Los Angeles Times article on Helsingius and anon.penet.fi

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

The attached article was reposted to fight-censorship with the permission
of the Los Angeles Times, which ran it on the front page today. 

It's a good story. Compare it to the Reuters dispatch, which yowled about 
child porn but didn't even mention threats from the Church of Scientology:

 >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.  [...]

Note Esther Dyson's comments:

         "The damage that can be done by anonymity is far bigger" than in
   any other medium, said Esther Dyson, chairwoman of the Electronic
   Frontier Foundation. "In the end, you need to be able to get at
   somebody's identity to enforce accountability, and the question is how
   do you also enforce freedom of speech and freedom from prosecution for
   unpopular opinions."

Also, on the "Mick Williams Cyberline" radio show I was on this 
afternoon, we heard an unconfirmed report that Helsingius is suing the 
Observer, but I haven't seen it on the wires yet...

-Declan

---

Los Angeles Times
Saturday, August 31, 1996

Internet Figure Pulls Plug   (- 0p9)
on His Anonymity Service   (- 0p6)
 
By AMY HARMON 
TIMES STAFF WRITER Byline ends here.

        Johan Helsingius, an Internet icon who for 3 1/2 years has
   championed anonymous communication over the global computer network by
   running a service that makes it possible, pulled the plug Friday on
   the machine known as anon.penet.fi.
         Civil liberties advocates said the move, prompted by a Finnish
   court decision that the anonymity of the service could be breached by
   court order, raised serious concerns about the future of anonymous
   speech on the rapidly growing network.
         A strong privacy ethic has prevailed on the Internet since its
   early days as a tool for academics and the military. The network was
   largely self-policed, and anonymous services--including
   Helsingius'--explained to users that they were not to be used for
   criminal activity, otherwise they would get shut down.
        
