A Tale of Two Files by Dr Martin Roberts A CEOP Mystery 25th June 2015

PeterMac posted this yesterday on the main ‘Stevo’ thread, but it promptly got buried. Not up on McCannfiles yet that I can see.
 
 
Thursday, June 25, 2015
A Tale of Two Files by Dr Martin Roberts A CEOP Mystery
 
I'm far from qualified to opine over this latest can of worms for reasons simple. One, I have not been following the debate over this issue. Two, internet technology is not my forte.
 
All I can say, if it comes down to matters of trust, does one put one's trust in man or machine?
 
I cannot speak for machines, but I think I might offer an opinion about the man, in this instance, that man  being Jim Gamble, late of the CEOP.
 
Of course you can trust Jim Gamble, he's a career policeman of twenty five years plus experience.
 
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The furore over Steve Marsden’s apparent discovery of inappropriate computer files having been generated by CEOP in connection with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, revolves around two entities that were archived, according to the San Francisco-based Wayback Machine, on 30 April, 2007, several days before Madeleine was reported missing – an impossibility according to some, just as it appears impossible for a file recorded on 30 April to include specific references to events the following October, under the heading: ‘Latest News’.
 
On the basis of these paradoxes a number of scrutineers have concluded that the Wayback Machine was at fault and subject to computer error – a ‘glitch’ as is commonly referred to by those who use computers without actually understanding how they work.
 
Whilst Marsden pointed up the potentially explosive significance of a premature CEOP-generated internet file with a URL that included the name ‘mccann’, it was another, more expansive document that revealed a chronological inconsistency. Although both were archived on the same date, distrust of the one promoted dismissal of the other and, with the WBM backroom staff now busily ‘tinkering’ with their own records, it would appear that what might have been a smoking gun has had its cordite fumes wafted away. Or has it?
 
The ‘computer done it’ school of thought would have it that some as-yet-unidentified species of error occurred in late October 2007 (on a date following those futuristic ‘Latest News’ references) which led to the CEOP home-page for that period being erroneously recorded as an archival on April 30 – a leap backward in time of six months. The smaller, yet infinitely more significant, ‘mccann’ file was deemed, by extrapolation, to have suffered the same fate.
 
There has since been intense scrutiny of/debate surrounding/speculation over the very coding of the files in question, in an attempt to discover what exactly happened to them, and whether Marsden’s first impressions were justified, or not, as the case may be. Equations abound, the academic fur has been flying, whilst staff at Wayback headquarters, after giving a handful of contradictory answers to initial questions, have remained resolutely silent on the matter. As has Jim Gamble, Head of CEOP at the time the puzzling files were created. Perhaps the Marketeer’s dictum (‘KISS’ - ‘Keep it simple, stupid!’) should be brought to bear.
 
Let us suppose, merely for the sake of argument, that the Wayback Machine did indeed suffer some calamity, of whatever origin, during late October 2007. The first question to ask is whether there has been any evidence brought forth of said disruption’s having affected all the internet files the Wayback Machine has ‘crawled’ in the eight years since (*/*) – a catastrophe almost beyond measure if so.
 
Answer: ‘You cannot be serious!’
 
So then we should re-iterate the question, but progressively narrowing the field each time, until we are left, more simply, with ‘all CEOP files ’ (ceop.gov.uk/*).
 
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This is already the test case, since the two files which have given rise to the debate are each CEOP files, and no mistake. One, it is claimed, has been affected, the other simply tarred with the same brush. However, since the files in question are functionally independent of each other we are entitled to examine them independently.
 
According to the Wayback Machine, on 30 April 2007 the file ‘mccann/html’ featured a single photographic portrait of young Madeleine McCann, together with a provisional link to a second picture. If, however, we consider what that second picture eventually turned out to be, we discover it is a ‘head and shoulders’ view cropped from the now well-known ‘tennis photo’, which Kate McCann claims in her book to have taken on Tuesday 1 May. However smart a computer may appear, it cannot refer for information to an event that has yet to take place.
 
At a stroke it becomes obvious that the 30 April version of the internet page in question (‘mccann.html’) must have been incomplete. In point of fact, no ‘screen shot’ of this file’s 30 April output has succeeded in revealing more than one photograph, plus a ‘broken link’ icon in respect of the other. Subsequent archivals by the WBM (on 13 May, for instance) include both pictures, which are reproduced without demur.
 
