ABCI
This service
(The Missing Persons Register) has always endeavored to do the right
thing, but our experiences with the ABCI left us bewildered and confused
and disillusioned about their services, and their staff. Here is what happened.
In 1999, the
following information was copied ver batim from their website, followed
by an email to the webmaster telling him. We also stated if there was any
problem to please inform us. At no time was my correspondence acknowledged,
nor was I informed of any problem. I later followed up my emails with calls
to various NMPU's about Missing Persons details. At no time were any emails
or calls ever returned over the space of four
years. The information held here was linked
to their site. Later, I found they had purchased another domain, so I updated
all the links.
The below (written
in blue) came from their website in 1999.
Read it carefully.
See if you can notice any differences.
The
Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence (ABCI) Version One
Was established
in Canberra, Australia, in 1981 in response to the recommendations of a
number of law enforcement Royal Commissions. The Bureau was established
primarily to facilitate the exchange of criminal intelligence between Australian
law enforcement agencies. The Australasian Police Ministers’ Council provided
a mandate for the ABCI to have intelligence collection, collation, analysis
and dissemination functions. The ABCI does not have an operational arm,
but rather is a service agency for Australian police forces and other law
enforcement agencies. The ABCI is one of six national common police services
in Australia. The others are:
Australian Institute of Police Management
National Police Research Unit
National Crime Statistics Unit
National Exchange of Police Information
National Institute of Forensic Science
The role of
the ABCI is to provide a cooperative national criminal intelligence service
through liaison and Memoranda of Understanding with other law enforcement
agencies both in Australia and overseas; participating in activities such
as joint task forces; and by developing procedures and standards to allow
better integration of intelligence related activities. The ABCI’s Charter
is sufficiently broad to encapsulate a wide range of intelligence interest.
The ABCI is non-operational and relies on client agencies for collection
of information in the field.
A Board
of Control, consisting of all Australian Police Commissioners oversees
the general administration and performance of the ABCI and determines appropriate
policies, procedures and methods for governing the ABCI’s activities. The
ABCI responds to the directives of the Board of Control to ensure its role
in the Australian law enforcement community remains relevant to the intelligence
interests of its clients. The ABCI comprises sworn and unsworn members
from all Australian police services.
The Board of
Control has recognised that appropriate intelligence skills, including
the use of technology, go hand in hand with providing a reliable and timely
intelligence service. To effect this philosophy, the ABCI has worked in
partnership with law enforcement agencies to develop and enhance the Australia
Criminal Intelligence Database (ACID) and Australian Law Enforcement Intelligence
Net (ALEIN) for use as a secure computerised intelligence facility.
ABCI Services
The Bureau
has a commitment to a number of projects and activities that have a national
focus, including:
National and
Strategic Projects
The Behavioural
Analysis Unit including the National Missing Persons Unit Liaison Information
Technology Publications
All correspondence
to the ABCI should be addressed to:
The Director
Australian
Bureau of Criminal Intelligence
PO Box 1936
CANBERRA CITY
ACT 2601 Australia
Telephone:
(02)6243-5666 (Australia)
+61(02)6243-5666
(Int)
Facsimile:
(02)6247-5380 (Australia)
+61 (02)6247-5380
(Int)
Information
Source: NMPU Website
Date &
Time: 12:00, 18th September 1999
Update
11:13am 13th September 2001
I received
a telephone call from CAROL KEIRNAN, at 11am on the 13th September 2001
who claimed she 'owned' the Australian Bureau Of Criminal Intelligence
in Canberra. At first she was nice, but she soon turned quite viscious.
She ranted about 'how dare I' have the above information and their
logo on my site, without HER permission. I reminded her I had notified
them many times and never had any complaints. I had to explain this to
her five times and at length how I had rung NMPU's, Crime Stoppers and
the ABCI. Sent email to the NMPU's - in the states that have them
- to be completely ignored.
