CEOP show Maddie is missing on 30th April 2007

After soaking up the arguments the last week or so I'm erring toward the WBM being in error or their crawler program having some funkyness. Unless WBM come out and explain what has happened here though I think the arguments on both sides will continue.

Or for those less technically minded this will explain all....

Someone should throw the captured file in water. If the file floats, then we know that it weighs exactly as much as a duck. And is therefore..? A glitch!

I can't say that I've read anything that, I'm a n00b of course, has made me think that Way Back hadn't captured ceop/mccann on 30/04/2007. All the arguments I've read pointing to a glitch, or wrong filing, are indirect, and tbh, vague. While the direct "evidence" of there being, now removed, a capture of it on that date still stands.

Lots of glitchcraft, no glitches shown.

If I understand correctly, it was deduced from another file, the homepage, with the October-newsarticles on it, that the capture of the ceop/mccann-page on that date shouldn't be true. That's indirect. Might be a clue, but no more than that.

And if you take the October-argument for decisive, then the only real and direct reason to say that the capture was wrongly dated, namely the Archive guy saying it, isn't there. Because he says the date should be in July. October wasn't born then yet.

And if it turns out that the October-links could have been the wrongly dated captures, as Resistor might have hinted at the possibility still to establish, well,

then ceop/mccann was for all we know captured on 30/04/2007.

"Mo money mo glitches" - MC Macky Can

Just tried an experiment. Using 2006 captures Ceop.gov.org has a capture date of 24 Apr. I opened that then opened each of the sub headings. Eg What we do, Get advice etc. Each one so far has a crawl date of 30 Apr not 24th but they have different times of capture by some seconds. So why does the one we are all looking at have exactly the same timing for 30 Apr 2007?

chirpyinsect wrote:Just tried an experiment. Using 2006 captures Ceop.gov.org has a capture date of 24 Apr. I opened that then opened each of the sub headings. Eg What we do, Get advice etc. Each one so far has a crawl date of 30 Apr not 24th but they have different times of capture by some seconds. So why does the one we are all looking at have exactly the same timing for 30 Apr 2007?

Because it just shows you it to the nearest second. It would be different numbers if it were shown in miliseconds.

As someone has rightly pointed out elsewhere - the main CEOP page is the one that might have been misfiled or whatever.  There's no evidence that the exact same thing happened to McCann.html or any of the others.

The question we should be asking the WBM people is, how can data from October appear in a page that was ostensibly captured in April. Just saying it is a "timestamp error" won't cut it. We want to know what sort of "timestamp error". And which other pages or sites or domains have the same "timestamp error". Because there will be more than one.

And criminal proceedings may well depend upon their answer.

Someone should be asking these questions of WBM. Somebody who is likely to get an answer, because clearly they are just ignoring all of us plebs.

Tony has had a response from the CEO of Wayback unfortunately I can't copy over.

Mo wrote:Tony has had a response from the CEO of  Wayback unfortunately I can't copy over.

No he hasn't, he has lifted a statement off the internet somewhere, and it's a spoof. For several glaringly obvious reasons that I don't have time to list right now, but somebody else will no doubt do so.

Thanks, unfortunately I'm the kind of person who takes things at face value! I will leave for the experts in future.

Mo wrote:Thanks, unfortunately I'm the kind of person who takes things at face value!  I will leave for the experts in future.

Please don't Mo, there are no "experts" here, if there were then we would all be agreeing on this. It's a valuable contribution in that either somebody is determined to shut down this debate, or it is a troll taking the hiss (I suspect the latter, and yes, there are just such sickos in the world who seem to believe that the death/disappearance of a three year old girl is somehow a topic for amusement)

Even our own MSM take most of their information "at face value", it's not unknown

I think it's Tony's own spoof, not someone else's.



