Operation Ore

Operation Ore was a British police operation that commenced in 1999, following information from USA law enforcement, and it intended to prosecute thousands of users of websites reportedly featuring child pornography. In the United Kingdom, it has led to 7,250 suspects identified, 4,283 homes searched, 3,744 arrests, 1,848 charged, 1,451 convictions, 493 cautioned, 879 investigations underway, 140 children removed from suspected dangerous situations (although the definition of what constitutes such, has varied and remains vague)^[1] and an estimated 39 suicides.^[2][3] While Ore did catch a number of sex offenders, it turned out the original access data was faulty, resulting in a number of false investigations which ruined lives and appear to have caused a number of suicides.^[4]

Operation Ore succeeded the similar crackdown in the United States, called Operation Avalanche, though in the U.S. only 100 people were charged from the 35,000 US access records available.^[5] The U.S. legal cases are generally accepted as valid, because the U.S. FBI gathered additional evidence for prosecution and thus avoided the errors that UK police made in handling the investigations.^{[citation needed]}

Origins

In April 1999, United States Postal Inspection Service of Texas had received an internal complaint via postal inspector Robert Adams. Adams had received a tip from an acquaintance in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Ronnie Miller, who provided information in relation to a website advertising child pornography. The image in question was being sourced from a webmaster in Indonesia which presented the question as to whether the USPIS could successfully prosecute it.

As a part of a nationwide initiative funded by the Office of Justice Program’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), The United States Department of Justice announced a grant from the Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce Program to the Dallas Police Department on January 10, 1998. The purpose of the ICAS was to investigate and prosecute Internet crimes against children. In early 1999, The United States Postal Inspection Service engaged the Dallas Police Department to further investigate whether the image from Indonesia could be prosecuted. ^[6]

As later revealed in the court transcriptions from the case against Landslide Productions, the Dallas Police Department had formed a relationship with The Microsoft Corporation through a series local police investigations where the software maker had encouraged its technical employees to volunteer their time to better the community in which they lived. After having confirmed that the image in question was indeed being sourced from Indonesia making prosecution difficult, The Dallas Police Department reached out to its local Microsoft volunteers for one last opinion. Using Web Buddy, a computer program which displayed Internet traffic on geographic maps, the volunteers helped the Dallas Police Department to identify that Internet traffic related to Ronnie Miller's complaint was passing through routers of Ft. Worth, Texas based Landslide Productions. ^[7]

On September 8, 1999, federal agents raided the Fort Worth, Texas, home and offices of Thomas and Janice Reedy. The Reedys operated an internet business called Landslide Productions, Inc., which the FBI believed had sold subscriptions to websites offering child pornography. Landslide was, in actuality, an adult pornography empire stretching across three continents, some 250,000 subscribers in 60 countries. ^[8] Furthermore, a separate raid of Reedy's nearby Ft. Worth residence confiscated a home computer where computer expert Dane Heiskel uncovered business emails confirming his knowledge of customers using his payment system to access child pornography. Sexually explicit images of underaged children were also found on this computer. ^[9]

Later independent investigations questioned Thomas Reedy's intention to provide child pornography^[10] , but on August 6, 2001, Reedy was convicted of trafficking in child pornography and sentenced to 1,335 years in prison (later reduced to 180 years on appeal). His accomplice, Janice Reedy, was sentenced to 14 years. This marked the beginning of Operation Avalanche.

Landslide Productions

Landslide provided payment systems for adult webmasters. These systems were automated; webmasters could sign up to the system online and people accessing the websites would go through the payment or login system before being granted access. The principal systems were AVS for Adult Verification System and Keyz because it operated via the keyz.com domain name owned by Landslide.

An adult classified section of the Landslide website allegedly included postings offering to trade Keyz passwords. USPIS and Dallas Police brought their investigation to the attention of Terri Moore, an assistant district attorney.

