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Is Reading Spouse's E-Mail a Crime?
Hugh Pickens writes "The Detroit Free Press reports that Leon Walker is charged with unlawfully reading the e-mail of Ciara Walker, his wife at that time, which showed she was having an affair with her second husband, who once had been arrested for beating her in front of her son. Walker says he gave the e-mails to her first husband, the child's father, to protect the boy. 'I was doing what I had to do,' says Walker. 'We're talking about putting a child in danger.' Now prosecutors, relying on a Michigan statute typically used to prosecute crimes such as identity theft or stealing trade secrets, have charged Leon Walker with a felony for logging onto a laptop in the home he shared with his wife. Prosecutor Jessica Cooper defended her decision to charge Walker. 'The guy is a hacker,' says Cooper, adding that the Gmail account 'was password protected, he had wonderful skills, and was highly trained. Then he downloaded [the emails] and used them in a very contentious way.'"
It is unless your spouse is your property.
If you would like it not to be a crime, your rightful place is amidst the Taleban and in Saudi.
If you would like to live in a civilised society where privacy is a respected right, you have to live with the fact that _EVERYONE_ has a right to privacy. That includes your wife. It also includes the special case where you are sysadminning your home network. The fact that you have access to the mail log and to su and sudo does not suddenly give you the right to treat you wife as if she is wearing a burka and break into her $HOME.
Same goes the other way around with the minor difference that there are not that many matriarchical societies out there to be given as an example.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Don't be a disingenuous ass. Having a room mate is clearly different than being married in the legal sense. There are special rights given to married couples. You share a credit rating, your lives are linked.
Again, don't be an ass.
I've been married for 18 years, and frankly the idea of my wife and I reading each other's mail seems ridiculous and codependent at best, offensive at worst. Yes, we're a team ... but I don't read my work or sports teammates' mail either. We have separate bank accounts, we don't we each have "a room of one's own", and we trust each other and respect each other's privacy.
Different strokes in guess.
Your first sentence indicates that you are a reactionary asshole who's not gotten out of the 19th century in time for the 21st. Just skimmed the rest, and it confirmed that first impression.