Statement released by CEO of Wayback Machine, 7.00am this morning

Post Tony Bennett Today at 07:19
Statement by the Chief Executive Officer of Wayback Machine

The CEOP Website

Statement released by the Chief Executive Officer of the Way Out Machine (formerly the Wayback Machine) at 0700 hours BST, 23 June 2015 (time and date subject to confirmation)

On 16 June 2015, a British citizen by the name of Stephen Marsden interrogated the Way Out Machine about the website of a British organisation, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).

We returned to him the following information:



On the above date (30 April 2007), a Mr Jim Gamble was the Director of CEOP.

The following day, a Miss Isabelle Mary McFadden sought to confirm that the information was accurate, and our former Office Manager, Christopher Butler, confirmed that this was so at 9.47am. He actually gave out two print-outs of the accompanying pages which had been crawled. Butler referred to, even boasted of, ‘several attorneys a week seeking our services. He did so given our previous, fabled reputation for accuracy - which has been regularly relied on in court proceedings the world over and resulted in many persons being convicted and, on occasions, jailed.

Due to the timely intervention of a Ms Lizzie Taylor the same day, however, it suddenly dawned on Mr Butler that, on this occasion, the result returned to Mr Marsden was in error.

First of all, both timestamps on the record returned to Mr Marsden were plain wrong.

And the actual archive date for the ‘mccann html’ page was 31 July 2007, not 30 April 2007.

We apologise sincerely for having made this error which led to so many people wasting their precious time on pointless and sometimes angry debates on the internet.

So let me make these things crystal clear.

There never was a ‘mccann html’ page on the CEOP website on or before 30 April 2007.

It was clearly set up and live by the time it was archived on 31 July. But not on 30 April.

The two timestamps were errors,

Our web crawler clearly malfunctioned in a serious way and we are still working out why that happened, how to fix it, and how many other times it has malfunctioned in similar or other ways.

Until we are able to fully satisfy the internet authorities that we have permanently fixed this problem and corrected all the data on our system, they have directed us to re-title our business the ‘Way Out Machine’, giving a more accurate description of the current position of our archive.

Finally, it is unhelpful, ludicrous and very hurtful for posters like canada12 to keep insisting that we were correct after all. He wrote yesterday:

“Through all of these pages and pages of arguments and counter-arguments I'm afraid my initial assessment of the situation still stands. This was a genuine capture of an April 30 page that was not made public. There were going to be two photos but only one was in place. I believe the second photo had a placeholder in place, so that the second photo could be inserted when provided. There were links to pdf's of posters, which could also be uploaded when provided. Until I see something that convinces me otherwise, that's where my opinion lies. There was no error on WBM's part. It was accurate”.

It really is time that this sort of utter nonsense ceases. Of course we were wrong. Though we have never admitted it previously, of course we are always making errors.

It is of no assistance to us at all if people now keep insisting that our web crawler is right all the time. Plainly it is not. Any further insistence that our web crawler doesn’t make mistakes and that our time stamps are always correct may face legal action. Leave us alone until we find out what went wrong.

We thank you all for your patience and understanding. When we have fully sorted this, we will put out a statement. Following that, we will make an application to the internet authorities to allow us to revert to our previous name, the ‘Wayback Machine’.

In the meantime, find us on Twitter at the hashtag #WayOutMachine

Way Out CEO

haha, it could well be!

In all seriousness tho', Tony with his legal hat on could well be the one to actually get a REAL answer to some of our questions. I hope he keeps plugging away at them. They might just eventually give in.

Resistor wrote:

chirpyinsect wrote:Just tried an experiment. Using 2006 captures Ceop.gov.org has a capture date of 24 Apr. I opened that then opened each of the sub headings. Eg What we do, Get advice etc. Each one so far has a crawl date of 30 Apr not 24th but they have different times of capture by some seconds. So why does the one we are all looking at have exactly the same timing for 30 Apr 2007?

Because it just shows you it to the nearest second.  It would be different numbers if it were shown in miliseconds.

