Students charged with computer trespass

At least one student viewed pornography. Some students also turned off the remote monitoring function and turned the tables on their elders — using it to view administrators' own computer screens.

The administrative password on some laptops was subsequently changed but some students got hold of that one, too, and decrypted it with a password-cracking program they found on the Internet.

"This does not surprise me at all," said Pradeep Khosla, dean of Carnegie Mellon University's engineering department and director of the school's cybersecurity program.

IT staff at schools are often poorly trained, making it easy for students with even modest computer skills to get around security, he said.

Fifteen-year-old John Shrawder, one of the Kutztown 13, complained that the charges don't fit the offense. He fears a felony conviction could hurt his college and job prospects.

"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 offense, he said.

Shrawder's uncle, James Shrawder, has set up a Web site that tells the students' side of the story.

"As parents, we don't want our kid breaking in to the Defense Department or stealing credit card numbers," said the elder Shrawder, a businessman. "But downloading iChat and chatting with their friends? They are not hurting anybody. They're just curious."

The site, cutusabreak.org, has been visited tens of thousands of times and sells T-shirts and bumper stickers, including one that says: "Arrest me, I know the password!"

The district isn't backing down, however.

It points out that students and parents were required to sign a code of conduct and acceptable use policy, which contained warnings of legal action.

The 13 students charged violated that policy, said Kutztown Police Chief Theodore Cole, insisting the school district had exhausted all options short of expulsion before seeking the charges. Cole said, however, that there is no evidence the students attacked or disabled the school's computer network, altered grades or did anything else that could be deemed malicious.

An association of professional computer educators, The International Society for Technology in Education, believes in a less restrictive approach to computer usage. The more security barriers a district puts in place, the more students will be tempted to break them down, it believes.

"No matter how many ways you can think to protect something, the truth is that someone can hack their way around it," said Leslie Conery, the society's deputy CEO. "The gauntlet is thrown down if you have tighter control."

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