It's 2364, and Owen Paris is delivered a letter his son won't write him for another 7 years.
What if Owen didn't know that Tom was a Black Sheep that needed a kicking until Future Tom asked forgiveness for being a Maquis, before Owen knew what a Maquis was?
And really what's more important?
Saving Tom from his downfall, or derailing the boy's redemption?
You seem to be putting book on Tom even having written a letter to begin with. It's never stated and I wouldn't assume that the animus he held for his father, would even allow him to send something letting the latter know he was alive and breathing. If that were the case, no issue of future information, being used or abused, right?
In such a circumstance, how would Tom's so brief it's not really worth mentioning, involvement with the Maquis, mark him as the family's Black Sheep? Sure he wound up in the polkie, but didn't his previous misdeed that got him thrown out of the service, aside from having terminal consequences, do all the defining that his father needed to pretty much permanently see him in that light already, to say nothing of their conflict of attitudes as Tom was growing up? I know, the most recent infraction was for treason, but the fact that his involvement was, let's say pretty much non-partisan. probably led to the relatively light sentence and how much more did it really serve to condition his father's impression of him? His image didn't even bring it up in Persistence of Vision, just a regular laundry list of Tom's general deficiencies, probably from the viewpoint of his characterization of Tom from childhood on.