IP: Finn To Close Net Remailer After Child Porn Claim

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/960830/tech/stories/finn_1.html


Friday August 30 2:36 PM EDT 


Finn To Close Net Remailer After Child Porn Claim


HELSINKI - A Finnish Internet specialist said today he's closing his
remailer, or anonymous forwarding system, after rejecting allegations it was
being used as a conduit for child pornography. 


Johan Helsingius, whose remailer is one of the largest in the world with
over half a million users, said in a statement he was closing down the
system because the legal issues governing the Internet in Finland are unclear. 


"The legal protection of users needs to be clarified. At the moment the
privacy of Internet messages is judicially unclear," said Helsingius, who
said he set up and ran the remailer in his free time partly as an initiative
to help abused children. 


Internet remailers are computers that receive and forward messages with a
pseudonym or anonymous source. 


There are about five large ones in the world, and they exist to enable
anonymous discussion of sensitive subjects -- for instance by victims of
child abuse, potential suicides or people in politically repressed societies. 


Helsingius, supported by Finnish police, earlier this week dismissed claims
in Britain's Observer Sunday newspaper that his remailing system handled up
to 90 percent of child pornography on the Internet. 


"I have also personally been a target because of the remailer for three
years," he said today. "Unjustified accusations affect both my job and my
private life." 


The newspaper reported the charges, by a U.S. policeman and FBI adviser, as
Belgian police were investigating horrific child sex crimes and ahead of an
international conference in Stockholm on the commercial sexual exploitation
of children. 


In Helsingius's statement, Helsinki police sergeant Kaj Malmberg was quoted
as saying he had found no evidence of child porn being transmitted from
Finland. 






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