Man arrested for reading wife's email
news.yahoo.com
news.yahoo.com
> ... after finding her password written in a book next to their shared laptop.
What seems to have happened in this case is no different from what would happen if my babysitter borrowed our computer to access her email, and I snatched her password. Use of a shared computer to access your email does not surrender the account to everyone else who uses the computer.
It looks like the guy straight-up broke the law. Good for Michigan for actually enforcing it.
'In a voice message left with the Law Blog, [Michigan prosecutor Jessica] Cooper added that two judges have denied Walker’s motion to dismiss the charges. Walker and his wife “were in divorce proceedings and had separate email accounts, separate computers, separate everything,” Cooper said.'
I don't see why this case is so outrageous or why they have to use a law that puts this in a gray area. The guy clearly stole his wife's password and broke into her account. This would be clear cut if it were a stranger who did it.
Even if he believed the son to be in danger, there are ways of address the situation without compromising her email account.
But he's not a stranger. Married couples do all sorts of things which would be criminal if they were strangers.
It seems to me that the key point here will be his state of mind when he found the password and logged in to his wife's account -- did he believe that his wife would object? (Obviously in hindsight we know that she did object, but you can't hang a man based on hindsight.)
(Analogous situation: Man fondles woman's breast. If they're strangers, it's sexual assault. In a happily married couple, it's perfectly normal. If the wife is thinking of getting a divorce she might tell him to stop fondling her. But no court is ever going to demand that husbands receive written permission from their wives prior to each instance of breast-fondling, because there's a general recognition that people in relationships can make judgement calls about the boundaries of those relationships.)
A password does not in and of itself mean "don't look" because all online services require one anyway, so it doesn't work as a special "don't look" request. And especially when they share computers.
You also clearly have a legally enforceable expectation of privacy in your personal email account, so I don't know what your point is; just because Reddit also asks for a password doesn't mean that the Gmail login screen is optional.
Having a password on your account does not give you a reasonable expectation of privacy from your spouse. Having a piece of paper that says "Please don't read my gmail" does.
My point is that the password alone does not give you that expectation - you need an additional something.