The operation led to the seizure of user information of thousands of persons who were alleged to have accessed a child pornography website with their credit cards. It also resulted in the arrests of several prominent individuals, ranging from police officers and judges to The Who's guitarist Pete Townshend (who accepted a police caution but was later found to have accessed a site unrelated to child pornography).^[10], and Massive Attack's Robert Del Naja (against whom no further action was taken, as the site he accessed also had nothing to do with child pornography).^[10] The actor and writer Chris Langham is among those convicted. ^[11]

Controversies

Since 2003 Operation Ore has come under closer scrutiny, and the police forces in the UK have been criticised for their poor handling of the operation. The most common criticism is that they failed to determine whether or not the owners of credit cards in Landslide's database actually accessed any sites containing child porn, unlike in the U.S. where it was determined in advance whether or not credit card subscribers had purchased child porn. Investigative journalist Duncan Campbell exposed these flaws in a series of articles in 2005 and 2007.^[12][13][14]

This was a serious error, because many of the people making charges at child porn sites were using stolen credit card information (and the police arrested the real owners of the credit cards, not the actual viewers). Plus, thousands of credit card charges were made where there was no access to a site, or access to only a dummy site. When the police finally checked, they found 54,348 occurrences of stolen credit card information in the Landslide database. The British police failed to provide this information to the defendants, and some implied that they had checked and found no evidence of credit card fraud when no such check had been done.

Independent investigators later obtained both the database records and video of the Landslide raid and with this information showed that Michael Mead of the United States Postal Service lied under oath regarding several details relating to the investigation. As a result of these errors, a number of people arrested in Operation Ore filed a class action law suit in 2006 against the detectives behind Operation Ore, alleging false arrest.^[15]

A growing criticism of CEOP and its Chief Executive, is that in defending the operation, they have used vague terms which do not have a recognised meaning within either child protection or law enforcement.^[16] When clarity is then sought on the definition of these terms, in order that an impartial assessment of the operation can be made, promises are made that clarity will be given 'very soon'. So far, this does not seem to have materialised despite the passage of some years. This it may be felt, can only heighten the impression that this operation not only had serious flaws, but that some of these may yet remain undisclosed.^{[original research?]}

The operation has also been increasingly criticised for its unprecedented use of the media to distribute inaccurate and prejudicial information against suspects. For example, at the outset of the operation, a very senior police officer declared on national television news, that everyone on the list was "definitely guilty" before many had even been charged with any offence. Misinformation was also widely circulated by the police officers in charge of the operation, often via their so-called 'partners' (retained 'experts' and certain charities), that the chances of anyone encountering indecent images of children on the Internet by accident was extremely remote. Both these claims, amongst many others,have now been completely discredited. For example, according to the Internet Watch Foundation, around 1.5 million (one and a half million) UK Internet users have accidentally stumbled on such imagery at some point. There is good anecdotal evidence to support this figure.^{[citation needed]}

By the time the truth came out however, the damage had been done for many suspects, who had caved-in and pled guilty to offences they may in fact not have committed, or accepted cautions. This concern can only be accentuated by the fact that suspects who still maintained their innocence, were often left with these allegations and charges hanging over them for several years, until eventually they pled guilty. Placing potentially innocent people onto the sex offenders register, means that crucial and much stretched resources are diverted away from genuine child protection.

The operation also resulted in a man being charged when the sole "suspicious" image in his possession was of adult actress Melissa-Ashley.^[17]

In 2006 the campaign website Inquisition 21st Century was delisted from Google for allegedly manipulating search results^[18] but has since been restored.^[19]

References

See also

• Operation Avalanche
• child pornography
• Duncan Campbell

External links

• "Child porn suspects set to be cleared in evidence shambles" Sunday Times 3 July 2005
• Townshend arrested over child porn The Guardian 14 January 2003
• "Operation Avalanche: Tracking child porn", BBC News, November 11, 2002.
• "Operation Ore flawed by fraud" The Guardian 19 April 2007
• Child porn suspects blame fraud BBC 10 May 2007
• They Stole My Life The Sun 3 April 2008