Cyber space is Dodge City, FRONTLINE reports tonight, and Marshall Dillon hasn't come to town.

A piece produced for FRONTLINE by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reports that your personal privacy and our public security are prey to the whims of any teenage computer hacker with a PC and time to kill.

This isn't exactly headline news. But FRONTLINE puts it together in an alarming package.

...FRONTLINE's point is that anyone with a modem, from an individual to a bank, a government agency or a major corporation -- Microsoft itself has been successfully hacked -- exists in a Wild West environment, vulnerable to the mischievous and the criminally malevolent.

...Solutions? None, exactly, though one expert urges government certification for the safety and reliability of software. The other step, he says, is personal responsibility by computer users...

Some of the scariest crime out there isn't on the streets, it's on the Net -- techno-nerds who "hack" into protected sites and wreak havoc. This excellent documentary outlines the scope of the problem.

It's a very good program, cogent in its skepticism about the marketing of the Internet. One expert interviewed here suggests that the public and businesses have been made to feel that if they're not connected to the Internet they're dimwitted, uncool, and absurdly old-fashioned.

The untold story, we are informed, is that nothing on the Internet is secure. We can learn a great deal from this Frontline...