rizona highway patrolman Lorne Shantz says he has always lived by the book, and since 1980, he has made sure that others did the same. When he wasn't on the job, Lorne was cruising the Net as the operator of Wish Book, a BBS he operated from his Phoenix, Arizona home. It was a good life until November 29, 1994, when Lorne was pulled over on the information highway. His violation? Possession and distribution of child pornography."I was mortified," says Lorne. "The CD-ROMs I'd ordered for the Wish Book's adults-only section were advertised as BBS-ready and I assumed that meant legal." What Lorne says he didn't know was that among the thousands of stock images the CD-ROMs contained were a handful of pictures that the County Attorney's Office deemed obscene. Lorne's claims of innocence went unheard. Within minutes, he went from rule enforcer to a victim of ill-defined cyber-rules. His 16-year career with Highway Patrol was over. The District Attorney's Office dropped criminal charges against Shantz on September 18, 1995, but he's still waiting for a March 27th civil hearing to determine whether he gets his job back. "I was unjustly fired. It's absurd to think a systems operator can police everything that comes across his system," says Lorne. "I'll continue to live by the book like I always have but that's tough in cyberspace. As far as I can tell, the book is still being written."
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