Re: Steve Marsden's WBM screenshot: The CEOP Home page for April 30, 2007 also refers to Missing Madeleine.

by whodunit 09.07.15 15:35

skyrocket wrote:@HKP
The wooshing was done a while ago, not long after they realised (told) that there was an issue. We can't be sure that anything we are picking up is the true reflection unless a capture by Stevo at the time was conducted and made available

Hi HKP - I realise that the 30 April pages were wooshed almost immediately but I wasn't aware that the actual 30 April calendar date (showing on each of the calendars as a blue circle) had been completely removed/erased until now, it was certainly still there a few days ago. Thought it was a new development (think it's only very recent). Doesn't really make much difference in the whole scheme of things other than to show the IA's conclusion.

Yes they were still there a few days ago, but more importantly the internal coding of the pages have all been manually manipulated with the April 30th dates in 'next/previous capture' erased from all mccann related CEOP captures. [relevant sections are twice preserved in this thread] I know some people will be thrilled at this 'correction' but it's not so much a correction as an eradication of evidence and of the historical record. Highly unethical. Among those who care about such things IA has destroyed itself and for what? The McCanns? This is way bigger than the McCanns.

by Joss 09.07.15 15:47

whodunit wrote:
skyrocket wrote:@HKP
The wooshing was done a while ago, not long after they realised (told) that there was an issue. We can't be sure that anything we are picking up is the true reflection unless a capture by Stevo at the time was conducted and made available

Hi HKP - I realise that the 30 April pages were wooshed almost immediately but I wasn't aware that the actual 30 April calendar date (showing on each of the calendars as a blue circle) had been completely removed/erased until now, it was certainly still there a few days ago. Thought it was a new development (think it's only very recent). Doesn't really make much difference in the whole scheme of things other than to show the IA's conclusion.

Yes they were still there a few days ago, but more importantly the internal coding of the pages have all been manually manipulated with the April 30th dates in 'next/previous capture' erased from all mccann related CEOP captures. [relevant sections are twice preserved in this thread] I know some people will be thrilled at this 'correction' but it's not so much a correction as an eradication of evidence and of the historical record. Highly unethical. Among those who care about such things IA has destroyed itself and for what? The McCanns? This is way bigger than the McCanns.

Can you definitively prove that assertion?

by whodunit 09.07.15 16:05

whodunit wrote:
whodunit wrote:CEOP homepage capture April 27, 2007

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mccann.html capture dated May 13, 2007

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CEOP homepage capture May 14, 2007.^^^^

I'm not really sure what goes on with the index, but if I had to guess---perfectly permissible since Nuala is also guessing---I'd say that WBM tampering with and 're-indexing' the captures on this specific date over the last couple of weeks has caused it to go haywire.

What is not at issue, the thing that has not changed since this whole thing started is the embedded coding. If you dig around Steve Marsden's posts at FB you can find his downloaded coding for the original April 30 page that ignited this controversy. At the moment I cannot find it, but within that coding, under the 'Next/Previous Capture' heading you will find this text "You are Here: 11:58:03 April 30, 2007".

Now look at the caps I made of the same codes embedded in the pages that remain after the great re-shuffling. Both for the CEOP homepage and for mccann.html, April 30, 2007 is sitting right where you would expect to find it if the capture is true and correct. It is indeed the NEXT homepage capture after April 27 and the PREVIOUS capture to May 13. As for mccann.html, we find April 30, 2007 as the capture PREVIOUS to the extant May 14 capture.

If the April 30 capture is out of place in the contiguous sequences of captures you would expect to find evidence of this in the coding. We do not.

@Joss--"Can you definitively prove that assertion?"

Of course I can. The above post was made on Tuesday July 7. Anyone can go have a look at the present coding for themselves and see that the April 30 capture date has been eradicated from all contiguous sequences in the coding.

by skyrocket 09.07.15 16:13

@Joss Today at 1:38 pm
I think it is misleading to assert that WBM is unreliable in its use for electronic evidence in court cases as this is not what WBM was designed for and they stipulate as much:

Had to respond to this Joss.

