CRIME WATCH : Computers’ Dark Side

The fascinating world of computers offers opportunities for ill as well as good. Millions of dollars can be stolen with a few key strokes and some stolen codes.

The U.S. Secret Service announced this week that it had arrested six men in four states after setting up a “sting” on the global computer network known as the Internet. The federal agency established a computer bulletin board and targeted computer hackers seeking to steal electronic codes. The codes can be used to program cellular phones so calls can be made free, with the bills going to those whose numbers were stolen.

Crime of this sort isn’t nickel-and-dime: Cellular phone fraud is said to total hundreds of millions of dollars a year in the United States alone.

One of the six arrested was a 22-year-old Huntington Beach man whose mother subsequently offered an anguished cautionary tale, suggesting that parental guidance and control must be extended into cyberspace. She said children’s enthusiasm for computers is often encouraged by parents happy to see them having harmless fun but that computers can become addictive and destructive.

Her son already has spent a year in jail after pleading guilty to 18 felony counts and when he was arrested this week was still on probation. The mother said that as computer hacking consumed him, “It was like watching the disintegration of a person.”

A person who steals with a computer keyboard is no less a thief than one who picks a pocket. That needs to be emphasized by parents, teachers and the industry.