Yes but doing exactly the same thing using 2006 gives the times of the grabs as following on from each other by a few seconds ie 07.48.17      07.48.35 etc
but each page of the 2007 one shows 11.58.03

I'm sure I read somewhere that they changed crawler software in 2006. Somewhere on the Wayback page I think. I'll try and find it again. Maybe the old one just worked slower.

I feel famous. :-D

canada12 wrote:I feel famous. :-D

However there is now a big he/she debate

Hongkong Phooey wrote:

canada12 wrote:I feel famous. :-D

However there is now a big he/she debate

There's only ever been one of me, but there might have been a placeholder for a second me, just in case :-)

Resistor wrote:I'm sure I read somewhere that they changed crawler software in 2006.  Somewhere on the Wayback page I think.  I'll try and find it again.  Maybe the old one just worked slower.

Just tried same experiment using 2008 crawls. Now the individual sub sections have crawl times that are vastly different but all within the same capture date. I used www.ceop.gov.uk and a date of 6 Feb 2008
It just gets weirder. 
So far Apr 30 2007 is the only date where all of the sub sections have exactly the same time on them
Could be nothing though.

Hongkong Phooey wrote:

canada12 wrote:I feel famous. :-D

However there is now a big he/she debate

I wonder if he/she wears nail polish.

Was stuck in finger painting classes most of yesterday.

So again trying to catch up a bit...

In a nutshell then:

We are still non the wiser about this... Lots of for and against arguments which I can't really comprehend anyway. Although great to read.

No 'official' reply from anyone at the Wayback place.... Keeping very quiet considering...

Lots of activity from the 'paid shills' which basically means the truth is close.

Oh - and what's all that about with the Bennett Spoof.... Didn't realise it was a laughing matter. The seriousness of all this and the implications are potentially gigantic.

Anyway, Late for lego class.

As you were folks....

I can give you proper help with your Lego programming if you get stuck - with proper timestamps and everything

Resistor wrote:I can give you proper help with your Lego programming if you get stuck - with proper timestamps and everything

Haha - cheers.

I am learning fast though. Came across a spider crawl earlier. The cheeky little thing crawled over my laptop.

It won't be doing it again.

There used to be a nightclub near us with a big poster in the window, proudly advertising "Laptop Dancers".

I had visions of a scantily clad lady in 6" spike heels (and nail varnish), stamping all over somebody's netbook.

Andrew wrote:
Lots of activity from the 'paid shills' which basically means the truth is close.
Oh - and what's all that about with the Bennett Spoof.... Didn't realise it was a laughing matter. The seriousness of all this and the implications are potentially gigantic.
Anyway, Late for lego class.

The basics of what we have been looking at for the past 8 years and more are not a laughing matter, but the implications both of the original story, and of everything that so many people have done since to prevent the truth coming out are so dreadful that from time to time humour is the only acceptable outlet.
I include myself as one who seeks to take the heat out of some developing situations with a well (or badly) placed cartoon or joke, or limerick.

As an example - Almost everything that Mitchell has done and said has been dreadful, in that he has sought actively to conceal the truth, but also risible in its total ineptitude.
Since we cannot get at him in any other way, then ridicule is the most powerful acceptable weapon we possess
Ditto Carter-Ruck, ditto Gamble, ditto the McCanns' lawyers, ditto the McCanns private detectives, ditto most of the extended family

Over the road, rustyjames makes a very good point on page 81, 10:55
And he is 100% right, that is EXACTLY what WBM should be investigating
But either they won't, or if they do, we'll never hear about it

rustyjames wrote:Secondly they have available a MUCH more important set of information. As I've explained wayback :-) in this thread, the pages we see are not like a screenshot of a page, or a folder full of everything that has been grabbed, but are re-created from information that was captured during crawls.

It certainly seemed to do that with the CEOP homepage of 24/04/06. It shouldn't have looked like that without the associated CSS, which was only captured later, on 30/04/06. It's rebuilt a page captured on 24/04/06 with data taken from the future. (p41 of this thread).