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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.'"
Is opening a spouses physical mail a crime?
According to TFA, her email password was written down in a little book kept by the family computer. And yet, "The guy is a hacker" and "It was password protected, he had wonderful skills, and was highly trained."
Really, I don't see how it can get any more ridiculous than this. I realize the prosecutor has to put on a show to support such ridiculous charges, but good lord...
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Pre-nap? You mean I'm bound by things I said before I first slept with her? Oh god.
I am going to guess that either her password was easy to guess, or that he used a keystroke logging program to learn it.
from the TFA, the wife kept the passwords written down in a book beside the computer.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
Considering that when you are married, in terms of property rights, you are considered a single legal entity, I honestly don't see how this would stand up in court.
I think it is ridiculous that this is being brought as a criminal prosecution. If his ex-wife had brought a civil suit, I would still think he should win, but that would be a sensible case. The man's fear of the child being exposed to domestic violence (possibly even physical abuse of the child) was perfectly legitimate. I would really like to know why the prosecutor is really going after this man. It sounds personal.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The state of Michigan does not recognize prenuptual agreements. State law here recognizes, in effect, one generic marriage "contract", which is very vaguely defined. Michigan law *barely* defines how property is to be divided upon divorce. It certainly does not go in to any detail about the boundaries of privacy.
In practice, what happens in a Michigan divorce is that property is divided equally between "the parties", regardless of who filed, what caused the divorce, or either party's behavior during the marriage. Not an entirely unreasonable approach - family law judges have enough to sort out withou having to hear divorcing spouses' laundry list of grievances.
Michigan law *does* allow for unequal distribution of marital property in cases of egregious misconduct by one spouse. Presumably this is a "out" to allow one spouse to keep the marital property if the other spouse is convicted of trying to bump them off. But the bar for unequal distribution is set pretty high, meaning you pretty much have to have a felony conviction against your ex in order to get more than 50% of the family assets. Unfortunately, this means that the spouse who made the charges in this case has a financial interest in elevating the reading of spousal e-mail to the level of a felony.
DISCLOSURE: I am not a lawyer, but I was divorced in Michigan (more than the statute of limitations ago), and my ex tried to raise this same charge against me in family court. Judge and lawyers agreed at that time the was no clear statutory guidance on this issue, suggesting that the state courts will have to make this up as they go.
Imagine if the second husband DID assault the child? Then the new husband would be in trouble for NOT doing anything to prevent this atrocious act.
Funny that when we actually SHOULD be thinking about the children something else gets in the way.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
i.e. summary writer: learn to summarize better! Your first sentence had me so fucking confused. My mind as I read through that mess: "so he's the guy's husband, and he read his wife's email, he finds out his wife is having an affair with the second husband. Second husband? Oh, so do you mean the "hacker" is the first husband, and at the time the article was written, she's married to the guy she's been having an affair with? OK. But then he printed the emails and handed them to the woman's first husband. Wait, what? Isn't the hacker the first husband?"
You could have added ", who is Ciara Walker's third husband," in there to make the whole fucking thing easier to comprehend! I even RTFA to see if that incomprehensible mess was a copy/paste job, but lookie there: "Leon Walker was Clara Walker's third husband."
*mumble mumble kids and stupid American education these days.*
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
In this particular case I wonder, if the wife had checked the husband's email and found out about an affair, would she have been charged with a felony too? This seems almost like an attempt to abuse the law for sexist purposes to me. Unless the prosecutor just needs attention.
Trust is not needing that password.
Lack of trust is asking for it.
End of.
Not sure what I would do in that situation.
Prosecutor Jessica Cooper is totally lame and would not know what a real hacker is if she said "he had wonderful skills" vs he had mad skillz. Typical know-nothing government official.
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How many times have the Feds argued in court (or filings) that people have no expectation of privacy in emails?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Here is another case where she made a big mistake, was proven wrong by evidence and wouldn't admit that she made a mistake. http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2010/09/did_oakland_county_prosecutor.html http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/local/prosecutor-laura-johnson-freed-murder-evidence-not-enough-20100927-wpms
First of all, the woman is now divorced from her 3rd husband. So she marries the 1st one and has a child, then Divorces #1 for some reason. Marries a second man who BEATS her in front of the child from the 1st Marriage. Why was the child not taken from the mother then? Probably because she sought a better life, divorcing husband #2 and found a third man to call husband.
While we don't have the full story, and of course the News doesn't always provide all the facts, so this assessment is one of pure speculation based on information available, here is how I see the situation.
The third husband is a smart guy, and knows his way around a computer, and may likely make a decent living. The third husband seems to give a shit about the wife's son from a previous marriage, which provides the impression that he's a decent guy. The wife CHEATS on her third husband with the second husband, the one who BEAT her. So husband number three figures out his wife is cheating on him, and finds proof via her email, and in finding proof he notifies husband #1 to offer protection to the child. Here he could have gone to authorities and tried to protect the child that was living under his roof, but he went back to the birth father and say "hey man, you might want to know the potential danger your child is in..." (not an actual quote).
I suspect the Wife is pissed off because she's caught cheating which likely means she's lied to husband #3. I suspect she is probably pissed off, for child being removed from her custody, which she may have used the child as a tool against husband #1 for Child Support or as a power play . Now she's made to look the fool, by all three of her husbands past and present. The 1st husband has the child now, the 2nd husband is having sex with her again, and the 3rd husband caught her violating the vows of marriage. So she punishes the 3rd with legal action and finds a prosecutor to find possible Felony charges against husband #3.
She's already proven, by cheating, that she has the ability to lie, so why should her version of the story be more credible? At this point, based on a limited amount of facts, I see the 3rd husband as a victim. And when you are married there is a measure of trust between spouses, or should be. If he was always using the PC and she has the passwords in a book then only the act of him reading and typing in the password to an account that was not his is in question, right? The one thing that helps him is that he's no longer married to someone who didn't respect him enough not to cheat on him.
I believe we have a right to privacy even in our own homes from our spouses. I feel that while the man did violate her privacy, I honestly feel that his motives were right. I hope that a judge looks at this case and treats both parties fairly. He did violate privacy, but she, in my eyes has violated far more and deserves to be punished.
Again, all this is based on speculation of the facts as the new has reported them up to now.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
My wife doesn't know any of my passwords, and I don't know any of hers. However, I do have an escrow file which she can open in the event of my death which contains them all.
She will need access to banking sites etc. when that happens, so privacy until then, and full disclosure after.
Did you do that because you wanted to or because she asked and made it into a trust issue?