http://www.hotwired.com/netizen/96/36/index4a.html

HotWired, The Netizen   
6-8 Sept 96

   Finnish Line
   by Declan McCullagh
   Washington, DC, 5 September

   Call it a cyberporn fear-storm: Splashed across the front page of
   the 25 August issue of the London Observer was a hysterical report
   naming pseudonymous Finnish remailer operator Julf Helsingius as the
   "man US police-experts charge with being at the hub of 90 percent of
   the child pornography on the Internet."
   
   The report continued: "'Somewhere between 75 and 90 percent of all the
   child pornography I see is supplied through this remailer,' said Toby
   Tyler of the FBI." That was enough to make Helsingius - already
   reeling under threats from the Singapore government and repeated legal
   attacks from the always-litigious Church of Scientology - pull the
   plug on his anon.penet.fi site last Friday.
   
   But in trying to milk the story, the Observer went too far. The "FBI
   investigator" the paper cited as their only support for the
   accusations doesn't exist.
   
   In truth, Tyler is a sergeant in California's San Bernardino sheriff's
   office, and he says the Observer intentionally misrepresented his
   identity and his statements.
   
   Tyler says "there's very little of the story I agree with," and the
   Observer took a conversation he had with a reporter "and selectively
   chose words that would mean what they wanted."
   
   "[The article] was a complete, purposeful misidentification of what I
   am. I consult with the FBI, but that's a pimple on the scope of my
   activities," Tyler said. He said the report untruthfully "implies an
   employment relationship" with the Feds.
   
   Tyler also accused the Observer of a "gross mischaracterization" of
   what he said about remailers. "I said that most child pornography
   posted to newsgroups does not go through remailers." (In fact, he says
   he "absolutely" supports the existence of anonymous remailers.)
   
   For his part, Helsingius took pains to prevent any child porn from
   flowing through his free service, which removes identifying
   information from email messages and Usenet posts. "I block all the
   alt.binaries newsgroups and then on the other groups there's a
   16-kilobyte [posting] limit," he said.
   
   Helsingius blames the Observer for scaremongering. "It was quite clear
   that they were trying to create a story where there was none ... I
   quite clearly outlined why my server wasn't transmitting child porn,"
   Helsingius said. "I stated that the Finnish police had investigated
   and found that it wasn't. These comments were ignored. They wanted to
   make a story so they made things up."
   
   Now Helsingius is thinking of suing. "I'm definitely contemplating
   legal action.... The article contains so many errors and false claims
   that a libel suit would be successful."
   
   Mike Godwin, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, agrees:
   "Helsingius is very, very likely to win. If you took bets on lawsuits,
   I'd put my money down on him right now." Godwin says even if
   Helsingius filed a lawsuit in the United States, which has laws making
   it tougher to prove libel, "he'd still win."
   
   Still, a malicious front-page splash in the Observer isn't the full
   extent of Helsingius's troubles. Now he's also up against the
   Singapore government, which has demanded the identity of one of the
   users in his half-million-person database. (The Singapore government
   obviously isn't content with just banning Web pages that may "bring
   the government into hatred or contempt.")
   
   The unknown user, who has the email address an511172@anon.penet.fi,
   posted hundreds of messages to the soc.culture.singapore newsgroup
   under the name of "Lee Kwan Yew," the retired prime minister of
   Singapore. The messages are short and unimaginative, yet apparently
   are just enough to piss off the thin-skinned Singaporean officials.
   One post reads: "We are small and vulnerable. Without regulations, we
   will be like Hong Kong, oops, fuck, bad example, they are actually
   doing quite all right. - SM Lee Kwan Yew, Republic of Singapore."
   
   Now that a Finnish court recently ruled that the remailer's database
   could be breached in a Scientology case, Helsingius says he's not sure
   what might happen. In the meantime, he's stuck somewhere between a
   sensationalist British newspaper and a Singaporean government bent on
   silencing opposition.
   
   "It's unclear what the current situation is, and therefore the Finnish
   police are unclear on whether they can comply and give the information
   or not," he said. "That's the reason I actually shut down the
   service."
   
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