She screamed
at me that I had not rung her. She was correct. I had not rung her. I was
not about to ring someone I didn't know in Canberra when hard-copy mail,
emails and phone calls to 1800 numbers seemed adequate enough to me. I
told her four times I had rang 1800 numbers, other than local Queensland
numbers. As a person with no income, I cannot afford to do otherwise.
She
stated bluntly:
"I am very
very concerned that you have information on your site that is INCORRECT."
She demanded
I
remove all information pertaining to the NMPU and the ABCI and a few moments
later, contradicted herself saying if I had information on site directed
towards them, it was to be hyerlinked. Which - if she had bothered to check
- she would have seen it was!.
She claimed
she was getting 5 phone calls daily COMPLAINING about my website over what
she claimed was "inaccurate information is there."
She refused
to tell me exactly who had complained, and what their beef was.
I asked her
to be specific, because I was confused as to what the problem was. She
directed me step-by-step over the telephone, to THIS
page and no other. This page that you are now reading specifically
featuring the work and role of the ABCI.
She ranted
about the information reproduced above in blue. She said their information
was reproduced on this site. I was relieved she finally got something right.
She strongly implied the same information is not on theirs. As if
somehow I fabricated the wording or changed what had been written. I hadn't
edited the information nor fixed any of the glaring spelling and grammatical
errors. It was untouched, exactly as I had taken it off their site. It
remains the same.
Carol was quite
vociferous that I HAD GOT IT ALL WRONG.
She also stated
emphatically that the above (in blue) information is:
- WRONG
(ranting
100 miles an hour about HOW it is all wrong, which I told her is meaningless
to me - I just got the info from THEIR website. If it is wrong, that is
not my fault.)
- OUT OF
DATE (I apologized and said I'd update
it, at the time chastising myself for not having checked their website
for updates. When I got off the phone I immediately updated what info I
had - again from their website, and it was not out of date at all!)
- UNFACTUAL
(If
the material was unfactual, correcting it was not my problem, and
it was not possible for me to correct it, without FTP access to edit
their website. So who DID have the correct information and why was this
idiot blaming me for their own errors? If indeed there were any errors.
Why wasn't she ringing their webmaster about it?)
- CAUSING
DISTRESS TO POLICE AND FAMILIES (Who?
Which Police? Which families? I hadn't read anything about this major disaster
in the newspapers. If the material on my site was disturbing enough to
upset the whole Police Force - why was it not on the news? Why had
I not had a single complaint? Nobody complained to me or the sites programmer
in four years. I got no answers as to whom I was supposed to have caused
distress to. Why had they not said anything to me? -- as the material
came directly from their own site -- if police WERE complaining,
their site webmaster must have been getting thousands of complaints. If
that was so, why was the material
STILL there?)
While I was
on the phone to Carol Keirnan, I was already making my way to the NMPU
website to double-check the information I had was correct and we had not
made some major error. It was not till I got off the phone and printed
out their web page and mine that I could compare and contrast them.
At the time
I (stupidly) apologised to her, because thought I must have done something
wrong for her to be so angry. She was screaming and yelling at me on the
phone. Claiming police and their families were so very upset, and it was
all my fault because I had published lies on my website.
I was bewildered
as to how the info on my site could possibly be wrong as I triple check
and source everything. I allowed her the benefit of the doubt and I apologised
and promised to fix it. She was so hostile and bitter, that I said in jest
- "well maybe I should just delete my whole site then if that would
make you happy," and she frostily replied, "..maybe you should"
Shortly after,
I hung up on her, and she was still ranting...
I printed out
a copy of the current info to compare it with what I had onsite, in order
to fix up what I had supposedly got so 'horribly wrong.'
I printed another
copy of the page in question from their site at 11.13am on the 13th September
2001
It is reproduced
below in blue (Version 2).
I was shocked
to see it was exactly the same.
Every single
word was identical.
I could not
believe my eyes.
I emptied
my caches, flushed the proxy and completely reloaded the page.
It was still
the same!
I printed
out a copy of this page
(as it stood
at the time The Missing Persons Register FEATURE
on the ABCI) from this site and a
friend and I read both copies out loud.
