Precisely, I got quite angry over how it was all reported, with this pretense that a button would have saved her. Newsflash: Kids won’t go and meet people that they don’t trust, they don’t need a button to use common sense. When they do trust the people they’re talking to is the problem, and then the button is absolutely redundant.

There are several failures here, the first is obviously the police in losing track of the guy. If you’re going to have a register at least bloody use it properly.

Secondly though is a more long term failure in our education system and how we inform parents about online safety. I heard the mother on the radio and she seemed like a very reasonable person, a mother trying to strike the balance between being an authority figure and letting their children experience their own lives.

Yet at what point did Ashleigh miss the education she needed not to get in to a car with a stranger you don’t know? This is textbook stuff, at least I thought it was. Perhaps this girl felt like she could take a risk this time for the potential gains in her self esteem this new boy might give her? More likely I feel that it just wasn’t made clear enough to her what steps she needed to go through to keep herself safe.

It’s easy in retrospect but there are simple things we can do to teach our kids to keep themselves safe. 1) Hear the other person’s voice. 2) SEE the other person in an interactive way through the net. There is no excuse with the ubiquity of webcams for people not to prove they are who they say they are from the safety of their own home. 3) Get other contact details beyond facebook/email and test that they are right

These three steps alone mean that when a stranger turns up you have routes to verify whether or not you’re taking a stupid risk or a reasonable one, let alone the final options of ensuring that you meet first in a very public place and preferably take a friend.

If Ashleigh had been taught to do these things (and if it wasn’t this tragic situation), if all our kids were taught this common sense approach to meeting new people, then her first response might have been to call her “friend” and ask him if he’d really sent his dad, and given that she’d have heard his voice before, and seen that he was a real person, been able to trust his answer.

In this case she unfortunately trusted a ghost, a situation that should never have been allowed to happen if the police had been doing their job, and no matter how much it may be described that she was low on self esteem or otherwise, nothing about a person’s personality stops them from being able to take in lessons on keeping themselves alive.

So my question is why aren’t we trying hard enough to deliver those lessons? Why are we so eager to leave it up to ISPs and Facebook to deliver this message? The digital economy bill going through now has had multiple attempts to deliver more responsibility on external and impersonal organisations to either limit our children’s experience of the web or to act as internet child minders. Why are our politicians, and obviously families around the country too, happy to outsource this most important area of parental guidance?

Paul, great post if I may say so.

A correspondent wrote a letter to the Daily Telegraph about a related article:

The article Human rights laws stopped Home Office tracking sex offenders’ emails [1] makes false claims that contribute to human rights hysteria and disrespect of the judiciary. Human rights laws have not prevented such a thing at all – nor have judges “prevented police from gathering sex offenders’ email addresses”.

The article says that, “High Court judges agreed [in December 2008] that indefinite registration on the sex offenders register, with no chance of a review, breached their right to a private and family life under Article 8 of the ECHR, enshrined in British law as the Human Rights Act”. The judges in this case [2] said that the sex offenders register was lawful but that it was difficult to see how a lifelong requirement to register was proportionate in the absence of any opportunity for review. They made a declaration of incompatibility. The Government could have introduced a rule that offered opportunity for review – apparently it failed to do so, instead seeking to challenge the judgement in the Supreme Court.

Furthermore, on 9 March 2010 Merseyside Police referred itself to the Independent Police Complaints Commission [3] because of its failure to follow up on Peter Chapman on his non-compliance with the terms of his registration requirements – he wasn’t at home when the police visited – and Merseyside’s subsequent failure to issue a national alert. It is difficult to see how retention of Chapman’s email addresses would have made any difference to his victim Ashleigh Hall.

[1] Human rights laws stopped Home Office tracking sex offenders’ emails – Daily Telegraph 7:30AM GMT 10 Mar 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/7406462/Human-rights-laws-stopped-Home-Office-tracking-sex-offenders-emails.html

[2] F & Anor, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2008] EWHC 3170; [2008] WLR (D) 409
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2008/3170.htm
and
Times Law Report
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/reports/article5569974.ece

[3] http://www.policeoracle.com/news/Merseyside-Refers-Itself-To-IPCC-_22373.html

Great post.

I’m sure we can all also enjoy the fact that the Daily Mail is looking very much as if it is going to find itself on the end of the mother of all legal ass-kickings c/o facebook.

Brilliant post, Paul.

Still, I’m sure that there’ll be an…Oh…IPCC investigation…

Excellent post and a sad indictment of the fucked up relationship between the police forces and our media.

Very good post.

It’s really easy to whip up fear of electronic media many people simply don’t understand.

(Don’t think we’ve had such unanimity for a while!)

