Is reading wife's e-mail a crime? | Hacker News Reader

Is reading wife's e-mail a crime?

freep.com

19 pointswglb32 comments

A recent ruling in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the government must get a warrant to read stored emails [1]. The opinion was in large part based on the "fundamental similarities between email and traditional forms of communication" [2]. Having established that the 4th amendment does indeed apply to email, the question is how the 4th amendment works between spouses. In Burdeau v. McDowell the Supreme Court ruled that "the origin and history [of the Fourth Amendment] clearly show that it was intended as a restraint upon the activities of sovereign authority, and was not intended to be a limitation upon other than governmental agencies" [3]. Further, in the Supreme Court ruled that (emphasis mine) "[the Fourth Amendment] does not apply to a search or seizure, even an unreasonable one, effected by a private individual not acting as an agent of the Government or with the participation or knowledge of any governmental official." [4] Thus I'm not sure under what legal basis reading your spouse's email could be considered a crime (although ethically it is reprehensible).

(Note, no training as a lawyer. Just interested in the law.)

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/breaking-news-eff-vict...

[2] https://www.eff.org/files/warshak_opinion_121410.pdf

[3] http://supreme.justia.com/us/256/465/case.html

[4] http://supreme.justia.com/us/447/649/case.html

I find the poll rather offensive:

Should it be legal to snoop into your spouse's e-mail?

-No way! Privacy is a basic right, even in a marriage

-Sure, why not? How else can I keep tabs on him/her?

Why does the second option have to be framed from the perspective that anyone who logs into their spouse's email is doing so to keep tabs on them? What's wrong with a simple "Yes/No"? This isn't a webforum of friends joking around, this is a legitimate press entity.

I found it offensive too. My wife has full access to my email/facebook/bank and everything. Just this weekend my wife ordered something in my name and thus used my email. I don't see it as a problem.

Like my wife said one time: "If you were cheating on me, I wouldn't know how to track it online." Not because she's not technologically adept, but because she's seen me using proxy servers and disposable emails that she knows I wouldn't be dumb enough to do it in plain sight. Just like it'd be moronic to receive love letter correspondence at my home address, it's moronic to receive it at my main email address.

I'll also clarify further. The woman prosecuting is a moron for using her normal email address (with her password in a book next to the computer) to conduct an affair. If you don't try to hide it, you're trying to get caught. I'm sorry, I was computer savvy enough at 4 to start up a PC and use DOS to load a game. A 6-10 year old today would beyond the shadow of a doubt be able to access her email - therefore it was unprotected.

The wo/man prosecuting is a moron for using her normal email address

You would be very surprised. People leave traces everywhere, but I agree the first signs are not digital, they would be behavioral.

You don't lose your right to privacy just because you are a moron.

I'd say the traces on Facebook/Myspace/Twitter would beg to differ, but legally speaking you're right.

The poll is dumb. Me and Erin have roughly the same agreement. But if you don't have that agreement --- and especially if you're in divorce proceedings --- what possible valid reason can you have for accessing someone else's email account?

Every time issues like this come up, somebody makes the point that someone else is a moron for {using a crappy password,using a shared machine,not knowing how to stop SQL injection,not knowing how uninitialized variable exploits work,not knowing to suppress all exceptions when decrypting untrusted ciphertext}. No. Unless it is your job to know these things, not knowing them does not make you a moron. The thinnest veneer of a security mechanism is sufficient to protect the privacy of your accounts under the law, which is exactly how it should be.

I find it easier to treat all "legitimate press entities" as tabloids until proven otherwise. It's surprising how much a heuristic like that sets your mind at ease.

This is how Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper describes "knowing wife's password and logging into gmail":

"The guy is a hacker," Cooper said in a voice mail response to the Free Press last week. "It was password protected, he had wonderful skills, and was highly trained. Then he downloaded them and used them in a very contentious way."

"wonderful skills" = able to open and read the notebook of written passwords she kept beside the computer.

I hear literacy is all the rage these days in the elite h4x0r community.

Where can I download that?

http://freehaxx0rd0wnlaods.webs.com

>Leon Walker told the Free Press he routinely used the computer and that she kept all of her passwords in a small book next to the computer.

Wish I had skills like that. I wonder where he was trained to hack computers, I'd love to reach that level some day.

When I read that portion, I was amazed that this action was brought. I don't know what is motivating the prosecutor but I doubt it is a sense of justice.

