Should reading your wife's e-mail be a crime?

[Grid]

He shouldn't have been going through his wife's e-mail, but in my opinion this should be more of a moral problem than a criminal problem. In other words, he was in the wrong, but he shouldn't go to jail or go to court over something so stupid.


A Rochester Hills man faces up to 5 years in prison — for reading his wife’s e-mail.

Oakland County prosecutors, relying on a Michigan statute typically used to prosecute crimes such as identity theft or stealing trade secrets, have charged Leon Walker, 33, with a felony after he logged onto a laptop in the home he shared with his wife, Clara Walker.

Using her password, he accessed her Gmail account and learned she was having an affair. He now is facing a Feb. 7 trial. She filed for divorce, which was finalized earlier this month.

Legal experts say it’s the first time the statute has been used in a domestic case, and it might be hard to prove.

[Bilan]

Need more details about the case and the legislation.

[MilkmanofHumanKindness]

Depends on the consent... if my wife asks me to read her email, no. If I'm hacking into her account without her consent, then yes.

[Manic Impressive]

Finally an interesting and important thread in the politics section.

[Political_Chucky]

5 years in prison sounds a bit harsh.

That's pretty fucked up on the ex-wife too. She cheated on him, then sends him to prison. Ouch.

[Comrade1]

For Christs sake the guy just wanted to know if his wife was cheating, its not like he spent hours hacking her, he found out the password. This is ridiculous. :rolleyes:

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

The loving warmth of the bourgeois family shines through again. :thumbup1:

[TC]

No, wives lose their legal personhood when they marry and all their personal belongings like their email accounts belong to their husbands - so a husband can't commit a crime against his wife. Oh wait, its not the 19th century anymore!

Yes of course it is a crime whether its your wife or not. (obviously this was done with her password without consent - no charges would have been filed if there was consent).

Your right to privacy and right to the security of your identity and personal information (and using someone elses password to access their accounts constitutes an identity theft) does not vanish just because you have a husband. Husband's don't have free access to their wives personal things and information - not anymore.

[¿Que?]

So apparently this thread is not meant to be participated by women. Hurray. A revleft boy's club!!!

[gorillafuck]

No, reading the e-mail of a spouse shouldn't be a criminal offense. That's fucking stupid.

[MilkmanofHumanKindness]

So apparently this thread is not meant to be participated by women. Hurray. A revleft boy's club!!!

It's been like 35 minutes...

Looking at the demographic information of this forum, the vast majority is male...

This isn't surprising news, that the majority of responses have been all male so far.

Or are men supposed to wait to express their opinions until women begin posting?

EDIT: Oh... okay, I know what you mean now.

[¿Que?]

It's been like 35 minutes...

Looking at the demographic information of this forum, the vast majority is male...

This isn't surprising news, that the majority of responses have been all male so far.

Or are men supposed to wait to express their opinions until women begin posting?
No, I just mean, "wife's email," I mean seriously. Say spouse or significant other, or just make it more gender neutral already...geez.

[RadioRaheem84]

Five years is excessive. Shouldn't there be a fine or a misdemeanor violation?

Wife cheats and then sends the guy to the slammer? Fucked up to the max.

[FreeFocus]

I'm kind of torn on the issue. Marriage is obviously an unequal and unfair relationship. On the other hand, people who choose to get married (or enter into any type of serious relationship) should trust each other and not violate that. This guy should definitely not be going to jail, especially for five fucking years. Privacy boundaries should be up to a couple to decide on, not the state. He probably was wrong for violating her privacy. She was also wrong (more wrong than he, I don't think there's a moral equivalence of what they did) for going behind his back and cheating.

[Le Libérer]

Moved to chit chat from Politics.

[Kaze no Kae]

I lean towards yes, ie reading someone else's email (unless it's been left open on the computer, in which case it's just human curiosity and it would take a will of steel to resist) should always be a crime unless you have valid reason to believe the emails in question is decieving you about something which is actually your business. People have a right to personal privacy. I suppose in a democratic society it would be up to a court to decide whether you had a good enough reason.

That said, if he had a valid reason before reading her emails to think she was cheating on him - and they were understood to be in an exclusive relationship in the first place, which he was faithful to - then you could say he was within his rights to investigate. Either way, a prison sentence is entirely irrelevant to the goal of preventing him from re-offending, all it would take to ensure he didn't re-offend would be divorce which would be her prerogative regardless, so there's no justification for the state getting involved in this case.

[Lucretia]

Tough call, this one. One of the major problems with marriage as an institution, and why I think it's silly that anybody would think that access to marriage is a political goal worth fighting for, is that in the context of marriage it's usually much harder to press charges on your spouse regarding what in other instances would be considered clear-cut crimes.