Comments from the IA to the effect of - 'this is not what we are really designed for but if you want to use us for that then go ahead and here's how we can help' is what's confusing/misleading. The IA will not guarantee content is concurrent with the page date stamp or that the page is an accurate portrayal of the page as it appeared on that date. They don't seem to encourage legal use BUT they have clearly been prepared to supply verified (by their staff) page copies and will supply legally verified copies if you pay.

When an archived page is retrieved from the IA the date stamp may apply to everything on that page; only the body of the page (always); most of the page. Items/files, such as images, on the page may have different date stamps right through to the current date. That is normal. The problem has always been that although most of the page elements can be dated accurately via their momentos (date codes) some items have some of these codes missing and the page content capture date is unclear. This has always been the case and there is good research on it. So what you see isn't always what you think you're seeing. But pages (and page content) on the WBM could up to now, usually be checked for dates to corroborate an argument in a court case.

HOWEVER, if we now accept that the date stamp of both the page body and/or individual files (e.g. the madeleine_02.jpg photo) can be incorrect, even if it is a 1 in a million chance (who knows) then the whole business of using anything from the IA as evidence in a court of law is kaput and the IA need to make that clear. And yes, I do think it's fair to highlight the IA's apparent newly discovered unreliability in this respect because, despite their professed reluctance, they do clearly have a procedure in place for supplying pages to the legal profession. I would expect them now, in light of what has just occured, to draw attention to the fact that there are possible date stamp errors in their archives, on the legal advice page - I would think that would put a stop to all requests for pages as evidence and I doubt that any court, anywhere, will be willing to accept IA pages as valid!

by Joss 09.07.15 16:25

whodunit wrote:
whodunit wrote:
whodunit wrote:CEOP homepage capture April 27, 2007

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

mccann.html capture dated May 13, 2007

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

CEOP homepage capture May 14, 2007.^^^^

I'm not really sure what goes on with the index, but if I had to guess---perfectly permissible since Nuala is also guessing---I'd say that WBM tampering with and 're-indexing' the captures on this specific date over the last couple of weeks has caused it to go haywire.

What is not at issue, the thing that has not changed since this whole thing started is the embedded coding. If you dig around Steve Marsden's posts at FB you can find his downloaded coding for the original April 30 page that ignited this controversy. At the moment I cannot find it, but within that coding, under the 'Next/Previous Capture' heading you will find this text "You are Here: 11:58:03 April 30, 2007".

Now look at the caps I made of the same codes embedded in the pages that remain after the great re-shuffling. Both for the CEOP homepage and for mccann.html, April 30, 2007 is sitting right where you would expect to find it if the capture is true and correct. It is indeed the NEXT homepage capture after April 27 and the PREVIOUS capture to May 13. As for mccann.html, we find April 30, 2007 as the capture PREVIOUS to the extant May 14 capture.

If the April 30 capture is out of place in the contiguous sequences of captures you would expect to find evidence of this in the coding. We do not.

@Joss--"Can you definitively prove that assertion?"

Of course I can. The above post was made on Tuesday July 7. Anyone can go have a look at the present coding for themselves and see that the April 30 capture date has been eradicated from all contiguous sequences in the coding.

I think unless anyone knows 100% exactly how WBM works without any question of doubt whatsoever, then i don't think we can really assert anything with absolute positivity IMO. And if we knew exactly why this discrepency with a date in the archive pertaining to CEOP we wouldn't have all the different theories & opinions floating around at the moment for the last 100+ pages on this topic. Throwing around accusations at WBM staff of tampering with evidence in a criminal case is not the way to go as i see it. WBM claim an error, how are we going to prove otherwise when we don't have the complete picture of all of the information?

by Joss 09.07.15 16:49

skyrocket wrote:@Joss Today at 1:38 pm
I think it is misleading to assert that WBM is unreliable in its use for electronic evidence in court cases as this is not what WBM was designed for and they stipulate as much:

Had to respond to this Joss.

Comments from the IA to the effect of - 'this is not what we are really designed for but if you want to use us for that then go ahead and here's how we can help' is what's confusing/misleading. The IA will not guarantee content is concurrent with the page date stamp or that the page is an accurate portrayal of the page as it appeared on that date. They don't seem to encourage legal use BUT they have clearly been prepared to supply verified (by their staff) page copies and will supply legally verified copies if you pay.

