Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
So by that logic, if you rent out a room in your house you can legally read that person's mail? I think that name is pretty important.
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
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!
Letter of the law? I believe so.
However, in practice, though mail addressed to you may have your name on it, it's the address that's important. As long as you live at that address, you can open that mail.
Err, not exactly. Slashdot-lawyering is always fun to watch.
http://www.ehow.com/about_6293417_federal-mail-not-addressed-you_.html
In grotesque summary of a website's summary at the federal level "The statute is essentially about stealing mail from the Post Office.". In other words the feds pretty much don't care as long as there are no post office employees or post office property directly involved.
In the computer world that we live in, we all know and understand there is a desperate goal to re-legislate all our crimes with the words "on a computer" suffixed at great expense and publicity, etc. But in the real physical world, they mostly use general statutes which only tangentially happen to involve a piece of physical mail in this specific case.
So you might get charged with stealing, if you stole someones mail. Or identity theft if you do that, with someone elses mail. Or maybe some weird insider trading law, if thats what you do based on some stolen mail.
In other words the trial will be about them doing some naughtyness, and the stolen mail will be a piece of evidence. But there will be no charge of "opening the mail"
That being said, just as anyone can be civil sued for anything at any time by any one, the same applies to criminal court, although that doesn't mean it won't be thrown out with laughter by the judge, or involved as the start or end of a plea bargain, or tossed out on appeal by a sane judge.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
This might come as a surprise to you but you give up a lot of privacy to your spouse when you get married.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
The relevant law he is being charged with, according to TFA:
A person shall not intentionally and without authorization or by exceeding valid authorization do any of the following:
Access or cause access to be made to a computer program, computer, computer system or computer network
Well, he did access a computer that he bought for his wife and that he had often used, possibly while exceeding valid authorization, but he used the password that his wife had written down in a book next to the computer, so from the provider's viewpoint, he was authorized.
to acquire, alter, damage delete or destroy property
No he didn't do any of those and didn't have intent to do those.
or otherwise use the service of a computer program, computer, computer system or computer network.
I read this as theft of services, which he did not do and he did not intend to do.
I don't think there was\ any reason to charge him under this statute.
IANAL, YMMV, etc.
If my wife gets an important letter she's waiting for, while she's at work, I phone her to ask for permission to open it and read it to her.
It's one of the cornerstones of marriage that you respect the privacy of your partner, even if you're a jealous asshole.
Wait, wait, wait. The wife in this story is cheating on her third husband with her ex-second, who by the way has a criminal record for abusing her. The third goes into her email and provides it to the first husband, the father of their son, so that he might intervene and prevent any contact between his son and the second.
And the third is the asshole?
Really??
It seems to me that the Mrs has very poor judgement, and her privacy has less value than making sure her son stays safe. Sometimes individuals need to violate the law in order to do the right thing. This appears to be one of those times.
Further, he's not 'jealous'. That appears to be his WIFE that we're talking about. Everyone that she sleeps with is also sleeping with him, in terms of VD, and she genuinely has no right to keep that sort of secret until after they're separated. Vis-a-vis him cheating on her.
I'm just out-and-out stunned that you'd defend her by blaming number three. Do husbands really have NO rights any more? Are they genuinely just boyfriends with joint bank accounts? Marriage means NOTHING additional?
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
You need to recheck your definition of hilarious. Hilarious would be if the wife was having a secret affair with his mistress. Still seeing the guy who beat her is pathetic and disturbed.
Santa Letters in Canada are distributed to volunteers (mostly post office staff and the family thereof) who read them and write responses according to specific sets of rules and guidelines. My family does it every year since my father's a post man. It's fun.
Did you do that because you wanted to or because she asked and made it into a trust issue?
It sounds like you are somebody who doesn't either need nor deserve marriage in any form. Part of the point of a marriage is that you share your life in such an intimate level that it becomes difficult to distinguish any separate property. Marriage is about serving and cherishing each other, about giving more than you receive and doing good for others in spite of personal limitations.
In such a situation, marriage is something that is incredibly powerful where two people support and sustain each other to fill in the weaknesses of each other to be much stronger together. Unfortunately when you have two selfish people who fight against each other rather than work with each other to make each other stronger, the effort to cut each other down actually backfires and makes both "partners" all that weaker and makes attacks from outside of the marriage all that easier to destroy the lives of those bound in the marriage.
Marriage is thus a two edged sword that can be incredibly powerful or to be absolutely horrible, depending on how those involved make it. Divorce in particular is awful because intimate details have been shared and are being used against each other, often as a sort of a game. I'll also point out that with rare exceptions (and I'm not even sure with that) there are no "winners" in a divorce. At best it can be said to be a form of "cutting your losses" and at worst the equivalent of a thermonuclear war in terms of relationships. Amicable divorces can happen, where at least those married can agree to disagree and move on with their lives and a minimum of damage to each other. Unfortunately it is all too easy to lob that first "bomb" and start the war where everybody loses, including those outside of the marriage and in particular the kids in the marriage in particular are the ones hurt the most.