Thank you again for your email of 16 April 2007 concerning questions raised by the Committee with Mr James Gamble of CEOP.

  I strongly believe in public enquiry, public accountability, and fully support the principle that material before and procedings of the Committee should ordinarily be public and published.

  Mr Gamble writes on 23 March 2007 to ask you to forward "evidence in your possession or the letter you have received to better inform our process". This appears odd. Surely the purpose of such correspondence is for him to better inform the Committee? His letter could suggest that his aim is to place the Committee's sources and methods under investigation. He omits any undertaking to respond in the correct way to the Committee.

  The letter therefore raises misgivings in my mind. I hope it will not seem a distraction if I briefly explain these.

  My misgivings are strengthened by a recent professional experience when I attended before the Recorder of Belfast in February. I prepared for the Recorder, through Queen's Counsel, a draft order listing details from CEOP held files in Operation Ore which were needed to establish the scale of Internet credit card theft and fraud that was evidence in computer records held, but never produced, by CEOP and the Crown Prosecution Service.

  When the draft order as produced, CEOP staff present in Court directed PSNI officers to seize the document, and to withhold it from the Court as "evidence". They refused to obey a specific order from the Judge to surrender it. I personally was then also threatened by being advised several times that I should be cautioned, although it was not suggested what alleged offence I had committed in drafting a request for the Court to consider.

  This remarkable episode was brought to an end when the Recorder arranged for a second Crown Court Judge to attend his Court potentially so as to punish the officers if they continued their contempt. The document was then surrendered. The Recorder is now to hear an abuse of process application against the prosecution for threatening a witness.

  It came to light on the same occasion that a team of CEOP officers had spent at least 18 months on an intrusive personal investigation into myself, collecting documents as bizarre and widespread as student letters written in 1974 and irrelevant postings from Internet conspiracy sites. As part of these investigations, they have several times instructed prosecutors to falsely accuse me of fraud. To date, no judge has listened to the allegations. CEOP prepared and handed in a 50 page dossier concerning me at the start of the Belfast matter, but were not able to present it when their own misconduct became the central matter of concern to the Court.

  This unusual approach to evidence, witnesses and justice has persisted through the course of Operation Ore, specifically in relation to the cases of allged credit card use for incitement (about which I first wrote to the Committee).

  I have described in a 2005 computer article how Internet evidence used generally in Operation Ore was founded on falsehoods.[8] In a second article to be published tomorrow by PC Pro magazine and in abridged form in The Guardian,[9] I describe how CEOP and the Crown Prosecution Service have withheld critical and important evidence from the Courts and defendants throughout the course of Operation Ore. In particular, the evidence withheld shows conclusively that Landslide Inc (the Texas pornography provider) was in possession of, and the vehicle for the re-use of, credit card information stolen by hacking from commercial companies in the same manner as the current TK Maxx issue in Britain and the United States.

  The third arm of CEOP's approach in Operation Ore cases has been to seek to exclude, or otherwise obstruct, investigate and attack defence witnesses who have raised critical questions about their evidence. CEOP have demanded the right to approve defence witnesses and to control the selection of such evidence as they see. Although attempts to attack me personally have been rebuffed (several times), a second and very experienced defence computer expert, a Mr James Bates, has been subject to harsher difficulties over a three year period and indeed has been charged by CEOP with alleged fraud.

  I would very much hope that the reason Mr Gamble replied to the Committee in the terms he did is not because he inteneds to ignore the issue the Committee raised about his own evidence and was instead seeking to add another document to the CEOP "enemies list" dossier.

  Having set out my misgivings, I would return to the principles in my second paragraph. I agree that my letter of 10 February 2007—and indeed all correspondence (other than my full personal address and phone numbers)—can be regarded as Parliamentary papers, and be published with the Committee's report(s). The corollary, on which I would insist, is that if my letter is sent to Mr Gamble privately, he is advised at the same time that it and his response(s) will be public and published, in the same way as his original evidence.

  I reaffirm that I am willing fully to assist the Committee by providing oral or other evidence. If it were the Committee's wish to seek common understanding of the matter by asking for the joint attendance of myself with Mr Gamble and/or other witnesses, I would be happy to agree. I have previously attended as a witness at Parliamentary Committee hearings, including a session of the House of Commons Health Committee where I and a UK tobacco control advocate were questioned together with the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of British American Tobacco.

  If I may add an afterthought within the Committee's current remit, it would be that by far the largest part of my current work as an expert witness in computers and the Internet is for radical Islamist inspired terrorism cases. It is common knowledge that the Internet supports many networks circulating radicalising and extreme materials, including voluminous manuals on military and terrorism methods. The types of problems and events I mention do not affect such cases and trials, nor do they appear in other Internet paedophilia cases. In my experience, they have occurred solely in the context of Operation Ore.

18 April 2007

9   "Sex, lies and videotape" PC Pro, June 2007. Back