When an archived page is retrieved from the IA the date stamp may apply to everything on that page; only the body of the page (always); most of the page. Items/files, such as images, on the page may have different date stamps right through to the current date. That is normal. The problem has always been that although most of the page elements can be dated accurately via their momentos (date codes) some items have some of these codes missing and the page content capture date is unclear. This has always been the case and there is good research on it. So what you see isn't always what you think you're seeing. But pages (and page content) on the WBM could up to now, usually be checked for dates to corroborate an argument in a court case.

HOWEVER, if we now accept that the date stamp of both the page body and/or individual files (e.g. the madeleine_02.jpg photo) can be incorrect, even if it is a 1 in a million chance (who knows) then the whole business of using anything from the IA as evidence in a court of law is kaput and the IA need to make that clear. And yes, I do think it's fair to highlight the IA's apparent newly discovered unreliability in this respect because, despite their professed reluctance, they do clearly have a procedure in place for supplying pages to the legal profession. I would expect them now, in light of what has just occured, to draw attention to the fact that there are possible date stamp errors in their archives, on the legal advice page - I would think that would put a stop to all requests for pages as evidence and I doubt that any court, anywhere, will be willing to accept IA pages as valid!

BBM, I think if you have a read on their legal faq's they are not in the business of proving legalities in cases involving law and are adverse to doing so. They also state they will fight being subpoenaed to court. They are quite limited in staff & resources. They provide a free public service.
They might comply with an affadavit concerning information, but at the end of the day it is not their job to prove a case or any information pertaining to it. I don't know why people don't understand their disclaimers and terms of service, it has been posted on the threads? They also have an email address to contact them on.

by skyrocket 09.07.15 17:34

Hi Joss

I agree with you completely - the archive was set up as a research tool and it does an invaluable job in that respect, where 100% accuracy is not essential.

But, as I pointed out, the IA do have a legal advice page and although they don't encourage it they DO have procedures in place. If the date stamps can now not be relied on then the IA should make this clear, they have a very clear duty to do so. It is a critical point - it is not just a case of the onous being on individuals/lawyers to check page content dates carefully, the fact is dates could be incorrect and showing a false history, which wasn't the known case prior to 17 June 2015 (unless the IA have been very naughty and have been concealing previous problems). And, the fact that we are here discussing what we have all been discussing is a clear indicator of the implications of such date 'errors'.

If the trawl dates can't be relied on (and apparently they can't) then the IA need to say so - they should either stop supplying endorsed page copies altogether or they need to be crystal clear that errors in the date stamps can occur.

Does still seem odd that in all the history of the WBM and the IA, the first time such an error has occured has been with a web page relating to the mccanns. Whats the chances?! Because surely, had any errors like this occured before the IA would have behaved responsibly and stopped dead the use of their pages in court, wouldn't they? That's the question! If we trust the IA, then the 30 April looks very odd, if we don't and all this has happened before, then it may not be odd at all.

by lj 09.07.15 18:23

skyrocket wrote:Hi Joss

I agree with you completely - the archive was set up as a research tool and it does an invaluable job in that respect, where 100% accuracy is not essential.

But, as I pointed out, the IA do have a legal advice page and although they don't encourage it they DO have procedures in place. If the date stamps can now not be relied on then the IA should make this clear, they have a very clear duty to do so. It is a critical point - it is not just a case of the onous being on individuals/lawyers to check page content dates carefully, the fact is dates could be incorrect and showing a false history, which wasn't the known case prior to 17 June 2015 (unless the IA have been very naughty and have been concealing previous problems). And, the fact that we are here discussing what we have all been discussing is a clear indicator of the implications of such date 'errors'.

If the trawl dates can't be relied on (and apparently they can't) then the IA need to say so - they should either stop supplying endorsed page copies altogether or they need to be crystal clear that errors in the date stamps can occur.

Does still seem odd that in all the history of the WBM and the IA, the first time such an error has occured has been with a web page relating to the mccanns. Whats the chances?! Because surely, had any errors like this occured before the IA would have behaved responsibly and stopped dead the use of their pages in court, wouldn't they? That's the question! If we trust the IA, then the 30 April looks very odd, if we don't and all this has happened before, then it may not be odd at all.

