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Changing Hawaii
WHEN they finally catch the culprits jamming up those national flagship Web sites, betcha they're young, highly intelligent and much too bored. These cyber-assaults on electronic commerce are obviously childish pranks being played by the young or the young-at-brain. Those naughty
Internet vandalsKids and those on the cusp of adulthood have always been prone to mischief. As we've become more technologically advanced, so too have our troublemakers.
My 14-year-old kiddo still marvels at the primitiveness of my early existence.
She can't fathom that I listened to music on a record player, watched black-and-white TV without remote control, and didn't have a personal computer, microwave oven, fax, telephone answering machine or VCR.
Whenever I nostalgically bring this up, she looks at me with a pained, incredulous expression that clearly says, "Oh, Mom, you poor thing. You call that living?"
Similarly, 25 years ago, my own generation's attempts at wreaking havoc were simple-minded and silly.
One night, in my freshman year at UH, our pledge class worked up the nerve to toilet paper a sorority member's house. We had a blast throwing the rolls into the trees and watching them unfurl -- wafting streams of Charmin -- while giggling in the darkness.
The next morning, we learned that we had toilet-papered the wrong home!
In our defense, we felt really bad about it and went back to apologize and clean up our mess.
Yet, it was only harmless fun -- nothing compared to what goes on today.
Teen-aged circuits are now wired differently.
They carry cell phones and electronic pagers. They enter chat rooms and have their own Web pages. They wouldn't think of trudging to the public library when they can surf the 'Net to glean information.
Since they've mastered the World Wide Web, what could be more fun than fooling around on a similar world-wide, bigger-than-life basis?
Thus, we have some sophisticated Barnies launching electronic attacks against well-traveled Web sites like Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, CNN, ETrade and Buy.com, clogging up their traffic and disrupting business as usual.
The FBI vows to hunt down these cyber-terrorists and to make them 1) go to jail for 5-10 years and 2) pay fines of up to $250,000 or "twice the gross loss to the victim."
I have no doubt they'll be caught.
WHEN they are, the authorities will get a pat on the back and things will calm down, until the next generation of young hoodlums rises to the challenge of irking the establishment. They'll be younger, smarter and more bored than ever.
Watch. They'll make throwing toilet paper or jamming up Web sites look like keiki play.
Maybe when these cyber-scofflaws are caught, a plea bargain should be arranged. Instead of incarcerating them, we should be hiring them -- to teach us how to make the Internet more secure and tamper-proof.
Then, in the far-off future, my daughter will be able to tell her own daughter: "I remember when the Internet was so primitive, any ol' hacker could go online and cause major mischief."
That'll be the day her kiddo will shake her head, grimace and say, "Oh, Mom, you poor thing. You call that high tech?"
Diane Yukihiro Chang's column runs Monday and Friday.
She can be reached by phone at 525-8607, via e-mail at
dchang@starbulletin.com, or by fax at 523-7863.