Gardai not acting on Interpol Information - RE Child Pornograpic Images

Z

z105

Guest
Heard on Radio One news today - a senior garda said it was "human error" that made them miss the information given to them by Interpol

Mcdowell says it was a "human mistake", "even politicians make mistakes".

My recollection is that it was "human" or more precisely "garda" error that a certain search warrant against a certain judge in the South West was served incorrectly - ultimately ensuring that individual was not investigated to the full extent he could have been, and no charges accrued.

Will anyone be made accountable for these "errors"?, I for one believe the very protectors should not be allowed make "errors". The man responsible for the Gardai is the Minister for Justice - hang your head in shame - we are now in a situation that another few paedophiles have slipped through the net because someone didn't do their job properly. NOT GOOD ENOUGH
 

The same thought occurred to me today. These two cases allied to the sometimes extraordinarily lenient sentences handed out for child porn offences makes me wonder if these creatures have friends in high places?
 
I'm not sure I'm reading this correctly, but are you suggesting that the two individuals concerned are known (publically known individuals) and that the Gardai purposely did nothing because of who these two individuals were?
 
ronan_d_john said:
I'm not sure I'm reading this correctly, but are you suggesting that the two individuals concerned are known (publically known individuals) and that the Gardai purposely did nothing because of who these two individuals were?
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Not remotely close to what I said at all, read it again. If we are to believe the Gardai's account of what happened they didn't even follow up the email from Austria, so how could they know who these two people were?

My concern is that we have now had three cases (the judge and these two), at least, were 'administrative' errors led, or will possibly lead, to the accused escaping prosecution. Allied to the lenient sentences I mentioned I wonder quite how seriously the Gardai and our legal system take these offences?

I'd like very much not to believe that there are people in high places in this country who are ambivalent to these offences (but the Belgians probably hoped the same), but am troubled by what has happened in this case and others. That's all. The Gardai and legal system aren't, after all, infallible. Questions should be asked. Over and over again.
 
Bushfire said:
Not remotely close to what I said at all, read it again. If we are to believe the Gardai's account of what happened they didn't even follow up the email from Austria, so how could they know who these two people were? .
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Fair enough. I'll propose it then as a possible reason the perceived lack of Garda action. Maybe they did do the follow up necessary on this and found out that the 2 people involved were high ranking public or business people in the country, and they made a unilateral decision to cease investigations in the hope no one would know the issue had been raised.
 

Tremendously droll! So, are you enjoying Templemore?


Barnardos's director of advocacy Norah Gibbons: "All of us, but especially those on the front line of child protection, have an obligation to prioritise child safety and when alerted of the potential for abuse that we act upon it - it is not something that should be ignored and filed away."

Ellen O'Malley-Dunlop (Dublin Rape Crisis Centre): "We are very uneasy about this non-action by the Garda. We need to demand that this will not happen again. We need to know that systems are put in place so that every piece of information that is received is dealt with by a specialist team within the Garda who will act immediately."

The Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children: Research showed there was a clear link between individuals accessing child pornography and the direct sexual abuse of a child. A US study quoted by the ISPCC indicates that about 36 per cent of people who access child pornography abuse children.

Still no concerns?
 
I'm in total agreement with you Bushfire.

Why aren't the Gardai who messed up - because that's the mildest word I could use - not taken to task and fired - if it happened in private enterprise one would be dumped out on their ear. And if the MD of the private company had responsibility for this employee he would be KICKED out too - In this case Mcdowell should go - he has ultimate responsibility for Justice in this country, the good old people of Ireland don't give a toss though (excuse the expletive).

Sad really.

Questions should be asked. Over and over again
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And answers should be DEMANDED BY US - The Electorate, someone has to be accountable.
 
Was listening to TLW on Today FM & he had some Garda Rep on... sees as though on that day, they received 200 emails from Interpol..so through human error the did not act on it because the bulletin went to about 170 countries & it did not specifically call out for ireland ..or some other rubbish excuse anyways.....

It seems to me that ANY thing that comes over the wire relating to such acts should have been passed onto the outfit in charge of Operation Amethyst...so that they could decide if it was worthwhile info or not.

With all the news on this topic right now, the offenders could have easily dumped their equipment & legged it at this stage. One would have thought that the Gardai should have acted immediately to get warrants seize equipment etc. I would 'hope' that there was some level of cop on to do that much at the very least.

ninsaga
 
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I heard too that apart from two or three South (or Central?) American countries Ireland was the only one not to respond to the information. Staggering.
 

I think some of the blame has to lie with the Austrian police or Interpol - whoever actually sent the letter/email. It seems that the letter sent from Austria or Interpol didn't specifically mention Ireland, but looked like some sort of circular.

We all know from our daily work/lives that sometimes we get loads of irrelevant emails or letters. So we often just quickly glance through the content, and if we see nothing obviously directed at us which requires our action, then just move on to the next task.

If the Austrians/Interpol thought this was serious, then someone there should have thought to himself "who do I know in the Guards in Ireland, or who do I know here that knows someone over there." After all, they have all there EU and Interpol working groups exactly so that such contacts are made between the various forces. And police generally stick together, no matter what country they're from.

