Just FYI, a man in my area was recently arrested and charged with crimes after he installed Web Watcher on the computer he and his wife shared. The software monitored keystrokes, email, etc.

Huh. I didn't know it was a crime to install software on my own computer. I suspect there's more to this story.

I hope he gets a great settlement from the false arrest conviction!

Well, the wife noticed that the husband knew a lot about the content of her emails, so she went to the police. He was charged with unlawful use of a computer, interception, disclosure or use of electronic and oral communications, and unlawful access to stored communications.

Is there a record of this - in the newspaper, perhaps, that we can look up?

Has the case been tried yet? What happened?

Do you have a link?

Here it is: http://dailylocal.com/articles/2011/09/27/news/doc4e81f0fe3e5ea058291843.txt

That explains the problem right there. She had moved out and he had spyware on her computer. Even so, being "charged" doesn't mean being convicted. We know of another case where an overzealous prosectutor brought such a case [and it was on behalf of a cheating wife] and it was dropped before it ever got to court.

If I suspected my spouse was having an affair, I would most certainly take the risk. We have had hundreds of people put spyware on their cheating spouses computers over the years with no negative legal ramifications, so I would say it is well worth the risk.

A good take-away is to not be so transparent about your sources when spying.

It's not a crime. People monitor their kids with this type software all the time. It IS illegal to use this to steal identities or commit theft, however, given a shared computer there isn't any reasonable expectation of privacy. Maybe in the future we will see legislation making this illegal.

He installed it while they still lived together, though.

That is not illegal, though.

What's the 'victim' doing, removing community property from the home?? I hope the BH has an attorney so he doesn't have to wait any longer than necessary to see this case get thrown out.

And he needs to be a little more careful about sharing the results of his intel from here on out.

Legally, you have to tell other users that it is installed. Sometimes people are really bad listeners. They forget things.

Oh, goodness, absolutely. I know that, in the unlikely event that I were to install spyware on MY family's computers, I would certainly be sure to advise all users of its existence. Yeppers. I sure would. Because I wouldn't want them to do something on there that they wouldn't want me to see, nosireebob.

Of course, I'd have to make a mental note to mention that to everyone...I'm so forgetful that way...dang, I can't even remember if I put keyloggers on our computers...

http://news.cnet.com/Court-Wife-broke-law-with-spyware/2100-1030_3-5577979.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...s-in-jail-after-hacking-wifes-email.html

Food for thought. Im not sure how to articulate this, so someone with more expirience, please help me out.

I'll help you out.

In the first case, the judge said that the wife in the divorce proceedings broke Florida law by intercepting her husband's communications. The wife was not on trial for this, and there is no evidence that she has since been tried for this. The upshot of the judge's statement was that the screenshots were not permitted to be brought as evidence in the divorce case. In effect, the wife is no worse off than if she had not used the keylogger.

If you posted that case as a warning, I think it will have no effect on the advice given here.

In the second case, the husband has since been found not guilty. http://archive.freep.com/article/20120713/NEWS03/120713065/email-snooping-felony-charge-dismissed

I think only you know what you were trying to articulate, but these cases show that spouses should go ahead and spy if they need to.

What is the thought exactly?

One thing to remember is that sometimes low life individuals such as Jessica Cooper, the county prosecutor, seek fame and will do anything they can with the power of government to achieve it. In her career as a judge she presided over high profile cases such as Jack Kevorkian.
We can be thankful that America has a jury system which sometimes frees people from government abuse. Just think of all those poor black people that have been released from life imprisonment in recent years thanks to a college group that is conducting DNA testing. In almost all of those cases, the original prosecutors never apologize. Its very disheartening, especially when one of them attempts to imprison a husband for reading his wife's emails.
Hopefully the people in her county will vote her out of office some day. Of course, she would probably sue and claim its illegal to do so...

From the bio she has, she's just gone from husband to husband - dragging her child with her. Her second marriage definitely sounds like a violent affairage. That's why it's been brought to court - because the right to hide and lie just seems like a legal right to her by now.