Incidentally, I initially thought the title refered to a Facebook site which incorrectly ‘outed’ someone as Jon Venables.

That *is* a legitimate concern – even had the identification been correct.

Do police forces employ PR firms to tune their message, or are they naturally talented at disseminating bullshit?

How it essentially works:

The Police fuck up some immigrants/Muslims/protesters/people they believe to be protesters.

The Police anonymously tell the press that the immigrants/Muslims/protesters/people they believe to be protesters were doing something worthy of being fucked up.

The press repeat what the Police tell them.

Simples!

Hibernica,

Do police forces employ PR firms to tune their message, or are they naturally talented at disseminating bullshit?

Sadly, it seems the answer is yes and yes. There is also a degree of of incompetence; in the case of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Met’s press officer assumed that firearms officers always challenged suspects before shooting them and therefore included in her draft press release that Menezes had been challenged (see the IPCC’s Stockwell Two report, page 88 para 19.1.8) – this draft was approved by senior police officers and released to the press. With this and “sources” saying Menezes ran, had a heavy coat (he didn’t), etc, according to the mainstream press he only had himself to blame.

Police Minister Vernon Coaker said of 70 police officers hurt in the vicinity of a protest that he “naturally assumed” they had been injured by protestors. They had in fact been injured by wasps, “sitting in a car”, and suffered heat exhaustion.

What Police Ministers, incompetent press officers and “sources” seem not to realise, however, is that although a blame the victim (or someone else) approach might distract attention in the short term, they aren’t improving the long-term image of police at all in the long term. Perhaps they just don’t care.

HTML fail, sorry.

Nice to see that we can all come together – regardless of ideology – to unite on this one.

I’ve got to say, this case makes me absolutely livid.

It’s symptomatic of the way the media’s slavish despeartion for “balance” allows it to be manipulated and for accountability to go out of the window.

@ukliberty, I agree with most of what you’re saying, but (unfortunately) I’m not sure about “they aren’t improving the long-term image of police at all in the long-term”. While the reputation of the police is being gravely damaged among certain sections of the populace (us, for example), it’s unclear whether it’s a general trend. If your main news source is the Sun or the Daily Mail (which, for many, it is), then you probably still think De Menezes was a terrorist/rapist/ne’er-do-well, Ian Tomlinson was a rowdy protestor, 70 police officers were hurt by marauding tree-huggers, etc.

Most of what police forces churn out after they make mistakes may well be bullshit, but how many people know that?

Those of us who remember the miners strike have a naturally sceptical attitude to the media and the police. Its notable that a lot of the today’s senior coppers must have cut their teeth at the time.

Hibernica, on reflection I think you are right.

Well said, Paul.

It usually goes like this.

Boy hit on head by spade.

The Home Secretary smiles inwardly and announces a Dangerous Garden Tools Act controlling spade use and including a statutory instrument allowing him to ban anything else he doesn’t fancy.

That’s how they’ll get the internet in the end.

Yes, this seems to be the old ‘fear factor’ being used again to stamp all over our civil liberties.

Maybe facebook is simply too democratic for them. I mean it’s already caused a few stirs by demonstrating how many people object to various things – like the recent exam backlash by students.

Vive la revolution comrades.

14. Yurrzem!

“Those of us who remember the miners strike have a naturally sceptical attitude to the media and the police. Its notable that a lot of the today’s senior coppers must have cut their teeth at the time.”

…or maybe it was the way they blatantly lied about Jean Charles DeMenzes ‘running through the gates’ or ‘wearing a bomber jacket’ shortly after they shot him in cold blood.

We can’t trust the police any more than we can trust criminals. They have lied to us, beaten us, shot us dead and lied again to cover it all up (G20, Ian Tomlinson etc.)

When will the public see through this charade – the police are not there for your protection, they are there to protect ‘them’ from ‘us’.

Well, I’ve known a few coppers. Some are good and some aren’t. If I have trouble its them I turn to. Isn’t that the irony?

All the lies discussed in this list were posted by senior police. There may be a wider issue with police culture, especially when special groups are set up, though they’ve improved a lot since the SPG. I think they still have a chip on their shoulders about past misdemeanours that prevents them from being more open today.

OP, Paul Sagar: “Yet it seems overwhelmingly obvious that in this case, a CEOP button would have made zero difference. If Hall had thought that she was in danger she wouldn’t have gone to meet Chapman. She’d never have hit a CEOP button, because she didn’t think she was in danger.”

In the most part I agree with Paul’s argument. Lee Griffin follows up with a good post about why Ashleigh Hall should have been more aware.

