Online child porn investigation costs police £15m

The cost of forensically examining the computers seized during the UK police's Operation Ore investigation into online child pornography will total £15m, according to the National Crime Squad (NCS).

Operation Ore was launched after the FBI smashed an illegal pornography ring in the US. The FBI passed UK police a list containing the details of over 7,000 UK citizens who had given their credit card details to gain access to child pornography websites run by the gang.

The operation was launched in 2002 and as of December 2004 police have raided 4,283 addresses and charged 1,846 people leading to 1,451 convictions and 493 cautions. There are also still 870 related investigations still ongoing.

But the investigation has been a huge drain on police resources. A spokeswoman for the NCS revealed that the cost of forensically examining the computer hard drives seized during all the raids alone is £15m.

Neil Barrett, visiting professor in the centre for forensic computing at Cranfield University and a regular expert witness in cases of hacking, paedophilia, fraud and murder, said examining each hard drive is a costly and lengthy process.

"Each one takes the thick end of 15 days of computer forensic analysis and you are talking about multiple tens of thousands of pounds just to complete the computer investigation on a case that is prosecuted in court," he said.

He acknowledged the strain on police budgets but said it is "absolutely" worth it to combat this kind of crime and warned that those currently being prosecuted are just the "stupid" ones who still visit child pornography websites and can be traced easily.

"A lot now are using file-sharing, which is much more difficult to track," he said.

The quadrupling in arrests for online child pornography over the last two years led children's charity NCH to last week call for a special police unit to be set up but this has been met with a muted response from the police, who claim the rise in arrests is as a direct result of Operation Ore.

Jim Gamble, deputy director general of the NCS, said on BBC radio last week: "Figures released today of a 400 per cent increase in this type of crime are merely reflecting the success of Operation Ore. It put a tremendous amount of pressure on forces around the country."