06/05/2011 - Operation Alpine - Investigation Background

Investigation into the online distribution of Indecent Images of Children

Operation Alpine is a joint investigation run by Lincolnshire Police and the Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre (CEOP) into the online distribution of Indecent Images of Children via news services. Until recently, access to those news services was provided by computer systems operating in Britain. Ian Frost, Paul Rowland, Paul Frost and Ian Sambridge were all involved in that operation.

Alpine was launched by Lincolnshire Police after receiving intelligence via CEOP from the German Federal Police in 2006.

A search warrant was executed at the home of Ian Frost and Paul Rowland in Martin Dales, Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire. Police seized a vast amount of computer hardware, including PCs, laptops and a considerable amount of server hardware. Examination of the equipment and interviews led to the identification of the other suspects in the case.

Via a server in West Yorkshire, the offenders were running a number of news service websites, including Athenanews.com. This was linked to a further server in the US and distributed child abuse images back and forth.

Subscription Internet based forum

A news service is an internet based forum which allows online discussion on a vast array of topics – many of which are legitimate and perfectly legal. A news service offers access to many thousands of ‘folders’ called newsgroups, each of which focuses on a particular topic of interest. Members can view and post comments, pictures and videos in them. Through Athenanews.com, paedophiles could buy access to news services and their subsequent news groups, which carried child abuse images of all levels.

On the front page (right) there was a search facility to find the newsgroups the site carried. Potential offenders could enter keywords relating to their preferences and get a list of relevant newsgroups.

If they then decided to join Athenanews they were offered a variety of payment options, dependent on the amount of download capacity they chose. The greater the download capacity the more content they could access and view. Subscriptions could be paid monthly, six monthly or annually.

Having had confirmation that the payment had been received Athenanews then delivered a randomly generated username and password (an automated system produced this) and sent it to the email provided by the customer at the time of payment.

The username and password allowed the customer to enter the particular news service they subscribed to and gain access to the entire library of newsgroups. Entry into particular newsgroups, containing text, images and movies were then manually chosen by the subscriber. The suspects identified had selected to enter newsgroups which appear on the Internet Watch Foundation ‘banned’ list or contained titles which were suggestive of containing child abuse images.

Tracing the suspects

Customers of the site who were suspected of downloading child abuse images were traced through names, postal addresses, email addresses and credit and debit card details.