THE PAINS OF TECHNOLOGY

A 12-year old girl, accompanied by her parents came to the office to file a complaint when they found out that two friendster accounts have been illegally created under her name. The accounts portrayed the girl as some sex-starved teenager soliciting sex through her email and cellphone and you guessed it right, she received a lot of obscene text messages and mails as a result thereof. The girl, enrolled in an exclusive school was devastated she did not want to report to school for the coming school year, for who would, if all her classmates and friends have seen the accounts. The family, as with the poor girl was devastated.

These complaints are one a plenty nowadays. With the growth of the internet, traditional crimes are now being committed the high-tech way and people with ill motives take advantage of the anonymity it brings. I pity the parents who have been working very hard to earn themselves a living just so that they can send their kids to very good schools and yet even the exclusivity of the institution, or the stupendous amounts being paid as fees are no guarantee that the people their kids meet everyday are good mannered individuals. I shared this story to a parent who commented that God forbid, she would kill in the event her kids become victims to the same kind of unspeakable tragedies. But more than the parents, I could just imagine the trauma it caused to the girl who in reality should only be playing with her Barbie dolls and shielded from the pains of living.

Truth of the matter is that no one is safe from the ills of the people misusing the internet. The KATRINA HALILIs or MARICAR REYESes or the common “magtataho” on the streets can always fall victim to this type of net-related craziness. Worse, apart from the fact that technology seem to be on the side of unscrupulous individuals, even the absence of law to define and penalize these kinds of activities (or the regulation of the parties using the internet) seem to favor them too.

Are we safe? If not, how are we to investigate and what are the courses of action to do and what are the challenges we will encounter in the process?