Each page
read identically - WORD FOR WORD!
If you don't
believe me, print out this page, and try the same test.
Someone care
to explain it to me?
Why was I
rung and harassed for no VALID reason?
A perceived
slight only in the mind of Carol Keirnan?
Is there anything
I can do about it? Probably not.
This harassment
followed closely on the heels of the Queensland Police Detective (on the
Linda Roberts case) phone calls having a go at us seven days earlier (6th
Sept) over other ludicrous claims of publicising publicly available
information and even a media release. How can they rant about
us publishing information they put out in a media release for gods sake!
But they did!! We got two calls. More details on the Linda
Jane Roberts page.
Added to this
was the refusal by Elizabeth
Craig to publish my letter in the Readers Digest "HAVE YOUR SAY"
about our site, after they had run an article about Missing People in Australia.
I was not allowed to have my say and she effectively gagged me,
so much for freedom of speech. Talk about discrimination! I wondered whether
Elizabeth Craig's telephone calls to Canberra was what had set Carol Keirnan
off in a killer rage, it certainly appeared that way as Elizabeth had been
milking me for information and I had told her far more than she needed
to know, then at the last minute told me she would not be publishing my
letter!
I wish these
morons would get their facts right before attacking me, and had the decency
and manners to apologise if they got it wrong. Will I ever get any apology
from the Police? from CrimeStoppers? NMPUnits the ABCI, from Carol
Keirnan, Detective Pointing, Kirsten Roos and Elizabeth Craig? I doubt
it...
Version
Two
It is identical
. It came from the same site, the same place, the same hyperlink. 11.13am
on 13th September 2001 (2 years after the one above)
The
Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence (ABCI)
The Australian
Bureau of Criminal Intelligence (ABCI) was established
in Canberra,
Australia, in 1981 in response to the recommendations of a number of law
enforcement Royal Commissions. The Bureau was
established
primarily to facilitate the exchange of criminal intelligence
between Australian
law enforcement agencies. The Australasian Police
Ministers’
Council provided a mandate for the ABCI to have intelligence collection,
collation, analysis and dissemination functions. The ABCI does not have
an operational arm, but rather is a service agency for Australian police
forces and other law enforcement agencies. The ABCI is one of six national
common police services in Australia. The others are:
Australian
Institute of Police Management
National Police
Research Unit
National Crime
Statistics Unit
National Exchange
of Police Information
National Institute
of Forensic Science
The role of
the ABCI is to provide a cooperative national criminal
intelligence
service through liaison and Memoranda of Understanding with other law enforcement
agencies both in Australia and overseas;
participating
in activities such as joint task forces; and by developing
procedures
and standards to allow better integration of intelligence related activities.
The ABCI’s Charter is sufficiently broad to encapsulate a wide range of
intelligence interest. The ABCI is non-operational and relies on client
agencies for collection of information in the field.
A Board of
Control, consisting of all Australian Police Commissioners
oversees the
general administration and performance of the ABCI and
determines
appropriate policies, procedures and methods for governing the ABCI’s activities.
The ABCI responds to the directives of the Board of Control to ensure its
role in the Australian law enforcement community remains relevant to the
intelligence interests of its clients. The ABCI comprises sworn and unsworn
members from all Australian police services.
The Board of
Control has recognised that appropriate intelligence skills, including
the use of technology, go hand in hand with providing a reliable and timely
intelligence service. To effect this philosophy, the ABCI has worked in
partnership with law enforcement agencies to develop and enhance the Australia
Criminal Intelligence Database (ACID) and Australian Law Enforcement Intelligence
Net (ALEIN) for use as a secure computerised intelligence facility.