So the point of all this. If Austria/Interpol thought it was so important, why didn't Hannes get on the phone to Paddy and say "hey there's a really important email from Interpol about paedophiles in Ireland about to arrive at Garda HQ. Can you make sure someone acts on it immediatly before evidence is lost".

Not saying the Guards are blameless, but I don't think it's entirely their fault.
 
Persius said:
I think some of the blame has to lie with the Austrian police or Interpol - whoever actually sent the letter/email.
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Thought that too, it's mind boggling that they merely emailed such crucial information, rather than phoning about it. Yeah, 170 calls are a lot to make, but you'd have thought a matter of such urgency merited such an approach??

But the Gardai don't seem to be denying that the email was read (or do they??) - if it was why on earth didn't they follow it up to seek clarification on whether or not any of the suspects were Irish?

Of course heads should roll. But this is Ireland, so they won't.
 

I think in fairness to that particular investigation it emerged that the Gardai knew there may have been a problem with the timing of the particular warrant but on the advice of the DPP went ahead with the search. Not good enough I know but the fault may not always lie with one particular individual or organisation.
 

The DPP don't make such decisions to my knowledge, the warrant was issued properly but served late - This is the Gardai's fault, in anyhow, The Minister for Justice should be held accountable IMO. He is the one with jurisdiction over the Gardai and if proper procedures aren't being adhered to then someone's head must roll. Individuals should not get away with these typre of errors. NOT GOOD ENOUGH !
 
Interpol communications systems work a little differently than your basic email system . . . it wasn't 'just an email' - it was sent through official Interpol communications channels. These channels aren't used for sending messages like "There's going to be 5-a-side on Friday night, anyone interested in joining ?", these channels are used to alert other forces to potential issues and as such *anything* received in this manner deserves attention and formal rating for action.

I don't think people deserve to be fired for this if it was a single omission, but the root cause of the omission in this instance needs to be established and action taken to make sure the chances of it happening again are lessened. If it is a systematic failure then someone high up in the force needs to get a plan together to come up with a better system and one where a report like this can't just come in and be overlooked.

z
 

That's what puzzles me about this. The Gardai, apparently, received 170 messages that day from Interpol which two Gardai had to deal with.

I get roughly 70 emails every day to my work and personal addresses (about 50 of them are spam ), and painful and all as it is I have to go through them all to make sure I'm not missing anything important.

Presumably Interpol don't send ads for Viagra or offers to invest in companies that don't exist, so you'd imagine all 170 of those messages should at least have been read - 85 for each Garda, not that big a deal. And if any message was unclear, as they claim this one was, should they not have followed it up?

These messages, apparently, generally relate to missing people, warnings re foreign criminals who may be in Ireland, notifications re Irish people committing crime on the Internet, etc - if that's what they're about then surely they should be sifted through carefully?

The Gardai complained that the message wasn't flagged, as it should have been, so they weren't alerted to its importance. That might have explained why it wasn't dealt with that day, but why not the next day, week or month? What happened the message?

The Austrians claim the Gardai were told in the message that two of the suspected child porn users were Irish and that they enclosed their IP addresses - if this info was contained in the original message how could it possibly have been overlooked or misunderstood?

The UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre received the same message on the same day and acted on the information within hours of receiving it.

When people call for an enquiry in to anything I usually weep, but I'd damn well like an enquiry in to this.
 
Apparently Interpol notices are also [broken link removed] which might also help when prioritising which to deal with first. Unless the Gardaí are claiming that this did not happen in this specific case? Either way - it hardly seems an onerous task to actually review all received messages in a timely fashion and bear in mind that this notice was received last August!
 
Is an IP address not of very little use anyway - most ISP's here don't provide users with static IP addresses, so would that not negate the usefulness, additionally would people using these sites not use proxy servers which would mask the real IP address?
The only clearcut evidence would have to be the money trail, I don't think anything else would stand up in a court of law, as even if they found the computer with images etc, who's to know who actually accessed those images, at least with the credit card authorisations etc, you've established a pretty good probability that the owner of the card is culpable.
 
glenbhoy - all the evidence will be circumstantial. Use of a credit card proves absolutely nothing about authorisation or identity. That's why there is a market for stolen credit card details. The advantage with IP addresses is that in many (but not all cases) they are logged in various places, but use of a given IP address still only provides circumstantial evidence.

z
 
Apparently Interpol notices are also [broken link removed] which might also help when prioritising which to deal with first. Unless the Gardaí are claiming that this did not happen in this specific case?
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Perhaps the Gardai's printer ran out of colour ink - so they all looked like the black notice - Black Notice -To seek information on unidentified bodies., They then might have said - "ah sure it's only another few unidentified bodies that Interpol crowd are after, sure we'll leave that until last, right where are those outstanding parking fines"

Just perhaps !
 
There's a good leader in today's Irish Times about the whole thing.

Also saw this quote from Harald Gremel, head of the police investigation:

"Ireland was the only European country that didn't reply, along with several South American countries. It's up to every country whether they pursue this matter or not and whether they pursue people who want access to child pornography. Whoever doesn't want our information, well that's their concern."
 
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