Had this file been ‘crawled’ in October and wrongly assigned as an April 30 record, then what until recently appeared to the viewer to be the earliest known instance of the file ‘mccann.html’, should have incorporated two photographs. It did not. In reality this file probably did not even exist beyond August 2007 and is highly unlikely to have featured in any October review by the WBM.
 
Even if one were to trace the history of the ‘two-picture page’ backward in time, with a view to offering up the fatuous argument that the WBM found a ‘broken link’ example only slightly earlier than 13 May and proceeded to drop that into its 30 April folder instead, that contention is still untenable, since the ‘crawls’ conducted by the WBM in this instance were two weeks apart (30 April – 13 May). As far as ‘computer glitch’ proponents are concerned, 13 May should have marked the file’s very first appearance among the WBM’s records, given that CEOP did not join the party until officially invited to do so on 7 May.
 
Instead we are brought back to the ‘Marsden scenario’ that first set alarm bells ringing. Until such time as its ‘minders’ completely re-work their indexing in this regard (and they will) the WBM self-evidently contained a record of CEOP file ‘mccann.html’ archived on 30 April, 2007 – four days before Madeleine McCann was reported missing. Even if we dismiss its contents, the very existence of such an entity is potentially incriminating.
 
But…but…but…how do we explain the contradictions inherent in that other file – the CEOP home-page with its Latest News from October? How did that come to be identified with April?
 
Answer: By accident or design. It matters not a jot, since we have already adduced evidence to establish that not all CEOP files were affected by whatever caused their home-page to experience a premonition. Whatever befell that page structure, it was an event unique to that document and basically irrelevant to the focal issue, which requires resolution.
 
Instead of bombarding the keepers of the Wayback Machine with questions concerning a problem they have never experienced, we should be asking Jim Gamble to explain how and why CEOP came to be preparing a ‘find me’ campaign for a girl who had yet to go missing.
 
Martin Roberts
 
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Comments and responses are regularly being added so its worth clicking on the actual thread:

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DougD
Thank you for your recent post it is some what interesting reading perhaps big Jim could enlighten us?

I'm far from qualified to opine over this latest can of worms for reasons simple. One, I have not been following the debate over this issue. Two, internet technology is not my forte.

Should have stopped right there then.

BlueBag wrote:

I'm far from qualified to opine over this latest can of worms for reasons simple. One, I have not been following the debate over this issue. Two, internet technology is not my forte.

Should have stopped right there then.

Could have simplified it down to "I'm far from qualified to opine over this." and halted there.

Jim McGamble, the 60+years old, male, self appointed 'doyen' and self 'aggrandised' 'protector' of all underaged, at 'risk', 'online or not', females, says 'The one thing that we know, is that people lie'

McGamble 'hastily added' 'When i said 'that the one thing we know, is that people lie' I, obviously, do not associate/include the poor McCann's, or any of their friends, with that statement'

Just one thing, Mr McGamble, 'where were you, as CEO, and CEOP, when thousands of vulnerable 'girls' were being 'raped/drugged/assaulted/exploited', on an 'industrial' scale, in Rotherham, Rochdale, Derby Oxford etc., on 'your watch' whilst you were CEO at CEOP' from 2006-10?

How many of the, predominately, 'asian' perpetrators, of these heinous crimes, did CEOP arrest, whilst you were the CEO at CEOP?

The 'industrial scale' ABUSE took 'place' ON YOUR WATCH, when YOU were CEO at CEOP!

I think an 'investigation' should be 'set up' to investigate YOUR 'dereliction of duty' to PROTECT, all the THOUSANDS of abused 'victims'!

  jeanmonroe

Not necessarily
A person with no specialist or technical knowledge can often ask the simple question. Children are very skilled at this.

In this case for example
It is possible that the date 30/4 is correct and that this page existed in that form on that date
It is possible that the date 30/4 is NOT correct and that this page was created on another day - later or perhaps even earlier - and wrongly automatically labelled by the computer
It is possible that the date has been altered by human intervention
And so on.
Now the tecchies can come in and explain why they think each of these is correct or wrong, giving examples and perhaps adducing evidence of similar pages
so that a jury - which by definition is made up of lay-people can understand.