He caught her having an affair. I doubt justice is on her mind; more like vengeance, and this showed up as something to get angry over. As to the prosecuting lawyer... probably money.

Chuckle all you want; if you run your startup on a mainstream web stack, take my word for it, there are people chuckling at the idea that you take your own security seriously. Should we make fun of you when you get popped?

The law doesn't protect only those accounts that are protected according to SANS-endorsed best practices. Thankfully.

Are you advocating obscure or proprietary web stacks for enhanced security?

No, I'm advocating being careful with the glass houses.

Is this any different than opening her physical mail or reading her diary? I doubt you'd go to jail for 5 years for either of those...

Agreed, her case also becomes non-existent if she's ever asked him to access her email for her. My wife knows all my passwords and I know all hers. Furthermore this is dangerous territory for the prosecution not only on the appearance front (it looks like a frivolous suit) but the precedence could collapse the judicial service in the state when kids sue their parents over snooping in their email/facebook and finding out they smoke pot or had sex.

I'd also like to point out how dangerous fighting the letter of the law is. From what I can tell in Michigan adultery is still a felony on the books and could land both the wife and the man she had sex with in jail. Prosecuting over an invasion of privacy is exceptionally stupid when you have to full-out admit to a felony that is still on the books but is unprosecuted.

I wonder if an adultery charge would even hold up in court anymore. I think the "right to privacy" (which is sort of an unenumerated constitutional right, but which has tons of legal precedent) might actually preclude actually prosecuting someone for adultery.

As far as I know, we're all just waiting for a state prosecutor to be dumb enough to bring an adultery case so these statutes can be struck down by the Supreme Court nationwide once and for all. It's (apparently) been years since the last case was filed; the ACLU had the guy's back, but he let it go in exchange for 20 hours community service and no record.

You can indeed be prosecuted for tampering with the mails of your legally-separated spouse. Title 18, Part I, Ch.83 § 1708.

Commented here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2044097

Nut: according to the WSJ, this couple was separated when the husband accessed the wife's email address. That being the case, the husband had absolutely no right to access the wife's private property; the husband straight-up broke the law. Michigan isn't a community property state, but even in Texas, once you're separated, what's yours is yours.

Just because you use a shared machine doesn't mean you've surrendered your accounts to anyone else who uses the machine. The law does not say that you have to employ state-of-the-art mechanisms to protect your email. Your password can be "password"; it's still unlawful to break into the account.

What's yours is mine and mine is yours.

Abuse of trust? Yes. Crime? No.

Theft of postal service mail has been a crime since 1948. It apparently comes up all the time during divorce disputes (though for obvious reasons it isn't routinely prosecuted). Why should email be any different? The ECPA is decades old and covers exactly this issue.

So is reading someone else's postal mail theft?

Reading your wife's email is a crime. It's a horrible violation of privacy, and borders on abuse.

Of course a woman reading a husband's email is normal.

I wonder what the legal consequences are when you log into the accounts of someone who stole your laptop (that you can still access via SSH).

Are you even allowed to snoop on what happens on your laptop locally?

Laptop thieves have lost cases trying to claim an expectation of privacy on stolen laptops, but "not because of a bright line rule that thieves never have a reasonable expectation of privacy in stolen property" (Florida Second District Court of Appeals). That case was the police looking at the laptop itself; presumably, if you lifted a cookie out of the browser config on your stolen laptop and sidejacked the thief's email account, her cause of action against you would not get weaker.

Prosecutors can charge people with all sorts of things. I seriously doubt this will stick.

I have a friend who is politically active around a certain cause -- the details are not important -- and I've noticed that he receives an "update" every day or two with the most outlandish sorts of news. Of course, in a country of 300+ million, odds are something unusual are going on every day. To read the accounts as he does suggests there is some vast conspiracy at work. But to take an honest look at the numbers just shows that, given the randomness of people's behavior, every once in a million times something happens that would piss him off. The rest is just a result of the large number of people and the efficiency of the reporting systems involved.

So I'm assuming that new law isn't being explored, and this is just another example of this phenomenon I've noticed with my friend. What I'm interested in, however, is how the prosecutor came up with the idea to criminally charge him? Did the wife file criminal charges on her own (which I suspect)? I can't imagine this being an issue that the state would have any interest in pursuing. Part of a lame-brain divorce lawyer's case, sure, but not a matter of law enforcement.

Of course, I'm not a lawyer and don't even play one on TV, so whatever you do, don't put any trust in any legal analysis I might give.

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