as he pleaded innocence from the start, the NHS eventually paid for the examination which found nothing. I reviewed the examination and the case and did what any detective should do on any job and asked for all the original information. This had not been done in the first place and when it eventually arrived from the US I was able to see that there was a slight discrepancy in the email address where it appeared in a number of places in the documentation. Long story short wrong email address, wrong suspect.
So a man, his wife, and his children had their lives turned upside down because of a lack of attention to detail. (This is in the public domain by the way as the innocent suspect has given talks about his experience)
The consequences of being suspected of IIOC can be life changing not only for the suspect but for their usually innocent family. When the police act on referrals they need to be sure that they are on good ground before they do so.
The failings in the technical assessment on Op Sledgehammer meant that this criteria was not achieved in some cases. I informed the authors and to this day they have never contacted me to discuss my report which you may consider strange.
H
<sarcasm> Be careful H, you are in danger of busting the myth that all cops are engaged in a conspiracy to stitch up innocent people. </sarcasm>
Paul
<sarcasm> Be careful H, you are in danger of busting the myth that all cops are engaged in a conspiracy to stitch up innocent people. </sarcasm>
Paul
Nah, it's a double bluff, I'm part of that conspiracy too. đŸ˜‰
H
The failings in the technical assessment on Op Sledgehammer meant that this criteria was not achieved in some cases. I informed the authors and to this day they have never contacted me to discuss my report which you may consider strange.
H
Not strange at all, as I've encountered similar reactions..
Shame? Reluctance to accept the responsibility for ones' mistakes?