"Almost one million images of child abuse were processed by Ceop in its second year."

Sounds like 1 million *unique* images, but I bet it's not. I bet it's the same images found in web caches again and again. More over I bet the origin of those images is FBI stings and similar. Since actual commercial sites are rare closed quickly and blocked in the UK.

"Over the last 12 months, 131 childen were safeguarded and ten of the UK's highest risk offenders were located via Ceop's "most wanted" website and awareness campaign."

Yet only 18 of those 131 were found to have been abused.... so basically you took 113 kids away from their families to 'safeguard' them from something that wasn't happening? Sounds like the Cleveland kiddie snatchers all over again.

"Ceop chief executive Jim Gamble said: "I hope offenders take note. Look at the ways in which together we are infiltrating your worlds, understanding your minds in order to limit deviant behaviour and I hope you think again.""

I can see into your mind. You've lost the grasp of the separation between abuse and images of abuse. You can't see the difference between a beheading terrorist and someone watching the beheading on the 10 oclock news. You also can't see why the Cleveland child snatchers was such a bad thing, they too lost all grasp of common sense. They too separated kids from families to 'protect' them.

I bet if you look on Jim's home computer.

A lovely statistic, but why is no one reporting the real figures?

Convictions as a percentage of these arrests are DECLINING. They are arresting MORE innocent people.

And the conviction rate for these crimes is already very low.

But an arrest is an arrest, Police officers are measured/targeted on the number of arrests they make, not the number of convictions as that is seen as the courts job. So arresting an innocent person isn't a problem, as it still helps you meet your targets as an officer.

From an ex police officer. Ex, because I was fed up of shit like this.

Try 6 %, not 0.06 %.

Start, run, type "calc" etc.

Fuckwit.

If the number of arrests is so high, is it because

a) we have too broad a definition of KP

b) KP and sexual abuse of a child is very common

I don't know anyone with what I'd call KP tendencies, though. So I'd suspect (a). It would be nicer if it were (a) too, because that shows up there's something REALLY WRONG somewhere with the human race.

And how many people caught in operation "get the fuckers" that netted a lot of "paedo's" by seeing where their card was used to purchase KP were later found out (after some had committed suicide) to have been the victim of credit card fraud?

...if they are let loose into society in no time at all by the do-gooders !!

Re.I keep wondering, though - these days, you are guilty until proven innocent !!

It's not even "guilty until proven innocent". It's "guilty even despite being proved innocent".

It's no wonder Clive Peachey acted the way he did.

Criticising CEOP can be dangerous and contributors to this comments page could be well advised to remain anonymous. The leading computer forensic scientist in this country “Jim Bates” became aware of what CEOP and their predecessors were up to. He exposed their incompetence and lying that characterised the “operation ore” scandal in which victims of identity theft were treated as paedophiles. However CEOP got back at him by indicting him with a spurious perjury charge, to shut him up and put him out of business. So if you have anything bad to say about CEOP then unless you are a brave person it is best to think twice.

holy c--- AC you're the ballsiest online poster I've ever encountered on the internet.

I sure hope you were posting via multiple proxies with a spamilator address mind you, less you get some boys in blue smashing down your door at 5am arresting you for thought crime. >.>

Sexual preference is mostly predefined - but people have the choice to follow social concious/morality and ethic as well as the law or they don't.

However long ago was the chance to have sensible adult debate about such topics washed away with fear and fanaticism (sexuality, immigration, racial prejudice, religion, nationality, climate change, so on, so forth - although all to differing levels, you can't get arrested for admitting to being a climate change doubter.)

O well - here's to a day where society is grown up again. Although I think I may be a pensioner by then.

Take a step back and look at what these people are doing. You have a police unit dedicated to thought crime. Currently the thought crime is related to children, an activity which is so outside social norms as to be indefensible. We focus our attention on this which blinds us to the tiny amount of actual crime going on in this area, the amount of resources focussed to detect this crime and the wide ranging powers given to police to investigate ("Will Someone Please Think of the Children!!")

We all should be able to recognize a template when we see one. What's being developed is a system that allows any kind of thought to be criminalized at will, literally by tweaking some parameters. This should be worrying people.

I'll trust El Reg to know the difference between 'paedophile' ('a lover of children') and an actual, law-breaking child molester - and that they know the difference between thoughtcrime and realcrime. More of us than you might think, as well - the popularity of Japanese lolicon is proof enough of that. Enough to say that my moral fibre is strong enough that I can acknowledge the weakness without giving into it.

(Besides, I'm behind 10 proxies! *thumbsup*)

However, if I were of weaker moral fibre (that is to say, a paedophile that DIDN'T object morally to even images of real molestation), the first thing I'd do is find employment at an agency where I could legally examine 'millions of discrete images of molestation' - kind of like how the American Congressman Mark Foley was a crusader against chid abuse until it was revealed that he liked sending suggestive emails to the underage male interns...

Who guards the guardsmen? Themselves, of course! Enough reason to never trust a guardsman farther than you can see them. Sometimes they admit it's a grave responsibility, but more often lately all I see are goons enthralled by the shine off their badges...

Firstly, let me say I am a parent and abhor the abuse - any form of abuse - of children. I support any productive and proportionate moves to protect children.

