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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.'"
So are logs now illegal in Florida? After all, logs are (usually) records of some form of communication which happens electronically.
How about text-sensitive software like Claria and WhenU that track certain websites using URLs through the IE address bar and pop up competitor's ads? Couldn't that be termed wiretapping as well, since it's actively monitoring addresses visited and keystrokes typed into a field?
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
I'm sure there are numerous cases in the last 20 years where spouses recorded their home telephone calls in the hopes of catching a cheating spouse.
If this judge's ruling is in line with prior court ruling since the most recent changes in the law, then I don't see the problem.
On the other hand, if he broke with precedent, he could be overturned.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
We have community property laws, it seems to me that any data stored on the computer would be property of both parties. The spyware issue seems more straightforward, but what if she had only made copies of logs?
What if she used built in logging of the IM software (if it has it)? Would that be considered "interception"?
ART on dA
At my job (in Florida) we maintain an email filter, which isolates in-bound and out-bound emails if they contain certain qualities (either spam-like, or have big attachements, etc).
I wonder if that would mean we are violating that law, since we are clearly intercepting electronic communications?
Does anyone know if these laws apply in any other states?
I just finished reading a computer forensics book, and found out something interesting.
Apparently the FBI can't keylog you while a modem is in operation because of some bizarre issue with phone tapping (something like you can't tap modem communication without a separate warrant). The FBI keylogger actually turns off when a modem is active. How about that?
I guess this sort of the same, but on a local level (and with a broader reach).
How do you think this would apply to Cell phone instant messaging logs? I've heard from some people that cell phones save even the drafts of SMS messages. Would intentionally searching someone's Cell Phone logs be wire tapping since the logger is already present by default?
IANL but... The judges ruled that she didn't have the right to install the software on his computer, but I am pretty sure that once you are married what's his is hers and what's hers is his. Doesn't that also make his computer her computer and wouldn't that also give her the right to install said software on her computer?
I'm in Pennsylvania, several years ago a lawyer that I won't name hired me to search a client's computer for proof that it was used to communicate with the person that s/he was cheating with during a family vacation to Florida.
It took me a few hours, but I located copies of all of the email sent between them that wasn't properly deleted.
It's been like 8 years since then, so I don't remember exactly how many there were, but I think it was something like 80 in a week.
They happily paid about $500 for the proof.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
So we can conclude that so-called "Homeland Security" -- which routinely intercepts electronic communication without a warrant -- is a criminal organization.
Seastead this.
When you start employment with a company, you agree to a policy manual that spells these things out. In there somewhere is probably a usage policy that says that they can monitor you. In order for your analogy to apply, the husband would have had to sign an agreement giving his wife permission to log his activity. If he had, this story wouldn't be here, would it?
And husbands across the nations breathe a sigh of relief....
:)
Not yet... There's still video cameras, tape recorders, GPS locaters, the Bobbit Procedure, and various in-laws with military experience in Iraq. Chat logs are nothing in comparison.
Besides, if you're going to screw around behind the wife's back, at least do it outside of the home. Just because Bill Clinton got away with it, doesn't mean everyone else can.
Hello,
Yes it is an interesting discussion, why spouses don't have the same rights as employers lol. One of the reasons that employers are allowed to eavesdrop, is because while you work for them, everything you do is considered something done by the company, so they need the ability (at least they claim) to monitor you in order to 1) ensure you are doing your job, in a manner consistent with company standards, and 2) to have control over what employees are saying on behalf of the company, because the company can be sued over something done by it's employees (and, honestly, it wouldn't be fair to make companies liable for employee actions if you take away the companies' ability to monitor and enforce discipline on their employees.
While the situations aren't identical, I do think the argument that anyone (spouse or otherwise) has a right to monitor communications on equipment they (co)own. I could potentially be sued, even jailed, because of any traffic that can be shown to have originated from my internet connection and computer. If I am held liable for what is done with my electronic communications equipment, I should have the legal right to ensure that it is being properly used. Granted, if you need to resort to this in marriage, there is already something seriously wrong with your marriage.
Privacy laws are based on a reasonable expectation. Kids don't have the same expectations of privacy from their parents that adults do from other adults.
I'd like everyone to think long and hard about this one, please. Privacy laws are based on a *reasonable expectation* of privacy. So if OTHER people stop expecting a certain level of privacy, that level of privacy ceases to be 'reasonable', and YOU can no longer expect it. Your level of allowed privacy is dependent on how much your fellow Americans care about privacy.
Sleep well, kids.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
What if your keylogger happened to log what an intruder was doing on your system? If you were trying to prove to a court perhaps that this attacker was responsible for deleting all your documents or something...would that still not be allowed in court?
You *can* do this in Kansas. I visited a client who wanted someone to interpret what Specter had caught her husband at. He'd secretly videotaped the two of them having sex and wanted to know if he'd posted it anywhere. Also, had he been surfing child p0rn? Had he taken any illicit pics of their children?
Her attorney told her it was legal in Kansas.
(All I could see him doing was saving a bunch of free p0rn videos. He'd set the date on the PC back a couple of years so he could say it was all old stuff if he ever got caught -- and he changed the file extensions so nobody could accidently run the movies.)
I report to Colonel 2.6.1 and General Chaos is his boss.
I was in a similar situation a few years back.
I had seen so many damned ads for Yahoo Personals while on a fuel injection group that I clicked into it for shits and giggles. My search criteria: women seeking women withing a five mile radius of my house (I'm male). Lesbian personal ads can be a hoot (for that matter, so are hetero ads), and it would have been a kick if some of my neighbors were not all they appeared to be. Logged in twice - it got boring really quickly.
Then... the wife was snooping and saw it. Not only did she start looking at ads, she placed her own and started having some correspondence (I'm a better snoop). When I asked why, the basic answer was "revenge." To which my reaction was "For what? Laughing at lonely lesbians?" This turned into just part of a serious crisis in our marriage, which hasn't completely been resolved, and it's been years.
About therapy; we went, and did I get a good happy feeling by the end? Not really, but I definitely felt that our relationship was on more solid footing. That is, until some of the things I said in therapy got lobbed back at me years later; she still has a lot of unresolved issues that didn't come out in therapy.
Hang tough; you aren't alone in your situation (althought it may feel like it).