FL Court Rules Against Spouse-Installed Spyware

idobi writes "A Florida court ruled that it was illegal for a wife to install spyware on her husband's computer, in order to catch him in an extramarital affair. The three judge panel barred the woman from using the chat records from being introduced as evidence in the divorce proceedings. The court ruled that the software, Spector, violated Florida's wiretapping law - which states that it is criminal to 'intentionally intercept' any 'electronic communication.'"

Comments

Community Property State?

[darthmundt]

According to this site, "Florida is an "equitable distribution" state. Each spouse can retain their non-marital property. Non-marital property is all property acquired prior to the marriage, or acquired by gift or inheritance, or any property that the spouses agree is non-marital property in a written agreement."

Unless the PC was his before the marraige, the whole PC is 'theirs' and she can install whatever she wants on it.

Re:Community Property State?

[Richard_at_work]

I think that the courts ruling has more to do with the interception of the spouses communications than the act of the wife installing the spyware on the PC.

From the article:

"It is illegal and punishable as a crime under (state law) to intercept electronic communications," wrote Judge Donald Grincewicz on behalf of a three-judge panel.

...and...

But Grincewicz concluded that "because the spyware installed by the wife intercepted the electronic communication contemporaneously with transmission, copied it and routed the copy to a file in the computer's hard drive, the electronic communications were intercepted in violation of the Florida Act."

The act of the wife installing the software was not ruled on and thus the question of what she can and cant do with marital property is not at issue, but the actual interception of the husbands communcations is what the court ruled on, and found to be unlawful. You dont have carte blanche over your partner.

But in LA its ok?

[Evil W1zard]

This is what I find amusing about states and their differences in laws. LA recently had a similar case where a man used a keylogger to keep tabs on his employer. This was ruled as not breaking wiretap laws. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/9978

Similar Parental Rights Case

[Chokai]

There was recently a case in Washington State where a suspicious mother had picked up the phone to listen to her daughter's conversation with one of her friends. Well it turns out the friend was a suspect in a robbery and the mother was called to testify. Now the testemony has been ruled inadmissible for similar reasons.

I'm confused...

[hyfe]

This is one part of American society that has always dumbfounded me, why do you guys need to prove all this cheating? Could somebody be nice enough to explain it?

Over here, I think it goes something like 'you keep any property you can conclusivly prove you took into the marriage, everything else is split 50/50'. No judge would give a rats ass for the reasons you want a divorce.. you agreed the share everything, and if you now want to stop sharing everything that's your deal.

Re:Are logs illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

my divorce in 1996 I owned an ISP. my Ex was having an online affair and the court was happy to look at all her email logs, captured chat sessions and detailed logs of websites and captures of the images and the like.

her lawyer tried the same tricks, the judge threw out the request stating "privately owned computer equipment is not under the jurisdiction of the wiretapping laws."

Sorry, that's no longer true.

If you read the decision, you'll see that the Security of Communications Act was passed in 2003, well after your court case.

The act was "a policy decision by the Florida legislature to allow each party to a conversation to have an expectation of privacy from interception by another party to the conversation."