But whether or not the police have used the absence of a CEOP magic button (or a similar suspicion reporting mechanism) on Facebook as an excuse for failure is separate from the concept that Facebook should have a prominent *something*. Whilst Ashleigh may have missed the warning signs, another person might have spotted something amiss and reported it.

We should be confident enough to argue: “fair point about the absence of a reporting mechanism, but why weren’t you properly monitoring a high risk individual?”

@20: Regarding “spotting something amiss”:
- if the parents were going to be prompted by Facebook to notice “something amiss”, they would have needed to be watching the page in the first place. Presumably this didn’t occur.
- if her friends/acquaintances were going to be prompted by Facebook to notice “something amiss”.. what? They weren’t worried enough to message their friend with “hey, maybe he’s a bit weird?”, but they were worried enough to hit a “here be paedos” button?

Therefore, in the sense that the button (or imaginary “something”) wouldn’t have affected the case in question, it doesn’t seem to fit the concept of a “fair point”.

@21 Hibernica: Provision of a magic button is not about the family and friends of Ashleigh Hall.

How many women do you think that Peter Chapman hit on before before he misled Asheligh Hall? Many would no doubt have swallowed the persona or just disregarded him as a harmless weirdo. But if, and it is an if, somebody had smelled something suspicious about him, they should have had a magic button to press.

@22: I think the ‘magic button’ idea is flawed on… essentially every level, but let’s pick one for brevity. What exactly would you expect Facebook to do if someone hit such a button?

Just heard a piece on the BBC that almost 3000 young people are admitted to hospital each year after harming themselves.

The solution?

Apparently the above occurs because they are encouraged to self harm by looking at websites and the answer is to censor the internet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/health/newsid_8563000/8563670.stm

Don’t forget that News International – bosom buddies of the more authoritarian among our police, also (as the owners of MySpace) love indulging in a bit of Facebook bashing.

Yurrzem @several:

Knightjack made this point in ‘Tazers to Truncheons’, and it was discussed a certain amount here during the analysis of the G20 debacle. You’re precisely right; the generation of top coppers who have led, planned, directed and then lied about the litany of over-reactions, brutality and political violence were learning how to behave as policemen in the 1970s and 1980s.

There are forces which have gotten past this, because some of the honest coppers from back then got promoted; but in the Met, Sir Paul Bloody Condon drove out progressive and liberal senior officers [1] and actively pursued an agenda of social authoritarianism and the suppression of protest. His proteges, fast-tracked by him because they were his type of copper, are now running the Met and in charge of the various high-profile anti-protest operations; Stephenson, Blair and company.

[1] Mostly because they were the ones lobbying for declassification of cannabis back in 1990-1995, and once he got the top job he made it his business to purge the force of senior officers who held that view. I didn’t realise it at the time, but he was already talking privately about this plan in 1994, when he was still Asst. Commissioner level.

@23 Hibernica: “@22: I think the ‘magic button’ idea is flawed on… essentially every level, but let’s pick one for brevity. What exactly would you expect Facebook to do if someone hit such a button?”

On the surface, not a lot. Delete the profile, which is a good move in itself if there is evidence that the profile is dodgy.

Unless the IP address could be identified as coming from a fixed address (all Charlieman comments submitted here from home come from a single IP address), nothing on the IP front either. I am one of the 0.001% of the internet with a fixed IP address. But the identity of the ISP who hosted the creep’s account is still useful.

Deletion of a creep’s profile does not prevent them from returning to a site under another pseudonym. But ISP identification (few people change ISP willingly owing to the disconnection period) with signature information within the original creepy profile can raise alerts if social networking sites are bothered when reviewing new profiles. Facebook aren’t bothered.

I can’t see how a CEOPS button on facebook would have made the slightest difference.

However, if you believe that the murder was in any way connected with the fact that Merseyside Police “lost track of” Chapman then you’re highlighting your ignorance of what the Sex Offenders Register actually is and the Police’s role with respect to people on it.

Basically, all that is required of most people subject to SOREG is that they notify the Police of their address. The Police aren’t, in any real sense in the vast majority of cases, required to supervise or keep under surveillance people who are on it and they don’t have the resources to do so. I don’t see how Chapman providing an accurate address would have prevented him from using the internet to groom a child and I don’t see how it would have stopped him meeting her. There seems to be a belief that the Merseyside Old Bill should have been watching him on CCTV 24 hours a day or that they should have had a car full of coppers parked outside his house. Not the case, I’m afraid. SOREG doesn’t really achieve much, in most cases.

Now, I’m not saying the Police shouldn’t have issued an alert earlier and I’m not saying that this wouldn’t have prevented the crime (it might, it might not), I’m just saying that you seem to have a mistaken idea of what SOREG actually is.