         But the recent explosion of electronic commerce and community
   has raised the stakes. Law enforcement agencies, as well as
   anti-pornography advocates and many others, maintain that total
   anonymity provides too much shelter for a variety of criminal
   activities.
         Based in Helsinki, the Finnish capital, Helsingius' service was
   the biggest of its kind in the world, with more than half a million
   users and with 7,500 messages passing through it each day.
         Frequent users included suicide counseling groups, human rights
   organizations and "anyone who wanted to discuss anything without their
   neighbors and employers looking on," Helsingius said.
         The amorphous structure of the Internet, which ignores
   international boundaries, means that users throughout the world will
   be affected by the shutdown. They will be offered the option of
   revealing their true identities or finding another service--there are
   about 40 others worldwide.
         The idea of an anonymous remailer is to protect the
   confidentiality of its users' identities. When a piece of e-mail was
   sent to anon.penet.fi, its identifying information was stripped off
   and a code number was substituted. The message was then forwarded to
   the individual, mailing list or discussion group for which it was
   intended.
         The only link between the real and assumed identity resided on
   the computer in Helsingius' home.
         More sophisticated remailers use encryption software to create a
   new identity and route messages through a string of several computers
   around the world, never recording the transactions. That way no
   individual operator has a record of the original sender.
         But Helsingius' service was notable because it allowed others to
   respond directly to the sender via the pseudonym on anon.penet. It
   also did not require any special software programs--and it was free.
         *
         In a telephone interview Friday from Helsinki, the 35-year-old
   Finn--known by his e-mail handle, Julf--said he was discouraged by the
   court's interpretation of the communication privacy laws in a case
   that involved a petition from the Church of Scientology, which wants
   Helsingius to reveal the identity of an individual who is alleged to
   have posted its copyrighted material on the Internet through
   Helsingius' remailer.
         "The court made it quite clear that the privacy of electronic
   mail isn't covered in Finland anymore," Helsingius said. "I would be
   running to the courtroom all the time because the suspicion of a
   crime, however minor, would be enough grounds to get a court decision
   to have the sender revealed. What's the point?"
         The Scientologists' petition underlines the heightened
   threat--and potential benefit--of anonymity on the Internet. While
   anonymity is possible via traditional mail or over the telephone, the
   Internet provides far greater reach for far less cost than any other
   medium, and it is technically much harder to eavesdrop upon.
         Helsingius, who has run the remailer in his spare time, has for
   three years been fending off requests from law enforcement authorities
   to discover the identity of his users. He was forced last February to
   provide Finnish authorities with the name of a user who was alleged to
   have broken into the church's computer to steal copyrighted
   information.
         The legal protection for digital anonymity has not yet been
   tested in U.S. courts, but Internet legal experts expect that it will
   be soon. The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia is currently
   seeking to restrict the application of the new Georgia Computer
   Systems Protection Act, which broadly prohibits the use of pseudonyms
   on the Internet.
         The issue of how to deal with anonymity is a crucial one for
   those trying to establish the medium as a place to work, play and live
   in the coming decades.
         Internet-spawned activists such as the Cypherpunks argue that
   the system will collapse without a guarantee of secure and private
   communication. And advances in cryptography have made that, for the
   most part, technologically possible.
         But other Internet enthusiasts disagree.
         *
         "The damage that can be done by anonymity is far bigger" than in
   any other medium, said Esther Dyson, chairwoman of the Electronic
   Frontier Foundation. "In the end, you need to be able to get at
   somebody's identity to enforce accountability, and the question is how
   do you also enforce freedom of speech and freedom from prosecution for
   unpopular opinions."
         Anonymous services have in fact been used for
   "mail-bombing"--crashing computer systems by overloading them with
   e-mail--and for obscene postings to discussion groups that are
   tantamount to broadcasting obscene phone calls.
         Anti-pornography advocates have also begun to target anonymous
   Internet services, which they blame for enabling the easy distribution
   of illicit material over the network.
         Last week, in a front-page headline, the London weekly newspaper
   the Observer called Helsingius "the Internet middleman who handles 90%
   of all child pornography."
         Helsingius says the sensational article had nothing to do with
   his decision, but he is clearly tired of the situation. Most anonymous
   remailers, included anon.penet.fi, he says, filter out the
   transmission of large image files that are likely to contain
   pornographic pictures.
         "I have personally been a target because of the remailer for
   three years. Unjustified accusations affect both my job and my private
   life," he said.
         After setting up his server so that it can be used on a limited
   basis by certain nonprofit groups, Helsingius plans to set up a task
   force to discuss the practical problems related to ethical and civil
   rights issues on the Internet.
         Meanwhile, many Internet denizens mourned the passing of
   anon.penet on Friday and hailed Helsingius as a "net.hero."
         "This is a sad day in the history of the Net," wrote Declan
   McCullagh, who runs a widely distributed electronic mailing list
   called "fight-censorship." "Hundreds of thousands of people had
   accounts on Julf's pseudonmyous server and many netizens relied on it
   daily to preserve their privacy online."
         "[Helsingius] has done a lot of good work. He's been attacked on
   all sides, and he's hung in there," said Sameer Parekh, founder of
   Community Connexion in Berkeley, which hopes to build a business out
   of providing anonymous remailer services.
         "It's too bad that he had to shut down. But we believe there's a
   demand for anonymity, and use of these systems is only going to
   increase."
   
        BACKGROUND
         Anonymous remailers make it possible to send messages over the
   global Internet computer network without revealing who or where they
   come from. Anyone with an Internet account can contact a remailer
   service and register for an account. Then, when sending electronic
   mail or posting messages to an electronic discussion group, the
   subscriber addresses it to the remailer as well as to the final
   destination. The message travels to the remailer computer, which
   automatically strips off the originating name and address and forwards
   it to the final destination. Some remailers also allow the recipient
   of an anonymous message to respond anonymously, so that the entire
   exchange is "double-blind."
        
   Copyright 1996, Los Angeles Times

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