The Kutztown 13

(This is the unedited version of the column that appeared in USA Today.)

When there are two sides to a story, sometimes everybody’s wrong.

You may have read about this: A group of high school students in Kutztown, Pa., have been charged with third-degree felonies for misusing their school-issued computers.

They’ve been given the nickname “the Kutztown 13,” as if they’ve been wrongfully charged by a government gone amok for a crime they didn’t commit. As a tech columnist, I suspect I’m supposed to rally to their defense because they’re just kids playing around with computers.

But that isn’t quite the story, although it is the story that one side wants you to hear: those poor, poor dears.

Students are Kutztown High School were given free Apple iBooks — Macintosh notebooks. They got free Internet access through the school’s network.

The price: $50 insurance if they wanted to take it home. And they and their parents had to sign an acceptable use policy document. Essentially, they promised to follow the rules of computer use, which included things like ‘you have to live with the Internet filter we put on the computers, as annoying as it is’ and ‘you cannot use instant messaging software,’ and ‘we have monitoring software that can peek at what you’re doing.’

The kids didn’t follow the rules. They’re kids, and they quickly took advantage of the school administration’s stupidity.

Stupidity, as in the school taped the administrator password to at least some of the machines. With that, they could shut off the Internet filter. (Taping the admin password to the machine? How dumb is that?)

Naturally, with the filters removed and the big, bad Internet at their disposal, kids did what kids will: They downloaded things they shouldn’t have, grabbed themselves copies of iChat messaging software, and — this is the best part — hacked the monitoring program the school had installed so that they could spy on the administrators’ computers. (Ha!)

And, as you may have read, they’ve been charged with third-degree felonies.

Sounds like overkill for some teenaged mucking about, especially when it’s pretty obvious that the school administrations was a small step away from clueless.

Their parents, naturally, are outraged at this. A felony conviction can stick with those kids the rest of their lives. Essentially, it could destroy them. Try getting a job when you have to check Yes to “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?”

Hence, “The Kutztown 13.”

But there’s a lot more to the story.

What the parents don’t mention — but the school did in a press release — is that it wasn’t as if the school came down with the Hammer of God out of nowhere.

Not at all. These kids were caught and punished for doing this stuff, and their parents informed.

Over and over.

Quoth the release:

Unfortunately, after repeated warnings and disciplinary actions, a few students continued to misuse the school-issued laptops to varying degrees. The disciplinary actions included detentions, in-school suspensions, loss of Internet access, and loss of computer privileges. After each disciplinary action, parents received either written notification or telephone calls.

What was the parents’ reaction those disciplinary actions? Some of them complained that — despite signing a document agreeing to the acceptable use policy — the kids should be able to do whatever they wanted to with the free machines.

‘We signed it, but we didn’t mean it’? Interesting lesson, there.

Of course, they point out how disturbingly stupid the school to tape the admin password to the machines. (How dumb is that? This dumb.) And kids will be kids; if I was 15 or 16 and got the admin password, yeah, I’d do what they did.

And turning the administration’s monitoring program around so they (the kids) could see what school officials were doing? Brilliant. Positively brilliant.

But brilliant doesn’t mean right.

Did you read about the four guys who stole more than $70 million from Brazil’s Central Bank by digging for three months and creating a 260-foot tunnel to the vault?

Also brilliant. And also wrong.

Then the kids and their parents argue that they didn’t do anything all that bad — downloading instant messaging programs they weren’t supposed to, for example. And if that’s all they did, they’d be right to be angry.

But that wasn’t it. When the school changed the admin password, the kids got hold of a password-cracking program to get the new one.

They were caught, over and over.

“Stop doing that.”

“Stop doing that.”

“Stop doing that.”

My two-year-old knows to stop when we tell him twice not to do something. What’s a 15-year-old’s excuse?

Warning after warning, punishment after punishment, letter after letter, the kids kept breaking the rules, kept breaking their promises, and kept getting caught.

Of course, they play up the fact that the school administration was outwitted by a bunch of teenagers and thus deserved what it got. And if you ask me, it is pretty pathetic that the school didn’t have people who could set up its systems properly.

