Goddard Child Sexual Abuse Inquiry ignore information on Lost Survivor Data
I contacted the Goddard IICSA Inquiry into child sexual abuse way back in November, due to some information that I had just seen on twitter about the data that IICSA lost when transferring over websites, see [3] [2]. To be sure that they had seen this, I asked them to acknowledge the tweet. They never did.
I had seen a tweet that said " the lost CSA files on child sex crimes are now in the US. Ping results pastebin.com t.co/1xqdxcU2Ui " [1]
There were several tweets in my exchanges divided into 3 or 4 conversations, when I was trying to find out what was the situation. The IICSA twitter address was included several times.
Unfortunately my technical skills are limited and it has taken a long time for me to just to achieve this selection being reproduced here. Thankyou to Troy for his advice, and for the full tweets check Nov 9th [4] Twitter Search @cathycathyfox and @iicsa_media, or there is one more screen grab at the end of this article.
The raw data some of which is pasted below, is all reproduced in Appendix 1 at the end or can be reached on the pastebin link [1]
1. PING AND WHOIS RESULTS FOR OLD AND NEW CSAINQUIRY WEBSITE URLS: 2. 3. OLD WEBSITE URL (as it appears today anyway): 4. old site address is listed here: https://www.iicsa.org.uk/sites/default/files/sharing-your-experience.pdf 5. www.csa-inquiry.independent.gov.uk | ping result is 89.200.139.79 6. https://apps.db.ripe.net/search/query.html?searchtext=89.200.139.79#resultsAnchor
28. NEW WEBSITE URL: 29. http://www.iicsa.org.uk | ping is redirected to iicsa.org.uk.cdn.cloudflare.net result is 104.20.6.39 30. Tracing route to iicsa.org.uk.cdn.cloudflare.net [104.20.6.39] is registered in ARIN not RIPE. Why? URL is also automatically redirected in a hidden manner – not great but that’s the cloud for you.
I had not and still have not a clue what it means - whether the data has been copied or deleted or what. I do not know what this pastebin holds, or what the "ping results" reveal. However I have copied what I think are the full "ping results" into the Appendix at the end of this article for technical people to look at. I would be grateful for any answers as to what it means.
The advice on one tweet from OpDeathEatersUS is clear "stakeholders need to contact @Cloudflare and find out what really happened"
I naively thought the Inquiry would be pleased to follow up the lost data or at least or some information about it.
I was wrong. A month after I had tweeted the Goddard Inquiry and received no reply, I emailed them, so that I could be absolutely sure that the information had got through.
An interim message received after 20 days, said I had raised some complex issues and they would need more time to reply. A further 11 days gave this gem "I understand that you wish to know about the monitoring of the Inquiry's Twitter account."
After my further explaining in great detail, another month went by to receive this nonsense on 18th February. "With regards to your questions relating the Twitter account, we have not deleted any replies to IICSA Media Tweets, nor unfollowed, blocked or muted users in the past few months. "
It is therefore plain that Mrs C Mendes Head of the Information and Engagement Hub is incompetent or being less than helpful, and emailing them is wasting my time and energy.
Mendes also replied to a question about the number of staff employed at the hub: "In relation to the number of staff employed at the Information and Engagement Hub, we are unable to provide an accurate figure, as we are still in the process of establishing the Hub. Hence any number given would be inaccurate and out of date."
This reaffirmed her unhelpful attitude. In over four months, whilst trying to help them about important lost survivor data, they have de facto refused to answer my questions, they have not once even referred to the matter of the lost survivor data, and instead have answered with two deliberately obtuse and obstructive comments. I think 4 months is enough time to be played for a fool by the Inquiry.
As I could not get any sense out of the IICSA Inquiry I have therefore decided to make the matter public so that people know about this, so those interested in the truth and have the technical skills can tell me and everyone what the true situation is, and to circumvent the obfuscation by IICSA.
What have the IICSA Goddard Inquiry got to hide?
Are the inquiry trying to keep this information quiet because this statement issued by the Inquiry, when they lost the suvivor data, is incorrect or even false?