Peter,

Do you agree the data in the WBM was in error on 17th June when Steve Marsden looked at it and before anyone spoke to Chris Butler about it?

Do you agree the WBM time stamps are unreliable?

Simple questions a child might come up with.

BlueBag wrote:Peter,

Do you agree the data in the WBM was in error on 17th June when Steve Marsden looked at it and before anyone spoke to Chris Butler about it?

Do you agree the WBM time stamps are unreliable?

Simple questions a child might come up with.

'Unreliable', 'error strewn', or NOT, THAT  'page/archive' IS THERE, on WB Machine, isn't it.?

jeanmonroe wrote:

BlueBag wrote:Peter,

Do you agree the data in the WBM was in error on 17th June when Steve Marsden looked at it and before anyone spoke to Chris Butler about it?

Do you agree the WBM time stamps are unreliable?

Simple questions a child might come up with.

'Unreliable', 'error strewn', or NOT, THAT 'page/archive' IS THERE, isn't it, on WB Machine?

Yes.. the october page in the april folder was THERE.

BlueBag wrote:Peter,
Do you agree the data in the WBM was in error on 17th June when Steve Marsden looked at it and before anyone spoke to Chris Butler about it?
Do you agree the WBM time stamps are unreliable?
Simple questions a child might come up with.

I do not know. I have no idea, and I lack the technical knowledge to make an informed judgment.
As such the question "Do you agree . . ." is meaningless for me
I am waiting for a person with expertise to explain in language we can all understand, ideally with evidence and examples of how it works

For example
I know I can change the day and date at the top right corner of my screen by going in to the Date and Time Preferences command, but then I have no idea whether this changes anything else
and whether for example the time and date of creation of a new document would follow that, or be guided by an 'internal clock' which is not capable of being altered.
I could of course try it, to gather evidence.

Your knowledge clearly exceeds mine by several orders of magnitude
What I am less clear about is why people who work in the industry are unable to answer these questions simply

PeterMac wrote:

What I am less clear about is why people who work in the industry are unable to answer these questions simply

It's a very complicated industry and computer software is a very complicated thing and spurious bugs are very hard to pin down.

'slightly' OT.

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'Notice' anything 'odd'?

'EXIF Information'

Date and time       22nd APRIL 2013.......10:15:21

THIS 'photo' of 'found' CRECHEMAN, by DCI Redwood, IO at OG, was his 'revelation moment/world exclusive' on CrimeWatch OCTOBER 14th 2013!

DCI Redwood had this 'photo' of Crecheman, and his child's 'pyjama's, from May 2007, in HIS 'possession' for 'about' 6 MONTHS, before 'stunning' the 'world' with his 'revelation' of Crecheman!

SIX MONTHS!

DCI Redwood, diliberately and consciously, WITHELD this 'revelation' from the 'public' for almost SIX MONTHS!

NOW, WHY would he do THAT?

'Somebody', in PDL, 'could' have 'recognised' Crecheman in APRIL 2013, IF DCI Redwood had 'released' the 'photo' of Crecheman on 23rd April, 2013!

WHY did DCI Redwood WAIT, SIX MONTHS, until October 14th 2013 to 'release' Crecheman, to the 'world'?

I thought 'witholding evidence' was a 'crime'!

Apparently NOT, if you're the IO at OG!

EXIF 'data/information' an 'error'?

I don't think so.

OT myself, sorry if not allowed so let me know, but I find it absurd that the identity of this so-called 'Chreche dad' is withheld from the public. Ideally, his identity would be released so his story could be checked. Was he actually in PDL, in the OC, on the relevant dates? Does he actually have a daughter of the age he claims? And so forth. Without his identity his story can't be checked, and without having any way to check his story we are allowed to dismiss it out of hand as wholly unsupportable.

whodunnit wrote:OT myself, sorry if not allowed so let me know, but I find it absurd that the identity of this so-called 'Chreche dad' is withheld from the public. Ideally, his identity would be released so his story could be checked. Was he actually in PDL, in the OC, on the relevant dates? Does he actually have a daughter of the age he claims? And so forth. Without his identity his story can't be checked, and without having any way to check his story we are allowed to dismiss it out of hand as wholly unsupportable.

