An interesting Net tidbit. Note that the "International Conference on Child Sexual Exploitation" in Stolkholm which served as a platform for these accusations and various coordinated stories in numerous media outlets is simply a circus put on by ECPAT, a well-known pressure group whose propaganda is modeled after the now-defunct National Coalition on Pornography, and whose spurious and laughable claims about child pornography and vast pedophile conspiracies would fill volumes. The only odd thing here is that the mainstream press is presenting this gathering with a perfectly straight face, as if it were some sort of credible event, which of course it is not. ----- HELSINKI (Reuter) - A Finnish Internet specialist said on Friday he was 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 which 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 on Friday. ``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. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd@netcom.com $ via Finger. $