GOOGLE ERASES OPERATION ORE CAMPAIGN SITE

Silence over Inquisition 21

By Lucy Sherriff

Register, UK: 21 September 2006
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/21/google_delists_inq21/

Google has delisted www.inquisition21.com, the website campaigning
against many of the Operation Ore child pornography convictions. The
last time the search giant's crawlers checked the site out was on 10
September.

Operation Ore, the UK's largest investigation into online child
pornography, was the result of US authorities handing over credit card
details on over 7,000 individuals whose details they had found on a
porn portal that contained links to child pornography.

Inquisition21 says the database contained a large number of fake
credit card numbers, and many card numbers that were being used
fraudulently. This, it argues, casts doubt on the safety of some of
the convictions in the UK. It is gathering support to mount a legal
challenge to the convictions.

Brian Rothery, Inquisition 21's editor, says the delisting followed an
attack on the site on 8 September. He says the attack, during which
"quite a large amount of undesirable material was placed on the site
with numerous links to it from other sites", came as the site was
about to make potentially damaging disclosures about the handling of
the investigation.

We asked Google why it had taken the site off its database, and on
which grounds it has appointed itself censor, but it refused to
comment on the action.

Instead it issued a statement: "We cannot tolerate websites trying to
manipulate search results as we aim to provide users with the relevant
and objective search results.

"Google may temporarily or permanently ban any site or site authors
that engage in tactics designed to distort their rankings or mislead
users in order to preserve the accuracy and quality of our search
results."

At the time of going to press, the company had not confirmed that the
Inquisition21 site had actually breached any of these guidelines.