In this case, though I have a hard time faulting the guy. The reason breaking into other people's email accounts is a crime is the importance of protecting people's privacy. But in this case, the guy had every right to know whether his wife was cheating on him. In a socialist society I would hope that extenuating circumstances of this type would prevent somebody from being punished as a result of what in other contexts are reasonable rules.

[Rafiq]

If so, she should have the same right to view mine.

[Il Medico]

wha- thats messed up.

No quite obviously.

[MarxSchmarx]

I don't see what being the wife has to do with it. If this were roommates or wives reading their husbands email the legal question of whether this should be a crime shouldn't be any different.

[ZeroNowhere]

Should reading your husband's brother's wife's e-mail be a crime?

[Amphictyonis]

Ah the facade of monogamy.

[Q]

Another case of a stupid law.

[Political_Chucky]

Well Im not tripping on so much whether its a crime or not, but for 5 fucking years?

[Manic Impressive]

It should have been 20 bloody liberal bourgeois laws
For all people reading others E-Mails there should be only one punishment
TO THE GULAG with you nosey counter revolutionaries

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_tznAmKo1y8k/SkTSeX23JLI/AAAAAAAAH4Y/3CLNiHeeZAQ/s400/gulag15.PNG

[Ocean Seal]

Jail time seems unnecessarily harsh especially 5 years. This should be more about the prison-industrial complex than reading a spouse's email. What the hell is wrong with this system. 5 years? The subject is trivial, you shouldn't face five years in jail for reading the presidents email. :confused:
This has got to be the most disproportionate punishment I've seen in a long time. What's next littering 10 years?

[revolution inaction]

it doesn't say he's been sent to prison for 5 years, its says that the offense he is charged with has a maximum sentence of 5 years. we don't actually know yet that he would be sent to prison if convicted.

[Sean]

Who's to say in this situation if this was a woman who was just sick of a controlling spying husband or a man driven to distraction by an unfaithful partner. Generally speaking, the law is more or less that taking stuff from a spouse doesn't amount to stealing, but when third parties are involved then youre commiting a crime against someone/thing outside of the marriage. The crime here isn't reading something belonging to a spouse, its providing false details to gain access to a third party.

To reiterate: Taking money from your other half's wallet/purse is a marital dispute, dressing up as them and walking into a bank to get money is.

[Comrade B]

If she thinks that her privacy has been violated, of course she should be able to bring him to court.
All law is morality, some laws are just stupid morality.

[Amphictyonis]

She's the victim.

[Wanted Man]

Voted "no" on instinct, but I don't really know enough about it. What exactly is in the legislation that they are using to prosecute him?

[synthesis]

Justification for a restraining order at most. Five years in jail? I have a friend who got five years probation for putting someone in a wheelchair.

[TC]

Generally speaking, the law is more or less that taking stuff from a spouse doesn't amount to stealing, but when third parties are involved then youre commiting a crime against someone/thing outside of the marriage. The crime here isn't reading something belonging to a spouse, its providing false details to gain access to a third party.

To reiterate: Taking money from your other half's wallet/purse is a marital dispute

This is not true

At least not in contemporary U.S. or English/Welsh law.

In a marriage there are two types of property, individual property/separate property and marital property/community property. Individual property is any property held prior to a marriage and certain things acquired during a marriage (gifts being a prime example - as are personal accounts held separately - though really what counts as separate and what counts as community depends on state law, in community property states mostly found in the west there is a presumption that property acquired during a marriage is joint, in non-community property states there is no such presumption. However community property states are in the minority, there are only ten - the opposite legal regime, called separation of property, is the norm in common law countries.) In common law systems (U.S., UK excluding Scotland, Australia, Canada excluding Qubec, etc), outside of civil law systems and community property systems, spouses hold their assets by default independently unless they have explicitly made them joint property.

The laws vary from state to state, but in general it is an ordinary theft to take without consent individual property of your spouse - and to seize marital property separately (changing locks on or selling real estate for example) is called dissipation of marital assets. In practice both are of course rarely relevant unless there are separation/divorce proceedings since people don't tend to pursue legal action for property issues against their spouses until marriages have fallen apart - but these are legal issues that implicate people's legal rights not just mushy moral ones: you really can't treat your wife like an extension of your own legal personality anymore, its not the 19th century.


(::inserts not-legal-advice disclaimer here::)


Some general comments here:

1. Clearly reading "your wife's" email will not result in spending five years in jail. As was pointed out, he was charged with a crime with a maximum jail sentence of five years. Maximum sentences are reserved for repeat offenders and the most extreme, aggravated, unmitigated cases of any given offense (maybe you'd get 5 years if you stole someone's identity to steal millions of dollars and fund a drug cartel etc - it might be charged under the same law but would be seen as aggravated case). Moreover in most state penal systems a five year sentence doesn't actually mean five years in jail because there are post-sentencing sentence reductions and parole - in practice people don't serve their full term in state prison unless they like, kill someone on the inside.