"We are very sorry for any inconvenience or distress this will cause and would like to reassure you that no information was put at risk of disclosure or unauthorised access. Due to the security measures on our website, your information cannot be found or viewed by anyone else as it was immediately and permanently destroyed."
I can only speculate, as I do not have the knowledge to check, and the inquiry refuses to engage.
Is it because the data was not immediately and permanently destroyed? Perhaps this shows it was not even lost in the first place? Perhaps it was just misplaced and found later? Perhaps it was stolen? Perhaps it was found and posted to expose IICSA? Who knows? But the inquiry obviously knows more than it is telling and a deliberate strategy of delay and obfuscation has been used.
Are the inquiry keen to keep quiet that the data might have been found because otherwise more confidence may be lost in the inquiry? I can see the Inquiry would be justifiably worried if that were the case.
However the consequences of attempting to keep quiet and cover up any finding of the data, will lead to much greater loss of confidence. Not only would it mean the Inquiry was incompetent with suvivors data, but then an inquiry designed to unearth the truth which has been covered up, may have itself covered up an uncomfortable truth. Has the Inquiry also breached the Data Protection Act with sensitive survivor data?
If this was an attempt by the Inquiry to delay and obfuscate and hope I get fed up and go away, and so keep this information quiet, then it has failed.
I have asked the hub and Mrs Mendes separately for the email address for complaints as well as the email for her in-line manager, and I will make a complaint about Mrs Mendes when that information arrives.
The policy of the Inquiry is "to aim to reply within 15 working days." Firstly 3 weeks is a very long time to reply. It appears an arbitrary time period, I have never seen any other body or institution have this time period to try to achieve a reply. Then it is just an aim, and one they have not always even bothered to achieve. Then of course they only have to give a couple of inane replies, a delaying interim letter and over 4 months has gone by with not even a vague attempt to answer the question. 14 days would be a more acceptable time period and one that should be stuck to. For matters like this, an immediate reply should be given.
The twitter account for the inquiry has only 752 followers at present, which for an inquiry of this importance, with the amount of interest in csa issues, is well underperforming. The cold brusque attitude may be a result of a lawyer dominated inquiry. There needs to be a rethink of how the inquiry engages with the public.
There is also another matter, which I may blog on in the future, with which the Information Hub has not dealt with me satisfactorily or openly.
This lack of helpfulness in two issues, has meant that I have not been in a position until recently to decide whether to engage with the inquiry for the purpose of helping them with all the information I have acquired over the last few years, whilst researching and blogging on Child Sexual Abuse.
I have now decided, despite the Inquiry's unhelpful attitude so far, that they will receive a brief summary of most of the information that I have. I will not let them be able to investigate and produce a report whilst using as an excuse that some information was not provided.
I have already sent a short submission to the Lambeth Investigator and asked the process to be interactive, rather than purely on a submission basis. A submission basis only puts an unacceptable level of work onto me, unpaid in my spare time. It is better to be interactive, and tell me how far they have scoped, how much they have studied my information and then I can fill in with any information not covered. No acknowledgment has been received, but hopefully it will be soon, and hopefully I will have an interactive relationship with the other investigators on all the areas covered by myself that the Inquiry is investigating. I have asked for this. We shall see.
Timeline of Interaction with IICSA Goddard Inquiry re Lost Survivor Data
2015 Nov 9 Tweeted @iicsa_media with no acknowledgement or reply.
2015 Dec 9 Emailed Mrs Mendes, Head of Information and Engagement Hub
"On twitter on November the 9th, I spotted a claim that some information about the data that IICSA had lost when transferring websites, could have been found. I retweeted this from @cathycathyfox to yourselves with a request that you acknowledge my tweet. No acknowledgement was received. I had made further inquires on twitter and somebody told me who to ask about this. The information is available in the short conversation. I do not know the truth of the allegations, I am not technical enough to understand. I am afraid also that my attempts to attach the information to this email have not led to success for the same lack of technical skill. Do IICSA ensure that the tweets to them are checked? If so why did I not receive an acknowledgement? Has the information I sent by tweet to IICSA on 9th November been checked? What was the result?"
