Judge Gives Student Probation for Tap of Computer Network

A computer whiz from UCLA last week was placed on probation for three years and ordered to perform 600 hours of community service for having illegally tapped into an international computer network linking research agencies and the Defense Department.

Ronald Mark Austin, 21, of Santa Monica was convicted in June by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Gordon Ringer of 12 felony counts for having penetrated the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network with his home computer.

The nuclear physics major had been held since late August.

Although Austin could have received a maximum six-year prison term, Ringer said he would follow the recommendations of a state study team, the county Probation Department and Deputy Dist. Atty. Clifton H. Garrott, all of whom called for probation.

“I have never maintained that my part in the computer break-ins was not wrong,” Austin said in a three-page letter to Ringer. “(But) I feel that what I have done is much less serious than other crimes such as drunk driving in which the offenders don’t suffer half as much as I have.”

Austin was arrested in his Santa Monica apartment in November, 1983.