I would have expected the
newspapers to be searching for this man, armed with chequebooks, so they can get a scoop and the headline "MADDIE 'ABDUCTOR' - WHY I KEPT QUIET FOR SIX YEARS"

They may be daft, but maybe not THAT daft

I don't think they're daft at all, just supremely confident that they can say and do whatever they like and the media won't challenge or question them.

The public can squawk all they like but the intractable media 'narrative' never changes.

YET ANOTHER McGLITCH ? ?
Brilliant work.
We must keep it up.

 
The Mamas and the Papas had plenty to say on the subject. The McCanns, on the other hand, had nothing to say on the subject, either when asked by police in 2007 or since (in Kate McCann’s ‘Account of the Truth’).
 
And now it appears they are silent once more – deaf to the question of why a computer file generated by CEOP and archived against a date of 30 April 2007 should have appealed for help in finding Madeleine McCann, who was not due to go missing until 3 May! The man who genuinely should know the answer, former CEOP supremo Jim Gamble, has also ‘assumed the foetal position’.
 
One cannot help but wonder whether Robert Murat booked his urgent early morning flight to Praia da Luz having read the CEOP announcement the night before. Or whether Kate really did take her famous ‘tennis photo’ on the morning of Tuesday 1 May, when Murat was heading home to Portugal.
 
You see, if Madeleine’s disappearance was known about on the Monday, it would have been when the child was still perfectly well and able to scamper around a tennis court the following morning. Should she then have been extricated from the family’s holiday apartment on account of some incapacity, this might suggest that CEOP also knew about that incapacity in advance.
 
You can hear the chorus from wherever you sit: “Oh no they didn’t! Kate McCann was confused. The ‘photo was already available to CEOP’s ‘mccann.html’ file (at 11.58.03)! The link was only broken temporarily - until the McCanns managed to communicate the image!” That very day - Monday 30 April; the morning when Madeleine’s group of infant crèche captives actually had an hour’s mini-tennis planned for 10 .00 a.m.
 
A ‘pic’ prepared within the hour then. Unless of course it was taken on the Sunday evening, following that impromptu social tennis session for newly-arrived adult guests (another truth accounted for by Kate McCann in her book). It does seem rather strange that a moment in time captured immediately following a group tennis session, be it a group of adults or a group of children, should show not a semblance of any one’s presence save that of the subject and her photographer.
 
And what of those CEOP internet ‘home pages’ that appear suddenly to have gone ‘tits up’ in October 2007? You know, the 10 October edition that cites the latest news to the 8th of the month and the 13 October edition that forgets all about it, but instead seeks to rival Reuters with a reference to what happened no later than the 2nd. Surely that and other strange perturbations can have nothing to do with the McCanns’ return to the UK, having been declared arguidos on 7 September, nor Jim Gamble’s protestations of their innocence a month to the day thereafter, and which were quoted in the Daily Mirror of the same date (7 October):
 
"We absolutely support the McCann family, they are to be applauded for their tireless work to keep the campaign to find their daughter in the public consciousness."
 
No, of course not. Pure coincidence, nothing more.
 
The current ‘hot topic’ though is that ‘30 April 2007’ archival date attributed by the Wayback Machine to certain CEOP internet files; files that make explicit reference to Madeleine McCann, the little girl who was not destined to leave the Ocean Club, Praia da Luz, until 3 May.
 
Whilst interpretation of the information they contain, both visually and in terms of their source code, suggests very strongly that the incriminating date (30 April) is in fact correct, there is a rump of detractors who remain adamant that neither of the two files, which feature heavily in the dispute, was composed, ‘crawled’ (archived), or whatever on 30 April, but that they were legitimately configured on some indeterminate later date and simply ‘misfiled’ by the Wayback Machine, which dropped a stitch somewhere along the line. As a staunch proponent of the WBM’s inadequacies has put it quite recently:
 
“The same process that archived with an erroneous date will have updated the index with the same erroneous date.”
 
Note the involvement of a single process, an (as in one) erroneous date, and the inclusion of the latter within the (solitary) index.
 
Since the keepers of the Wayback Machine have been alerted to these specific shortcomings, they are no doubt busily preparing an announcement to the effect that, having identified the process in question and corrected the system error responsible for appending that one false date (in nearly twenty years of operation) they have ‘fixed the problem’, and we can all now go back to work.
 
