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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.'"
The woman, tech-savvy enough to install spyware and obtain the results, should have no problem finding a new husband on Slashdot, where doubtlessly her activities have gained her a certain cred and mystique and a following.
in today's news Beverly Ann O'Brien sought a mass restraining order against a poster on slashdot.org who has been stalking her and sending poems, such as 'r05e r r3d, v1o13t r b1u3, a11 my ba53 r b310ng t0 y0u'
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So are logs now illegal in Florida? After all, logs are (usually) records of some form of communication which happens electronically.
You would think, in a marriage, the wife owns half of everything, so maybe she was just spying on her half of the pc.
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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.
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Many states have different laws regarding what is legal in terms of wiretapping; some allow one party to record a phone call only if all parties consent, and others, famously D.C., for instance, do not.
Most all of them recognize that, outside of law enforcement activity a 3rd party isn't permitted to eavesdrop.
One thing that occurs to me is that there have been a spate of decisions in a law enforcement context to the effect that electronic communications like email lack the same "expectation of privacy" that phone calls and postal mail do. Whereas this seems to acknowledge that chat serves a similar function to the phone, just with distinct technology, and thus extends the same protection.
The article briefly mentioned that while this wife wasn't allowed to wiretap her husband, her husband's employer is (while he's at work, anyway). I thought this was funny, the different standards between the workplace and the home. There are a variety of justifications for wiretapping your employees - something that, as far as I know in most states, employers have carte blanche to do - but the interesting thing is that when you start thinking about them, most of them apply to the spouse as well.
At work, you use your employer's computer, in your employer's building (their machine, their house), but the wife jointly owns both. At work, you may make the argument that wiretapping is necessary to insure reliability and integrity of your business, but the spouse can argue the same is necessary to insure the integrity of the marriage. Both will claim: "What's their privacy for anyway? Do they have something to hide?"
The only strong argument I can think of for surveillance by employers is that the employee "consents." I suppose spouses don't have the same leverage to compel "consent" to eavesdropping as employers do.
Ugly business, trying to get a job that will promise to respect your privacy. You can always "just work somewhere else," but there are quite a few things we already prevent employers from doing because "somewhere else" is nowhere if we don't.
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Unless the PC was his before the marraige, the whole PC is 'theirs' and she can install whatever she wants on it.
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I hate how sometimes this comes up to near something personal. It shows how screwed up people are. My wife was searching sex search sites recently and I only discovered after some recent oddities when trying to fix her computer. It definitely woke up the relationship. Trust is so hard to rebuild though.
I spoke to a lawyer and in courts.. it ends up being next to useless. You may as well just leave the relationship... that being said.. it's not easy.
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Legal or not, if he's plugging into a box that's running in promiscuous mode, he deserves what he gets.
So I guess the question in how far can you take this? Does this automatically mean that any spyware is wiretapping? After all, most adware does observe and report a person's internet browsing activity. But I'm sure some people would argue it's a gray line, because is sending URLs really a form of electronic communication? Does spyware 'listen' to enough human-inteprettable language to be considered a wiretap?
In a phone analogy, it's more like listening in on which phone number is being dialed, not the conversation. But in a lot of instances there is more information, thanks to the query string. A URL can tell an adware program what books someone is looking at on Amazon, or what they are searching for at Google.
Just thinking out loud....
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So we can conclude that so-called "Homeland Security" -- which routinely intercepts electronic communication without a warrant -- is a criminal organization.
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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.