Another problem for them is, in case they continue to provide expert legal evidence, if they didn't know after all these years the date could be wrong, what else don't they know that can be wrong?

by Syn 09.07.15 20:30

Firstly, I wish to apologise to @HPK for my unwarranted comments last night. There was no need for my snark response at all and I hope that he will forgive me as my apology is sincerely meant :)

Secondly, @TonyBennett, it is funny that you should mention Al Gore as you will find this rather serendipitous I'm sure :) :-

Fred Cohen CEO – Fred Cohen & Associates
President – California Sciences Institute and owner of the http.all.net/ domain found an image of Al Gore accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001 on a Wayback Machine archive of one of his 1997 pages.

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Thirdly, Wayback did tell us the 30th April Calendar blue dots would disappear after they next re-indexed

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by Guest 10.07.15 11:53

[size=52]Deleted[/size]
[size=52]Having re-reading the post it wasn't correct.[/size]

by Guest 10.07.15 21:57

After much discussion, we seem to be in general agreement that an error has occurred, we are not going to get to the bottom of it without IA’s help however that does not seem to be forthcoming.

So let’s look at what they have said; Chris Butler has confirmed the timestamps from the two records that were highlighted to him are incorrect which were:-

20070430115803 [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
20070430115803 [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

He then states the mccann.html appears to be July 31 2007 & ceop.gov.uk October 7 2007

They may have initially thought that they APPEAR to be these dates but how come?

mccann.html :- from the information we have available the next crawl of this file was 20070513020901 (13/05/07) and there were also seven other crawls prior to his stated 31/07/07 date. If we then look at his proposed date there were no crawls of the ceop site that day (the last recorded crawl was on 27/07 for some reason however 689 urls were recorded that month, some may have been removed though).

IA could have just have said that 13/05/07 was the capture date it actually would have made much more sense, however he does have to tie it in to the 'campaign' posters. The first date where mccann.html, madeleine 01 & 02 jpg's and the find Madeleine posters appear is 08/07/07 it seems odd to me he is claiming 31/07, what about all the previously captured mccann.html pages? Just as an aside the 'Madeleine McCann campaign posters‘, campaign! really strange terminology (probably been mentioned before).

Ceop.gov.uk:- the 07/10/07 date he states does show in the records. The issue with that being correct would appear to be a link to a news article dated 23/10/07, given that the WBM can replay with this type of ‘issue‘ as stated in the FAQs it brings us back to a similar argument.

I don’t buy IA’s (lack of) explanation, the 20070430115803 timestamp came from an actual capture date / time imo what it actually captured, we are destined not to know

by Guest 10.07.15 22:55

HKP wrote:After much discussion, we seem to be in general agreement that an error has occurred

I'm back.

It seems sense has prevailed.

Hallelujah

by Guest 11.07.15 0:06

BlueBag wrote:
HKP wrote:After much discussion, we seem to be in general agreement that an error has occurred

I'm back.

It seems sense has prevailed.

Hallelujah

Not quite, since you've been gone (there's a song in there somewhere) nobody has been able to prove that mccann.html wasn't captured 20070430115803. Welcome back.

by Guest 11.07.15 8:09

HKP wrote:
BlueBag wrote:
HKP wrote:After much discussion, we seem to be in general agreement that an error has occurred

I'm back.

It seems sense has prevailed.

Hallelujah
Not quite, since you've been gone (there's a song in there somewhere) nobody has been able to prove that mccann.html wasn't captured 20070430115803. Welcome back.

Yeah but... you know.

by **sharonl** 11.07.15 8:12

HKP wrote:
BlueBag wrote:
HKP wrote:After much discussion, we seem to be in general agreement that an error has occurred

I'm back.

It seems sense has prevailed.

Hallelujah
Not quite, since you've been gone (there's a song in there somewhere) nobody has been able to prove that mccann.html wasn't captured 20070430115803. Welcome back.

We also have the correspondence between Chris Butler and Isabelle McFadden and the findings of Dr Martin Roberts to consider.

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by whodunit 12.07.15 0:42

HKP wrote: "After much discussion, we seem to be in general agreement that an error has occurred."