In this case, though as mentioned there is no precedent, it seems implausible that he'd face a custodial sentence if convicted. More likely he'll have to pay some sort of minor restitution if the law provides that and a conviction will be used against him in divorce proceedings.


2. Do you guys who think its "ridiculous" for this to be a crime also think its ridiculous for it to be a crime to cut open a stranger's sealed personal envelopes and read their personal correspondence with friends, parents, children? Read their locked diary? Medical and financial records? When you break into someone's email by typing in their username and password thats the kind of stuff you're getting.

Remember, email accounts today aren't just used to transmit and read correspondence but to store and backup huge amounts of personal files.

3. The original poster asks the (presumably straight male?) reader to basically imagine this was "your wife" - like you have rights over "your wife." If this type of violation as described in #2 is unacceptable and could be criminalized when done to a stranger than the only reason to think that "you" should be able to get away with such a violation against "your wife" is if her status and rights diminish at marriage.

This outdated notion is similar to asking "Should it be a crime to have sex with your wife" of a man charged with rape - remember, marriage used to be an absolute defense against a charge of rape since 'of course a man can't rape his wife! She consented at the alter!'. If you correctly don't see anything less bad about marital rape than stranger rape than you shouldn't see anything less bad about stealing a spouses log in credentials and breaking into their personal files and doing it to a stranger.


4. The out dated notion that 'of course you give up some rights and legal protections in marriage, its a partnership, a marriage for gosh sakes!' has one effect: to benefit the socio-economically stronger of the two partners over the weaker. In other words, it typically strengthens patriarchy and male dominance in marriage.

Supposed state neutrality in the 'private realm' of the family has the non-neutral effect of reinforcing the existing power dynamics within the family and giving them free reign.

[electro_fan]

maybe not a crime, but it certainly a fucked up thing to do without someones consent, and i'd be interested to know the full story behind this?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Seems pretty open-and-shut to me, although of course I question the wisdom of a five-year custodial sentence for such a minor offence. Losing one's spouse should be punishment enough, no?

[Sean]

This is not true

I stand extremely corrected! I'm not going to elaborate but some family member's have been given bum legal advice in this case.

[jake williams]

I think what he did shouldn't be done, though I should say I sort of have a bias away from being concerned at all about informational privacy, in excess of what I rationally think is appropriate. My instinct is really that if he had suspicions that she was cheating, and he read her e-mail, and she actually was, that it's totally understandable and really not the worst thing anyone has ever done, even if it's wrong. But I still don't think it's okay to invade people's privacy, including spouses.

Whether or not the best way to deal with it is criminal prosecution, I'm not sure. Partly because of the same lack of concern I have about privacy, I'm not instrinsically squeamish that the state would become involved in a conflict between spouses, but I don't know if it's really practical in this instance. You can't criminalize all the fucked up things people do to each other. There's a lot of horrible things people have done to me and people I love that shouldn't be crimes, and I think this might be one of them.

[gorillafuck]

2. Do you guys who think its "ridiculous" for this to be a crime also think its ridiculous for it to be a crime to cut open a stranger's sealed personal envelopes and read their personal correspondence with friends, parents, children? Read their locked diary? Medical and financial records? When you break into someone's email by typing in their username and password thats the kind of stuff you're getting.
Because a spouse = A stranger


This outdated notion is similar to asking "Should it be a crime to have sex with your wife" of a man charged with rape - remember, marriage used to be an absolute defense against a charge of rape since 'of course a man can't rape his wife! She consented at the alter!'. If you correctly don't see anything less bad about marital rape than stranger rape than you shouldn't see anything less bad about stealing a spouses log in credentials and breaking into their personal files and doing it to a stranger. That was a really good job making a mockery out of the severity of rape.

I dunno about the actual legality involved, but if a loved went through my stuff I wouldn't get the state involved. Wanna know why? Because I'm not a person who solves personal disputes, such as a loved one reading my e-mail, with the state. And a loved one is not the equivalent of a stranger.

I definitely think it's unacceptable to read through someone elses e-mail, but wanna know how I'd react if a friend of mines long time girlfriend read his e-mail, and he sued her for it? I'd tell him straight up, "that's fucking pathetic of you".

[Stand Your Ground]

For Christs sake the guy just wanted to know if his wife was cheating, its not like he spent hours hacking her, he found out the password. This is ridiculous. :rolleyes:
Agreed. People in relationships, I feel, have a right to know this stuff, no matter what it takes to find out.

[synthesis]

I'd tell him straight up, "that's fucking pathetic of you".

Exactly. I genuinely don't think this is an issue of "white male subjectivity." If the situation were reversed, I'd anticipate the responses to be more or less the same.

[Sean]

I really wish this thread had been worded "spouse" instead of "wife". Now here we go into the usual...