But the school wasn’t exactly outwitted; it caught the kids over and over. And even if it was outwitted, is that an excuse? If I’m smart enough to pick the lock on your house, and I get in and watch your TV for a while — would you say I had the right to do it? After all, I have these skills and you don’t know what kind of lock to buy.

What if I was caught and punished, and warned not to do it again, but I did? And again, and again, and again?

How many times is it OK to take advantage of someone who knows less than you, but also has power over you?

Answer, as they discovered: not too many.

Some of the parents have set up a Web site to give their side of the story. On it, on the page titled “What we want,” is this:

“The administration needs to admit their responsibility in the breakdown of security and discipline during the rollout of this experimental laptop program.”

Huh?

The breakdown of security and discipline? By the school? These kids and their parents were warned over and over to stop, and they persisted. These parents are in effect saying, “We can’t control our kids.” If there’s a breakdown, it’s on the parents’ parts.

And then there’s this oft-quoted bit from John Shrawder, one of the kids:

“There are a lot of adults who go 10 miles over the speed limit or don’t come to a complete stop at a stop sign. They know it’s not right, but they expect a fine,” [not a felony conviction].

Um, hate to break it to ya, John, but if you get caught doing 10 MPH over the limit again and again, Bad Things happen to you.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, you get two points on your license for driving 10 MPH over the limit. After three, if you’re under 18, you lose your license for 90 days. Do it again, and you lose it for 120 days.

Not a felony, mind you, but the lesson is clear: If you do something once when you’ve been told to stop, you might get away with it. But over and over? Not so much.

But we learn from the parents’ site that these kids apparently have, shall we say, poor impulse control. (And their parents are powerless to stop them.)

“Make it policy,” sayeth the site, “that there is a back up plan other than felony charges for the kids who can not handle the temptations that laptops bring into their lives.”

First, there was a “backup plan.” It was the repeated disciplinary actions. Second, they appear to be saying that these kids can’t control themselves and the parents can’t control them. It’s not their fault they did these things even after being punished repeatedly. It’s the school’s, and it’s the laptops’.”

Sheesh.

Finally, after all these warnings and letters and phone calls, the school had enough. Yep, the kids were smarter than it was; that’s been proven. They can crack the security, ignore the rules, and the parents aren’t helping.

When nothing else worked, the school turned to the only thing it had left: the law.

Pennsylvania law classifies computer crimes like these as felonies. That’s not the school’s choice; it simply reported the crimes to the district attorney, who filed the appropriate charges.

Good.

Maybe a few pairs of soiled underwear will finally hammer home the messages into their heads: You don’t break in just because you can. When you sign an agreement, it means something. Learn to read the writing on the wall when it’s spelled out clearly and repeatedly.

But.

Soiled underwear and sleepless nights are one thing. A felony conviction is quite another.

The charges are not appropriate. The kids were incredibly stupid to do what they did, and the parents are just as bad for ignoring the messages they got. They’re also pretty pathetic if they think that the “kids will be kids” argument could possibly hold water after the first infraction. Or to even try to argue that the kids did nothing wrong after all those warnings — it’s like saying, “They had the ability to break in, so why shouldn’t they?”

But felony charges are not appropriate. Yeah, the kids and their parents clearly need to learn a lesson in a big way, by authorities more powerful than the schools. Fail them for the year. Forbid them from having computer access, period. Give them community service every day till they graduate. Slap ’em with hefty fines.

Ruining their lives with a felony conviction won’t help. They weren’t violent offenders, just idiot kids and idiot parents. This is a major screw-up on their parts, and it’s a lesson they need to be taught good and hard.

But even a minor felony with no any prison time is overkill. Destroying the kids’ lives doesn’t fix anything — it doesn’t make the world a better place. And that should be the goal.

Hurting their chances of going to a good college, or landing a good job does not serve the greater good. The punishment needs to be serious — something they and their parents will finally take to heart. But it should not be a gift that keeps on giving.

The kids in Kutztown are obviously smart (or at least they know how to use a search engine). They stand a good chance of getting past this and growing up and becoming productive members of society. Punish them so they’ll never forget it — but not so society never will.