But I also abhor the hyperbole and hysteria surrounding this issue. Proportionality seems to have flown out of the window. Witch hunts do nothing for victims and nothing for justice.

Hysteria will be increased, not soothed, by the recent press-released spin from CEOP. Jim Gamble has become a tad too messianic for comfort over the past few years, a man obsessed. When he says "...we are infiltrating your worlds, understanding your minds in order to limit deviant behaviour..." I don't feel reassured, I feel queasy. This is the tone of Orwell's Ministry of Truth. Gamble, you may be well-intentioned but increasingly you're sounding like a scary fucker!

As others have pointed out (above), the figures are not nearly as impressive as the spin would have you believe. To quote the article again 'Almost one million images of child abuse were processed by Ceop in its second year. Such intelligence gathering led directly to the identification of 18 young victims of abuse.' For a start, I very much doubt it was a million *different* images. But if it was, 18 identifications out of one million is not exactly a high hit rate.

Again, look at the statement 'Major operations shut down six paedophile rings, all with international links.' How does it protect the *average* victim of child abuse to throw so much money at smashing these fabled 'international peado rings' when the vast majority of abuse is perpetrated by the victims' own family or their friends? Shannon Matthews, for example, wasn't abducted by an international ring of perverts - her mother, step-father and colluded in an attempt to defraud the McCann fund.

I also question the perceived prevalence of abuse. The Gambles of this world (and some zealots in NSPCC and local social services departments) would like us to think that every child in Britain is either being sexually assaulted or is in imminent danger of being assaulted. Of course sexual abuse is a real problem; of course it happens. But I never encountered it during my childhood or teens and no friend or aquaintance ever mentioned it either; neither of my sons ever mentioned sexual abuse happening to them or anyone they knew; and as an adult I have never met anyone who claims to have been sexually abused as a child.

What is needed is more common sense on this issue, less paedo-hysteria, and fewer - far fewer - press releases from Jim Gamble and all the other self-serving vested interests in the child protection industry.

Finally, to the commenter above "Being a paedophile myself... " You make good points and you are a brave person for 'coming out' - you deserve respect on that count.

Excuse me while I board up my doors and windows as I DBAN all my hard drives and melt my CD back-ups. Jim'll be round any minute now...

@ mark

"I don't know anyone with what I'd call KP tendencies, though. So I'd suspect (a). It would be nicer if it were (a) too, because that shows up there's something REALLY WRONG somewhere with the human race."

how do you know unless you catch them at it every one of your co workers could be a kiddy fiddler and you would not know

@ the honest ac

it would be intresting to do a totlesy honest servery of all men and see how meny pepol where atracted to a picture or say a 12 year old rember that the age limites are a invention of the socitery we live in <1000 years ago girls of 12 where being married

@ the article

I wander how meny pepol have been employed for how long to get 300 arretst and 18 convictions?

@Martin Usher

It isn't a police unit... it isn't even a law enforcement agency... it's set up as a multi-agency harm reduction agency, and is part of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), which isn't a police unit either.

Sure, there are some seconded police officers, but most of the staff aren't even employees themselves, they're seconded from elsewhere, e.g. NSPCC.

@everyone else...

There might be some short-sighted forces that use arrests as a measure of "performance", but there is NOT ONE single official Key Performance Indicator that does. IN short, folks, all this talk of "getting the arrest figures up" is honest-to-goodness misinformed crap. Oh, and "Arrests not convictions" AC, I get the feeling that no-one resigns over a moral stand such as you purport... can we have the real reason, please?

@Sceptical Bastard

Good post... it's a pleasure to read a reasoned view, and I actually agree with much of what you say. Keep on posting...

@Peter Day

"The leading computer forensic scientist in this country “Jim Bates” ..." No, he isn't...

"CEOP got back at him by indicting him with a spurious perjury charge..." - No, Jim Bates sealed his own fate when he decided to give evidence again and again in Crown Courts, on oath, which included evidence he knew to be lies. He tried to exaggerate his credibility by claiming totally bogus qualifications, including a non-existent degree... not a good idea when you're trying to be an expert witness for the defence. He was rightly convicted (6 March, Leicester Crown Court) and punished for the cavalier way he endangered the defendants whose legal teams were engaging him based on his "qualifications".

I mean all they're doing is increasing the number of people arrested. Something like this is pretty effective also...

PcPlod: Oi you you're under arrest for fiddling kids...

Victim: I didn't do it

PcPlod: We've got to hit our targets somehow.

... later that day ...

Victim: So you're letting me go... I told you I didn't do it

PcPlod: Thanks for your time, we really need to waste your time, our time and tax payers money, never mind it won't be going to court...

... There are lies, damned lies and statistics... And of course 82.7% of statistics are made up on the spot.

They say it's because children get abused when the images are made. However artwork showing the same thing is illegal. It depends on what is in the mind of the person viewing. If it's looked at and held on a computer owned by an NSPCC person then that's OK because they are thinking about helping children. If it's on a Paedophiles computer then it's illegal because we know the person is having illegal thoughts. I wonder how many of the NSPCC who love children are people who love children? Maybe they could raise the conviction rate by arresting themselves? Probably better than 6%.

If a paedo has a childrens clothes catalog, is that then an illegal document?