In light of recent reports of computer virus attacks on computers worldwide such as the Chernobyl and I Love You virus, I am reminded of Dr Tony Tan's concern regarding Singapore's national defense strategy in the Internet age. I strongly agree with Dr Tan that brick and mortar fortifications and conventional weapons and defense systems will be inadequate in the digital future and that the Ministry of Defense should be looking into complementing conventional means of defending our physical national borders with security systems of the digital kind.

In the age of the Internet, physical boundaries and barriers are being broken down everyday. Our electronic borders must be patrolled and protected in order for our nation to be safe from electronic attacks over the Internet. If not, such virus attacks will do as much damage if not more, to our infrastructure than agressive insurgencies on our physical borders. Such attacks are capable of crippling our financial institutions and undermining our position as a regional capital market since our financial services are greatly dependent on the smooth running of our computers. One need only point to the malfunctioning of the SGX systems in charging wrong comissions for stockbroking transactions to be aware of the gravity of such malfunctions on a much larger scale.

In order to safeguard our electronic borders, we need to research and develop defense technology relevant to the Internet age. Just as how we had adapted our National Service system from the Israeli system, I hope that the Ministry of Defense is taking cues once again from their Israeli counterparts. I remember reading in a Straits Times report last year that teenage hackers in Israeli had been recruited to serve their National Service in the military intelligence arm to develop electronic security systems in order to protect Israel from electronic insurgencies.

What caught my interest more was the fact that having exposed the young genius minds to the technology of such high level security systems, the teenage hackers were then nurtured into highly prized and sought-after computer programmers and computer security system consultants, often leading up to a job in Silicon Valley. Through the course of their National Service, these teenage hackers had matured into responsible adults who understood how to make creative use of their talents and not to abuse their creative programming genius to wreck computer systems or to release harmful computer viruses on the Internet.

Computer programmers require technical ability in order to churn out the bits and bytes of programming code but creative computer programming and hacking calls for a certain artistic if not creative flair. More often than not, creativity cannot be taught but it most certainly can be nurtured. As wayward hackers around the world become more dangerously creative, computer viruses will become increasingly smarter and more dangerous. We cannot just continue changing dates on our computer clocks every time the Chernobyl virus strikes but instead, we have to develop sophisticated counter-measures to protect our electronic boundaries.

So why are we punishing our teenage hackers by condemning them on the newspapers and in the courts? By doing so, are we not condemning the teenage hacker's creativity? Are we not denying our country of a limited source of creative talent just because our courts do not seem to understand teenage hackers? Apart from pure mischief, there must be some genius behind the hacking. Creativity is not a crime, abuse of creativity is. With proper guidance and nurturing, a rebellious but gifted teenager can become a world-class programmer. Even Einstein was misundertood at school. This is a plea to the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Law to look into a creative solution to help nurture our misunderstood teenage hackers instead of condemning them. Thank you.