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Armed with search warrants, the agents came early Wednesday morning to
15 middle-class homes throughout the U.S., peering under beds, pulling out
drawers, seizing print-outs and floppy discs. In California, they simulta-
neously struck four homes within a 40-mile radius of Los Angeles. Wayne
Correia, 17, of Irvine, Calif., looked up at 6:15 a.m. to find a man breaking
in through his bedroom window. "FBI," the figure announced. "And that comp-
uter's mine."
The raids on the homes of young compuer enthusiasts in 13 cities were
part of a federal investigation into reports of widespread abuse of computer
networks. For months authorities have been waging a quiet war of nerves with
the thousands of teen-agers who use their home terminals and telephone hookups
to dial into larger systems across the country. Most are careful to do no
harm, but for those bent on doing damage, the opportunities are boundless. One
14-year-old brags that he penetrated a computer belonging to a brokerage firm
and erased a group of commodity trading accounts. Particularly vulnerable are
the 1,200 computer systems that can be reached through a single telephone call
to GTE Telenet, a network based in Vienna, Va. Last summer the FBI singled out
for investigation a gang of Milwaukee-area youths who had used Telenet to enter
a number of different systems, including unclassified Defense Department comp-
uters and a machine monitoring the treatment of cancer patients in a New York
City hospital.
Last week's crackdown was the most dramatic to date. Phone taps and
electronic "sting" operations were used to trap the suspects. To prevent them
from warning their friends, the raids were carefully coordinated. Indeed, news
of the FBI strike was quickly flashed across the country through messages post-
ed on computer bulletin boards, and some youngsters reportedly rushed to erase
discs and burn files. Though no charges have been filed yet, the Government,
by going after the microkids in a style more commonly used for archcriminals,
risked turning the youngsters into instant heroes. Nervertheless, while such
tamperings may be born of curiosity and high spirits, they have serious con-
sequences and are increasingly dangerous. Four of the California youths who
were raided held a press conference at their high school to explain how the
passwords they used for unauthorized break-ins had been provided by an anony-
mous computer-network buddy. "I was kind of naive," said David Hill, 17, of
Irvine. "I thought, oh boy, how neat." After the FBI action last week, no one
smart enough to get into this sort of trouble should be able to claim such
ingenuousness again.
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