ABCI Services
The Bureau
has a commitment to a number of projects and activities that have a national
focus, including:
National and
Strategic Projects
The Behavioural
Analysis Unit including the National Missing Persons
Unit
Liaison Information Technology Publications
All correspondence
to the ABCI should be addressed to:
The Director
Australian
Bureau of Criminal Intelligence
PO Box 1936
CANBERRA CITY
ACT 2601
Australia
Telephone:
(02) 6243 5666 (within Australia)
61 - 2 - 6243
5666 (international)
Facsimile:
(02) 6247 5380 (within Australia)
61 - 2 - 6247
5380 (international)
Source: NMPU
Website http://www.missingpersons.info.au/abci.htm
Date &
Time: 11:13am 13th September 2001
Update
17:30pm 1st February 2002.
Two and a
half years later...
I went to
their website to update the information. Aside from the addition of paragraphs
about Vision and Mission, ABCI outputs and publications, and a new logo
-- that the webmaster had tried to shrink instead of resizing it, making
it look bloody awful and impossible to read, and making the webmaster look
incompetent -- the page remained unchanged.
It's on the
same site, in the same place. It remained virtually unchanged. I don't
know how the webmaster can live with himself (or herself) posting information
that (according to Carol Keirnan) is "unfactual,
out of date and causing distress to police and their families."Wonder
if I will be getting any more harassing phone calls this year? If I do,
I shall be making a formal complaint, and then laying charges.
The
Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence (ABCI) Version Three
The
Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence (ABCI) was established
in Canberra, Australia, in 1981 in response to the recommendations of a
number of law enforcement Royal Commissions. The Bureau was established
primarily to facilitate the exchange of criminal intelligence between Australian
law enforcement agencies. The Australasian Police Ministers’ Council provided
a mandate for the ABCI to have intelligence collection, collation, analysis
and dissemination functions. The ABCI does not have an operational arm,
but rather is a service agency for Australian police services and other
law enforcement agencies. The ABCI is one of five national common police
services in Australia. The others are:
Australian
Institute of Police Management
Australasian
Centre for Policing Research
National Crime
Statistics Unit
National Institute
of Forensic Science
The role of the
ABCI is to provide a cooperative national criminal intelligence service
through liaison and Memoranda of Understanding with other law enforcement
agencies both in Australia and overseas; participating in activities such
as joint task forces; and by developing procedures and standards to allow
better integration of intelligence related activities. The ABCI’s Charter
is sufficiently broad to encapsulate a wide range of intelligence interest.
The ABCI is non-operational and relies on client agencies for collection
of information in the field.
A Board of
Control, consisting of all Australian Police Commissioners oversees the
general administration and performance of the ABCI and determines appropriate
policies, procedures and methods for governing the ABCI’s activities. The
ABCI responds to the directives of the Board of Control to ensure its role
in the Australian law enforcement community remains relevant to the intelligence
interests of its clients. The ABCI comprises sworn and unsworn members
from all Australian police services.
The Board of
Control has recognised that appropriate intelligence skills, including
the use of technology, go hand in hand with providing a reliable and timely
intelligence service. To effect this philosophy, the ABCI has worked in
partnership with law enforcement agencies to develop and enhance the Australia
Criminal Intelligence Database (ACID) and Australian Law Enforcement Intelligence
Net (ALEIN) for use as a secure computerised intelligence facility.
ABCI Outputs
In order to
achieve its mission, the ABCI produces:
Nationally
significant criminal intelligence analysis; Access to national criminal
intelligence information systems; Products and services that build the
national criminal intelligence capability; and
Crime Reduction
and Community Safety products and services.
Publications
The ABCI must
have highly effective, innovative and flexible people,
systems and
processes to deliver these outputs.
All correspondence
to the ABCI should be addressed to:
The Executive
Director
Australian
Bureau of Criminal Intelligence
GPO Box 1936
CANBERRA CITY
ACT 2601
Australia
Email: abci@abci.gov.au
Telephone:
(02) 6243 5666 (within Australia)
61 - 2 - 6243
5666 (international)
Facsimile:
(02) 6247 5380 (within Australia)
61 - 2 - 6247
5380 (international)
Source: NMPU
Website http://www.missingpersons.info.au/abci.htm
Date &
Time: 17:30pm 1st February 2002.
Update
12:35pm 6th July 2002.