2015 Dec 29 Information and Engagement Hub to me
"As your query has raised some complex issues we have referred this to our Communications team and they will aim to provide a substantive response within 14 days."
2015 Jan 8th Mrs Mendes Head of Information and Engagement Hub to me
Despite the mention of a Communications team, the next was still from the Hub -"I understand that you wish to know about the monitoring of the Inquiry's Twitter account. Given the need for confidentiality the Inquiry does not use Twitter as a conversation channel."
2015 Jan 20th me to Mrs Mendes
1.You do not address the issue of whether you have searched for my tweets of Nov 9th and the conversations, and whether you have found them? Have you? and if so on what date? Was the information useful? Has it led to you recovering any data ? Has it led to a better understanding of what happened? For you to ignore this information and my questions defies belief. If you have not checked the information I gave you, why not? 2. You say "Given the need for confidentiality the Inquiry does not use Twitter as a conversation channel." This is oversimplistic. Not all messages are confidential, and the Inquiry could have replied to my non confidential twitter message. How often do the inquiry check incoming messages to twitter? It is obvious that with only 688 followers on Twitter for an inquiry of this importance means that the Inquiry is not making proper use of this method of communication even as a means to distribute information, and perhaps does not have the necessary skills to. Bizarrely the reason given for not using twitter is the very issue at stake in losing peoples emails ie confidentiality.
2015 18 Feb Mrs Mendes to me
"With regards to your questions relating the Twitter account, we have not deleted any replies to IICSA Media Tweets, nor unfollowed, blocked or muted users in the past few months. The following information from the Twitter Help page may explain further: You cannot delete Tweets which were posted by other accounts. Instead, you can unfollow, block or mute users whose Tweets you do not want to receive."
"In relation to the number of staff employed at the Information and Engagement Hub, we are unable to provide an accurate figure, as we are still in the process of establishing the Hub. Hence any number given would be inaccurate and out of date."
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One more screenshot, read the screenshot below from the bottom up. The advice from OpDeathEatersUS is clear "stakeholders need to contact @Cloudflare and find out what really happened"
Appendix 1
Raw Data
1. PING AND WHOIS RESULTS FOR OLD AND NEW CSAINQUIRY WEBSITE URLS: 2. 3. OLD WEBSITE URL (as it appears today anyway): 4. old site address is listed here: https://www.iicsa.org.uk/sites/default/files/sharing-your-experience.pdf 5. www.csa-inquiry.independent.gov.uk | ping result is 89.200.139.79 6. https://apps.db.ripe.net/search/query.html?searchtext=89.200.139.79#resultsAnchor 7. 8. MEMSET Ltd - RIPE Network Coordination Centre 9. https://www.ripe.net/membership/indices/data/uk.memset.html 10. Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre 11. MEMSET Ltd. Building 87 Dunsfold Park GU6 8TB Cranleigh UNITED KINGDOM. phone: +441483608010 fax: e-mail: ripe (at) memset (dot) com. 12. (fascinating https://www.ripe.net/membership/indices/GB.html) 13. 14. https://www.ripe.net/membership/indices/data/uk.asuk.html 15. https://www.linkedin.com/company/dedipower-managed-hosting 16. Craig Martin 17. Chief Executive Officer 18. http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapid=110016059 19. DediPower is Pulsant: 20. Website: http://www.dedipower.com/ redirects to http://www.pulsant.com/ 21. http://www.pulsant.com/company/management-team/ 22. "Mark was Director of Services for Computacenter prior to acquiring Lumison in 2010 as the foundation for creating Pulsant" 23. Okay, so it's them https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.pulsant.com+Berkshire&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 24. http://www.companieslist.co.uk/07403360-pulsant-topco-limited 25. Acquisition of company for Pulsant is Lumison. 