US Prosecutors had staged many attacks on the adult industry. Typically in the States, they go for the big bust and target the money and the fame. Take out the money and you take out the industry perhaps being the argument being used, in reality, it is a case that little people want their day in the headlines. In the case of Thomas Reedy, the prosecutors took the money before the trial, so if they had a moral imperative, it was hard to see. Shortly before election time in 1998, the Attorney General of New York filed criminal charges against an ISP in Buffalo, for providing access to child pornography through it's hosted newsgroups. The company chose not to contest the charges, entering a guilty plea and paying a fine. Despite this, the legal complexities were clear, due to the impracticality of a host or ISP monitoring and potentially censoring the content on it's servers.

Thomas Reedy took the view that he was not responsible for material that webmasters provided, that was the legal advice he had had, but this was a show trial and the state was out to get him, not because he was an important player, but because they wanted to be. Despite some eight hours deliberation by the jury, they achieved their goal.

In May 2002, out rolled Operation Ore as the UK police arrested some 44 people out of a list of 52 Keyz subscribers, not even that, a list of credit card numbers and email addresses. The police perhaps thought they were being good detectives and the fact they could normally trace these to names and real people was building evidence. Actually, not at all, they had a legal duty to investigate what that information meant and it was readily available to them, just as much of it has been to private researchers.

By contacting credit card companies, email hosts and telecom companies they would however, be able to trace nearly all of the list. This was not evidence of any crime and the issues involved are highly complex. For example, in the States, indictments of 3 individuals and 5 corporations uncovered an Internet fraud involving $230 million for tours of adult web sites where users were simply supplying their credit card details as proof of age.

Reportedly, the initial arrests concentrated on those they believed had made more than 10 purchases, with some users appearing to have visited on more than 50 occasions.

For some reason, which cannot be subscribed to fair reason, the police decided to change tactics. This group, of largely adult surfers and victims of credit card fraud were to be branded as dangerous and any children at hand were children at risk. The list was subsequently prioritised into three groups:

1. Those who had access to children, a previous conviction or were on the sex offenders register (SOR).
2. Those in a position of authority.
3. Those not considered to pose a direct risk to children.

As it happens, they did not have sufficient evidence to arrest all Keyz subscribers as the data would have exonerated most of the list. Over 5,000 arrests were made in one of the most serious violations of human rights this nation has seen. It was supported by an orchestrated campaign of lies, misinformation and fraud.

By December 2002, 1,200 had been arrested, including 50 police officers. This included the bulk of category 1 and 2. At this stage, Operation Avalanche which had been started some two years prior, had arrested less than 150 Americans in targeted stings.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Carole Howlett, who was heading the Scotland Yard investigations, was reported as saying the entire list of 7,200 would be completely investigated within nine months. The story soon changed, to one that the police were overwhelmed and more money was needed if they were going to be able to investigate these cases at all. Corporate policing had clearly hit the UK.

The Landslide forensic server archives were given to the UK police and Celt Ltd, at the start of October 2002, and Celt Ltd undertook the task of analysing the data. Celt had been formed as a computer forensic expert company by ex-police police officers Brian Underhill and Nick Webber and they provided testimony as prosecution experts at many of the trials for many of the forces.

When Sharon Girling OBE (NCS), Nicholas Webber (Celt) and Brian Underhill (Celt) returned from a visit to the US, they reportedly had a list of 7,272 credit card holders, 7,275 email addresses derived from 26,462 credit transactions records together with forensic archives of some of the Landslide data.

With meticulous analysis of the Landslide database, associated log files, and the websites involved, it would have been possible to produce a list of names that the database identified as specifically relating to potential access to known illicit websites, i.e. sufficient grounds for arrest. Independent estimates, worst case put this figure at a low few hundred people. This required detailed and time consuming analysis as out of nearly 400 Keyz sites, many of the names appeared to be incriminating, but only a minority of the sites actually were of an illicit nature according to UK law at the time.

When the police originally rolled out Operation Ore with reportedly but not true, 50 arrests and charges in the first phase, the press were onto a new story and the UK police briefed the press with false information. Most damning of the information supplied was a story of Thomas Reedy and Landslide, the king of child pornography, and a picture of a web page, showing an explicit 'click here for child porn’ button in the middle of the screen. The inference was clear and the police were at pains to point out, they were investigating people who had done just that, submitted their credit card and clicked for child pornography. They went way further and suggested that these were Internet paedophiles and abusers of children as if Landslide was a paedophile ring with 7,000 UK members.

Within a short space of time, the possibility of a fair trial had evaporated. The incriminating or emotive catch lines use by the UK police and their partners became more and more rehearsed and incriminating. Judges and juries swallowed the information whole, the accused were doomed from the start and most defence solicitors suggested pleading guilty if any images were found quite regardless of whether they were guilty or not.

The enquiry in Scotland completed with 700 Orees, not one of which was charged with any sexual offences against children. There is a report in some quarters of one offender being found, but he was not on the Ore list. This was confirmed by a third party FOI request on a public discussion board. At least one of the people is now dead. The police said they were suspicious of some of the people arrested, but some of the most senior police officers involved said that all 7,000 were Internet paedophiles. (All 7,000 did not exist as it happens).

The public that forms the juries, and even the judges that presided over the proceedings, of course read the newspapers, and overnight, the presumption of innocence had been removed and all sense of justice and the measure of the crime had been lost to the lies and propaganda. The mere terms, ‘Operation Ore’, ‘child pornography’, ‘credit card’, ‘every picture is a crime scene’, 'Internet paedophiles' and so many others, were often enough to convict or coerce a guilty plea. Just the fact they were accused was enough in so many instances, in some instances too much.

The police did not just target those that the Landslide database appeared to incriminate; thousands were arrested, searched and in many cases, charged. Anyone questioned had their lives changed forever. Many of the people did not survive and the death toll is estimated to be over one hundred UK individuals, and it was not always only the accused that lost their lives to the witch-hunt.