Almost three
years later.... yep.. it is STILL THE SAME !!
The only thing
missing is the "highly effective, innovative
and flexible people, systems and processes to deliver these outputs."
I
guess they are no longer innovative and flexible?
The Australian Bureau
of Criminal Intelligence (ABCI) Version Four
VISION
Criminal intelligence
driving Australian crime reduction strategy and operations
MISSION
To reduce
crime by delivering quality national criminal intelligence products and
services
The Australian
Bureau of Criminal Intelligence (ABCI) was established in Canberra, Australia,
in 1981 in response to the recommendations of a number of law enforcement
Royal Commissions. The Bureau was established primarily to facilitate the
exchange of criminal intelligence between Australian law enforcement agencies.
The Australasian Police Ministers’ Council provided a mandate for the ABCI
to have intelligence collection, collation, analysis and dissemination
functions. The ABCI does not have an operational arm, but rather is a service
agency for Australian police services and other law enforcement agencies.
The ABCI is one of five national common police services in Australia. The
others are:
* Australian Institute of Police Management
* Australasian Centre for Policing Research
* National Crime Statistics Unit
* National Institute of Forensic Science
The role of
the ABCI is to provide a cooperative national criminal intelligence service
through liaison and Memoranda of Understanding with other law enforcement
agencies both in Australia and overseas; participating in activities such
as joint task forces; and by developing procedures and standards to allow
better integration of intelligence related activities. The ABCI’s Charter
is sufficiently broad to encapsulate a wide range of intelligence interest.
The ABCI is non-operational and relies on client agencies for collection
of information in the field.
A Board of
Control, consisting of all Australian Police Commissioners oversees the
general administration and performance of the ABCI and determines appropriate
policies, procedures and methods for governing the ABCI’s activities. The
ABCI responds to the directives of the Board of Control to ensure its role
in the Australian law enforcement community remains relevant to the intelligence
interests of its clients. The ABCI comprises sworn and unsworn members
from all Australian police services.
The Board of
Control has recognised that appropriate intelligence skills, including
the use of technology, go hand in hand with providing a reliable and timely
intelligence service. To effect this philosophy, the ABCI has worked in
partnership with law enforcement agencies to develop and enhance the Australia
Criminal Intelligence Database (ACID) and Australian Law Enforcement Intelligence
Net (ALEIN) for use as a secure computerised intelligence facility.
ABCI Outputs
In order to
achieve its mission, the ABCI produces:
* Nationally significant criminal intelligence analysis;
* Access to national criminal intelligence information systems;
* Products and services that build the national criminal intelligence capability;
and
* Crime Reduction and Community Safety products and services.
* Publications
The ABCI must
have highly effective, innovative and flexible people, systems and processes
to deliver these outputs.
All correspondence
to the ABCI should be addressed to:
The Executive
Director
Australian
Bureau of Criminal Intelligence
GPO Box 1936
CANBERRA CITY
ACT 2601
Australia
Email: abci@abci.gov.au
Telephone:
(02) 6243 5666 (within Australia)
61 - 2 - 6243
5666 (international)
Facsimile:
(02) 6247 5380 (within Australia)
61 - 2 - 6247
5380 (international)
Source: NMPU
Website http://www.missingpersons.info.au/abci.htm
Date &
Time: 12:35:02 6th July 2002.
©Commonwealth
of Australia The material contained herein constitutes Commonwealth copyright
and is intended for your general use and information. You
may download, display, print and reproduce this material in unaltered form
only (retaining this notice) as long as is it sourced to the NMPU and is
not used out of context.
Source: NMPU
Copyright Statement http://www.missingpersons.info.au/copyright.htm
Date &
Time: 11am 13/09/2001
Checked: 18:30pm
1st February 2002.
Checked: 14.30pm
July 9, 2002.
"Cases:
Permission to publicise each missing person case has been granted by the
missing person’s family and investigating officers."
Source: NMPU
Privacy Statement http://www.missingpersons.info.au/privacy.htm
Date &
Time: 14.30pm July 9, 2002.
