Snooping Around Your Spouse’s E-mail Could Get You a Felony Charge

Cyber snooping may land a person in federal prison

Published: Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2010 1:50 p.m. MST

By Wendy Leonard, Deseret News

SALT LAKE CITY — Intercepting a spouse’s e-mail account may be an invasion of privacy, but it turns out that it can also land someone in jail.

Internet crimes are relatively new and still largely undefined in the legal world. But legal statutes designed to protect company trade secrets and thwart identity theft or other information fraud may end up implicating those who discover something from an e-mail they were not necessarily authorized to access.

“We’ve entered a whole different world where all kinds of damage and harm can be done electronically without ever stealing information,” University of Utah law professor Wayne McCormack said Tuesday. He said the questions surrounding privacy are more vague when it comes to the Internet.

Further interpretation of the law will likely come with the case of a Michigan man who is charged with felony computer misuse for accessing his wife’s e-mail account while she was allegedly carrying on an affair. Following his February trial date, Leon Walker, 33, could face up to five years in prison if he is convicted on the charge that is intended to nab hackers and those who use the Internet to defraud or otherwise cause harm.

McCormack said that the way the federal statute is written, “it is illegal to obtain information about a spouse that the spouse hasn’t authorized you to have.”

While it might be illegal, Utah divorce attorney Eric Johnson said it isn’t uncommon for couples pursuing a divorce to go looking for information.

“Anybody who is any bit technologically savvy typically thinks, ‘Hey, this may be a place where I can find some dirt on that spouse,’” he said. Using information intercepted in e-mails is threatened a lot, Johnson said, but he’s not aware of anyone who has been prosecuted locally for it.

In Utah, the details of adulterous affairs, alcohol use or other potential secrets don’t usually have any bearing on the outcome of a divorce hearing or child custody battle, unless a spouse is spending money on a mistress that should otherwise be spent on the couple’s children or if the behavior has a negative impact on the other member of the relationship or any children involved.

Walker claims he was concerned about his daughter’s welfare when he suspected his wife was having an affair with an abusive person. After she had already filed for divorce, he used her password to access her account on the couple’s shared computer. Information discovered within her account didn’t come out until the divorce was heard in court, and a battle for custody of their child ensued, according to Walker, who has gone public with the details of his case.

Prosecutors in Michigan don’t buy his story and are charging Walker with unauthorized access to a computer in order to “acquire, alter, damage, delete or destroy property,” according to NBC News. According to the report, Walker’s attorney plans to argue the statute is not applicable to “domestic snooping.”

“We are just now getting into this world of cyber crime,” McCormack said. “We are just now beginning to understand what it can do.”

He said that applying current laws to everyone in a personal relationship who allegedly sees a text or e-mail would have far-reaching implications and mean a lot more court time. Ultimately, he said, a person would have to prove injury due to information obtained.

“People have to start thinking about this question of privacy,” McCormack said.

Johnson said that if the temptation to secretly monitor a spouse remains strong, the snooping should be turned over to professional private investigators, “who know the laws and are separated enough from the relationship to know what they’re looking for and how it can be used.”

“Even though it is tempting … you run the risk of criminal prosecution,” he said.