26. 27. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 28. NEW WEBSITE URL: 29. www.iicsa.org.uk | ping is redirected to iicsa.org.uk.cdn.cloudflare.net result is 104.20.6.39 30. Tracing route to iicsa.org.uk.cdn.cloudflare.net [104.20.6.39] is registered in ARIN not RIPE. Why? URL is also automatically redirected in a hidden manner - not great but that's the cloud for you. 31. 32. Trace complete. 33. 34. Which domain registry do I use to Lookup IP 104.20.6.39 ? It's a UK inquiry, so I would expect the IP address assignment to have been done in Europe. According to IANA the domain is registered with ARIN, which is USA based. 35. http://www.iana.org/whois?q=104.20.6.39 36. 37. % IANA WHOIS server 38. % for more information on IANA, visit http://www.iana.org 39. % This query returned 1 object 40. 41. refer: whois.arin.net 42. 43. inetnum: 104.0.0.0 - 104.255.255.255 44. organisation: ARIN 45. status: ALLOCATED 46. 47. whois: whois.arin.net 48. 49. changed: 2011-02 50. source: IANA 51. 52. https://whois.arin.net/rest/org/CLOUD14/nets 53. CLOUDFLARENET (NET-104-16-0-0-1) 104.16.0.0 - 104.31.255.255 RAW Paste Data
PING AND WHOIS RESULTS FOR OLD AND NEW CSAINQUIRY WEBSITE URLS:
OLD WEBSITE URL (as it appears today anyway): old site address is listed here: https://www.iicsa.org.uk/sites/default/files/sharing-your-experience.pdf www.csa-inquiry.independent.gov.uk | ping result is 89.200.139.79 https://apps.db.ripe.net/search/query.html?searchtext=89.200.139.79#resultsAnchor
MEMSET Ltd - RIPE Network Coordination Centre https://www.ripe.net/membership/indices/data/uk.memset.html
Please note that victims of abuse may be triggered by reading this information. These links are generally UK based.
The Sanctuary for the Abused [A] has advice on how to prevent triggers.
National Association for People Abused in Childhood [B] has a freephone helpline and has links to local support groups.
Other useful sites are One in Four [C]
and Havoca [D].
Jim Hoppers pages on Mindfulness [G] and Meditation [H] may be useful.
Hwaairfan blog An Indigenous Australian Approach to Healing Trauma* [J]
Links
[1] Pastebin https://t.co/1xqdxcU2Ui
[2] 2015 Oct 15 Sky Child Abuse Inquiry Deleted Survivors' Stories http://news.sky.com/story/1570333/child-abuse-inquiry-deleted-survivors-stories
[3] 2015 Oct 15 Needleblog CSA Inquiry Survivor Evidence “Instantly And Permanently Deleted” https://theneedleblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/15/csa-inquiry-survivor-evidence-instantly-and-permanently-deleted/
[4] Twitter Search @cathycathyfox and @iicsa_media https://twitter.com/search?q=%40cathycathyfox%20%40iicsa_media&src=typd
[A] Sanctuary for the Abused http://abusesanctuary.blogspot.co.uk/2006/07/for-survivors-coping-with-triggers-if.html
[B] NAPAC http://www.napac.org.uk/
[C] One in Four http://www.oneinfour.org.uk/
[D] Havoca http://www.havoca.org/HAVOCA_home.htm
[E] SurvivorsJustice Triggers post http://survivorsjustice.com/2014/02/26/triggers-what-are-they-and-how-do-we-work-through-them/
[F] SurvivorsJustice Blog http://survivorsjustice.com/
[G] Jim Hopper Mindfulness http://www.jimhopper.com/mindfulness/
[H] Jim Hopper Meditation http://www.jimhopper.com/mindfulness/#cultivate
[J] 2016 Jan 5 Hwaairfan blog An Indigenous Australian Approach to Healing Trauma https://hwaairfan.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/an-indigenous-australian-approach-to-healing-trauma/
This is all written in good faith but if there is anything that needs to be corrected please email iicsa@cathyfox.33mail.com
cathyfox the truth will out, the truth will shout, the truth will set us free
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” – Edmund Burke
"He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers." Charles Peguy