I do not agree. After much discussion, some are in general agreement that an error occurred. Others--the majority, I'd wager--remain unconvinced. Erasing the record, altering evidence of an 'error' without ever advising the public and explaining their actions is a sinister act by an ostensibly unbiased archive. Just think of these actions in any other context, like recalling a book and erasing certain passages and expecting people to believe those words had never existed....

by Guest 12.07.15 9:26

whodunit wrote:HKP wrote: "After much discussion, we seem to be in general agreement that an error has occurred."

I do not agree. After much discussion, some are in general agreement that an error occurred. Others--the majority, I'd wager--remain unconvinced. Erasing the record, altering evidence of an 'error' without ever advising the public and explaining their actions is a sinister act by an ostensibly unbiased archive. Just think of these actions in any other context, like recalling a book and erasing certain passages and expecting people to believe those words had never existed....

I respect your opinion and position on this, having seen and analysed as much data as I could my own conclusions are that a crawl was made on 20070430115803 then at some point in the future other URLs found there way into this index (maybe even as part of the 'super crawl' that was conducted over many months).

As another example of this probably happening I'll use the 'vacancies' captured 30/04. Out of the 14 captured 7 of them (very specific titles) first / next appear as a block on 23/10/07 another 5 are spread in 2 days of July. It appears to me (using 'appears' same as Chris Butler) that URLs have found their way back to 30/04 somehow but there had to be an index on that date/time for them to find ie the index was not created after the 20070430115803 timestamp. This particular date (30/04) has a trend of being used as a crawl date (2006, 2007, 2008) and I think it's genuine.

What I would contest is what was originally captured, I think there's enough circumstantial evidence to point to mccann.html having been 'caught' including the previous / next source data and lack of repetitions etc. We should also consider one other site that we know that has over 16000 captures for the same timestamp, again I believe a capture would have been made 20070430115803.

Apologies to those who took umbrage at my 'we' statement I didn't really intend to speak for all.

by Guest 12.07.15 9:48

If I was an attorney looking for work, I would start a class action and have all decisions overthrown that base their conclusion (in part) on data from the wayback machine.

by Guest 12.07.15 10:26

Juulcy wrote:If I was an attorney looking for work, I would start a class action and have all decisions overthrown that base their conclusion (in part) on data from the wayback machine.

I don't disagree Juuicy who knows the accuracy of the data we all downloaded as it took some time to figure out how. We should consider that the codexgeo site also suffered the same fate with this particular timestamp (there may be others we don't know about). Only IA will have the absolute data and it is highly unlikely that much more information will come from them.

If we completely put aside the data found then we are back to the basic argument of mccann.html & ceop page (with October news article mentioned) being found on 30/04 and all that this entails.

IA are/were obviously proud of their system, Chris Butler's last line of the e-mail was they receive many weekly requests from attorneys for authenticated records. Wonder how that's panning out lately?

by lj 12.07.15 14:31

Juulcy wrote:If I was an attorney looking for work, I would start a class action and have all decisions overthrown that base their conclusion (in part) on data from the wayback machine.

Yep, and they would make a lot of money.

by whodunit 12.07.15 18:06

@HKP--"We should also consider one other site that we know that has over 16000 captures for the same timestamp, again I believe a capture would have been made 20070430115803."

Which other site?

by Guest 12.07.15 18:53

whodunit wrote:@HKP--"We should also consider one other site that we know that has over 16000 captures for the same timestamp, again I believe a capture would have been made 20070430115803."

Which other site?

codexgeo.co.uk

by whodunit 13.07.15 0:29

HKP, I can't seem to verify this at WBM. If you mean the captures at archive.is, you know those are manually uploaded? archive.is do not use crawlers.

by Guest 13.07.15 7:51

whodunit wrote:HKP, I can't seem to verify this at WBM. If you mean the captures at archive.is, you know those are manually uploaded? archive.is do not use crawlers.

This is a bit puzzling, are you not the same whodunnit as this [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

by plebgate 13.07.15 9:29

So much for HKP being too grand to re-join this site. ha ha.

I just read a post from JeanM asking if Nuala used to be a pro McCann. Answer from mod. was tha tthey didn't care. Along those lines.

I am wondering why previously banned posters can re-join and start asking questions of others?

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