Unfortunately no.
 
The whole being the sum of its parts in this matter, archive.org will have to do rather better than that. Considerably better in fact. They will have to examine the architecture of their entire system if they are to convince anyone other than themselves that the ‘error’ which has been brought to their attention is confined to the archiving of but two files in 485 billion, since there is now further evidence that it just might have been a tad more widespread. Either that or CEOP have even more explaining to do.
 
The Wayback Machine is something of a technological wonder of the modern world. Its database is unimaginably large and its retrieval systems concomitantly complex. Nevertheless, at the touch of a button almost, it is possible to establish just how many files associated with a specific URL it has actually recorded over time, even those files set up and administered by CEOP – all 8779 of them according to recent estimates (see following):
 
 
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If one takes the trouble to review this inventory, it very quickly retraces events back to….30 April 2007. And what should we find listed among all those separately identified files with their unique URL terminations? Why, two image files labelled ‘madeleine’, recognizable as ’madeleine_01.jpg’ and ‘madeleine_02.jpg’:
 
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There can be no question that the ‘madeleine’ referred to here is Madeleine McCann, as these terminators are exactly those employed within the structure of the CEOP home page as visible (and archived) on 13 May 2007, a construct which, incidentally, features several references to ‘mccann.html’, another data structure that according to WBM detractors was not created until later that year. (Why on earth would anyone program a computer to access a non-existent file? I ask myself):
 
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To judge from the foregoing, either The Wayback Machine could be off-line for a considerable period, while their ‘techies’ rebuild almost their entire indexing and retrieval systems, or J. Gamble Esq. had better come up with some convincing explanation as to what CEOP would have been doing with photographs of Madeleine McCann barely two days into the McCann family’s fatal 2007 vacation.
 
Martin Roberts
 
5 comments:
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Anonymous said...
"(Why on earth would anyone program a computer to access a non-existent file? I ask myself):"

This is the question I have been asking myself since I began reading the claims of error/anomaly.

Thank you.
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Anonymous said...
Ok, this is fantastic but how did you get to the list??

Thanks!

whodunnit
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Anonymous said...
Dr Roberts,

I believe this is what might be called a "development".

Thank you so much for all of this work and for such clear explanations.

And of course Himself, once again!

Agnos

(A "glitch"...FFS)

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Martin Roberts said...
@Whodunnit 21.58

Hello again

It was a complete fluke!

I wanted to address the question of the twice archived page thrown up by 'Syn', i.e. the supposed 21 November image derived from WBM data.

Since we already know that different URL's can yield the same result (CEOPS 'global' address and the subordinate index.asp file for example) I thought I'd look for an instance of a URL identity that had been 'crawled' in November and that we didn't know about simply because no-one had looked in that cupboard.

As chance would have it there was some comment among the WBM FAQ's indicating the command string that one should input for a complete domain listing. I tried it. Fouled up. Computer tied in knots. Gave up. Then tried again using a character string that looked vaguely a propos. After a couple of mins. - 'bingo'

That's the story. Here are the command strings in play at the time:

The link (as copied from my web browser) was: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] directory source therefore: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and roll!

Martin R.
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Martin Roberts said...
@Agnos 21.59

Greetings!

I fancy the only genuine 'glitch' we shall encounter here is that in J. Gamble's ever tightening rectum as this affair progresses!

('Himself' is, I think, well pleased with the outcome in this instance, given his not so modest dislike of the man).

Thanks for looking in.

Kind regards

Martin R.
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That’s the comments up to now. I suspect the list may well increase by the morning.

Just went to the site & one more comment by Steve Marsden, Interesting.

Joss, it didn't appear in your post so here it is:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] said...
Dr Roberts, thanks for your support on this. Get in touch sometime. There are other details I can supply to you that I haven't published.
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So again, 'Stevo' has clearly not thrown in the towel on this one!

Doug D wrote:Joss, it didn't appear in your post so here it is:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] said...
Dr Roberts, thanks for your support on this. Get in touch sometime. There are other details I can supply to you that I haven't published.
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So again, 'Stevo' has clearly not thrown in the towel on this one!

Hi Doug D, I didn't copy it to here, thanks