Internet innocence lost

I have a tough-love message for parents: Learn about [the Internet]. It's in your kid's life."-Sherry Turkle, sociologist.

That fact is now painfully clear to a Massachusetts teen and his family. This month, the boy made history as the first juvenile to face Federal computer crime laws since they were instituted in 1984.

>From his room, the teen hacked into a Bell Atlantic/Nynex digital loop carrier system and disrupted phone service in Rutland, Mass. Next, for more than six hours, he cut off phone service to an airport tower in Worcester, Mass. He also gained access to pharmacy records and copied several prescriptions. Busy night.

Prosecutors say the teen said that he was sincerely unaware of causing any harm. Yeah, right!

The what-ifs are frightening: What if a plane had crashed while air traffic controllers were forced to use limited backup systems? What if someone in the outlying Rutland area needed help and couldn't dial 911? What if the boy had filled those prescriptions he copied and used them to harm himself or others?

Rightly, the Feds didn't buy it. The teen faces two years of probation, surrender of his computer and a ban on use of a modem or other remote-access devices for two years. He could also be required to perform 250 hours of community service and pay $5000 in restitution to Bell Atlantic.

The teen, and other adolescent hackers, should get the message. But their parents should pay attention, too. "When your child is in his room, you expect he's safe from any harm coming to him, and you expect he can't do any harm to anybody else," the teen's father told prosecutors.

If that room has a computer in it, then such an attitude is at best extremely naive and at worst negligent. Besides containing on-line child molesters and inappropriate content, the Internet caters to that blessing/curse of youth: curiosity. The more they know how to do, the more they want to try, in which case it is all too possible for youths to do harm.

Last year the Supreme Court refused to regulate the Internet. That leaves responsible use up to the individual and, where children are concerned, to their parents. Read a book, take a class or simply open that bedroom door and find out what your child is doing on-line. Computers, like guns, don't hurt people; people misusing the instrument do.