[I understand the text of the Observer article is available at http://www.hclb.demon.co.uk/obs.txt] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I. T. Consultancy Limited Our reference L2217 The Editor The Observer 119 Farringdon Road London EC1R 3ER 26 August 1996 AN OPEN LETTER FOR PUBLICATION Sir, I read with some interest the article by David Connett and Jon Henley in yesterday's edition regarding the Internet and child pornography. I was particularly interested as I am a computer consultant advising clients on Internet issues. In my professional opinion, the technical standard of the reporting was sufficiently poor as to be both inaccurate and misleading. The purpose of this letter is to clarify certain technical issues which might cause your readers to reach unfounded or incorrect conclusions. It is important to be aware of the various methods by which information generally (which can include pornography) is distributed around the Internet. Your article focuses on one particular route, namely Newsgroups. It is Newsgroups which are detailed in the Metropolitan Police's letter to Internet Providers and which are concentrated upon by your article. There are several other means of distributing information. I believe however that the Police letter lists fewer than the 150 groups referred to by the authors. Interestingly enough Newsgroups only offer the means of broadcasting information to anyone who wants to retrieve it. The authors do not appear to have a sufficient grasp of what a "remailer" does. For example they seem to draw a direct link between the use of such remailers and people being able to "log on and participate in 'live' and 'interactive' filmed sessions". A lay reader would perhaps draw the inference that the remailer is somehow involved in any such live participation. Unfortunately this could not be further from the truth. Remailers simply allow people to post messages, either as email to other people or to Newsgroups for general reading. Nothing more. Remailers are generally incapable of being "logged on" to. Your article also refers to "remailing companies", from which the lay reader might infer that remailers are operated for commercial profit. Such an inference would again be wholly incorrect. I know of no organisation operating a remailer for profit, indeed none of them even charge for their services. They are generally run by individuals on a voluntary basis who consider them as a service to the Internet community. Your article appears not to mention any of the purposes of such remailers other than in terms of the distribution of pornography. In my view it would be difficult to present a balanced article without doing so. Different remailers take different steps to prevent whatever their operators consider as "abuse". My understanding is that Mr. Helsingius' service restricts messages to 48k bytes (or characters) and prohibits postings to the "binaries" newsgroups designated for images. I also understand that it only allows 30 messages per user per day. At a technical level these restrictions would make it almost impossible to use his service for mass distribution of any binary data, not just pornography. It therefore appears surprising to me that your article should allege that Mr. Helsingius' remailer is responsible for handling "90 per cent of all child pornography" on the Internet. I wonder what substantiating evidence The Observer has to this effect other than the alleged claim by Toby Tyler. Indeed it appears from your article that the words "is supplied through this remailer" may not be a direct quote from Toby Tyler. Your article alleges that "the photographs made available to Demon's subscribers through the Internet are supplied anonymously by remailing companies". The lay reader might infer from this that all photographs therefore come via remailers. Again this would be far from the truth. Finally I hope this letter offers some assistance to your readers in clarifying a number of issues which were perhaps less than clear in your article. Given your newspaper's difficulties with technical issues, I would be grateful if you would kindly refer any editing of this letter to me prior to publication. Yours faithfully, Matthew Richardson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQCVAgUBMiFvEAKwLwcHEv69AQGjIQP+IGR9rhvdYXe7CuCcwPl/tIrIBryikTM2 IVOpygTF2nCPf3WEJ8czRvs1emp9d9d++69XiG1f6QAeP9Jv/h9KzVtV7mjjuqCX LhlhXBYjLIiGCcxljKZ07zHFlCeZWCzuAmIFnZbz2fNNjqyicheIMlxI2tDrGgjp dlaGZuAI2XY= =dkXg -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----