It's just another case of:
Wayward - "This seems so outrageous to me that surely it must be illegal! All my other husbands were cheated on without the need to spy on me! I will find an attention hungry lawyer to tell me it isn't legal!
Lawyer - 'Legal? Well, um never mind about that - we will get a reporter on the scene to cover it either way. That will make everyone consider whether it IS legal or not.'
Everyone - 'Is it legal to spy on your spouse? Oh it is? What's all the fuss for then?'

Why oh why is his decision to look at her email being dragged through the courts - but not her decision to bring a child back around a violent man?

You answered my concerns. I was suggesting that depending on where you live that you should always check out the local (and now seemingly federal) laws regarding this type of thing prior to making any decisions. True, that it does take a lot of forethought and I don't really know how a lawyer would charge for merely answering questions regarding this, but the charges and the cases sounded severe enough, and I was very surprised to even hear of them, much the less, to find out the resolution of them as you did, so thank you. I am more......cautious by nature I suppose, and in case there were others like me out there (and if they are, they probably wouldn't be the first to speak up and ask, lol), if they had concerns about the practical fallout to follow. After all, you never know what a vengeful person will do, or how the ever changing laws will perceive this. Thats all. I was hoping you would have the inside story, and you did. And for that I thank you.

You can't live in fear of consequences.
A good example is the mayor of Houston recently said she would issue an order requiring church pastors to submit their sermons to her office for review.
Should every church pastor in the country be afraid of preaching and forsake their jobs over what one little person in a city does?

No, of course not Mr. Jedi. I wasn't trying to suggest that one should have no spine. I was merely pointing out that these are things that, fr me at least, were totally out of mind. I NEVER would have given any thought to the legalities of local governments at the time. I also would have never thought that ANY law enforcement might have reason to get involved in any way. I SHOULD have said, that whatever snooping plan you decide is right for you, that it, much like exposure, isnt done on an emotional reaction. With proper planning (and looking into some basic laws), that it could be done legally AND effectively. While a trip to a lawyer is a pain in the rear, and not what you are focusing on at the time, the $500.00 it may cost you is a drop in the bucket compared to the alternative.

The thing about the pastors is true, btw? REALLY? I thought we had a seperation of church and state. They can't have gotten away with that, could they?

JBD, please check your email.

Thanks.

The thing is, on the page that lists all the forums, it says this:

"Please be sure and check with your state's local laws before using any of these devices."

Those things might have been totally out of your mind, but they were not out of the minds of everybody who posts regularly here.

Affair-fighting is war. It is not for the timid. To suggest that one should be cowed by the possible intrusion on local privacy laws ignores the fact that such a misdemeanor pales in comparison to the egregious offense to the affair itself. If one is serious about winning one's spouse back, then it is entirely likely that one will need to ignore the signs on the lawn and step on the grass anyway.

No, the mayor did not get away with it.
After the pastors spent money on attorney and court fees to stop her, she dropped the order.
The pastors refused to comply and told the mayor to arrest them and send them to jail.

The two best defenses I can think of:

1. It's a set up. I never spied on anyone. She/he must have put the spyware on the computer themselves and had the program send me emails so they could then claim I was illegally spying on them (makes proving the claim very technically difficult especially if the email account that the packets of info were sent to is web based and accessed from the home where both of you still reside).

2. Don't say anything. It's a very difficult case to prove unless they can demonstrate that you actually put the spyware on the device, activated it and monitored it. The best way to prove all the elements is to get you to confess to it otherwise it involves an extensive computer forensics undertaking which no prosecutor (except maybe Jessica Cooper) has the time or resources to undertake and pay for especially in what's essentially a domestic dispute. You don't have to talk to the police about it. If you are asked about it under oath in a deposition, you can always plead the 5th Amendment (but it's better to duck the questions without lying).

Did you put a keylogger on her computer? NO (we were married and it's joint marital property so I consider it OUR computer if she has some other computer that is HER computer, I certainly don't know about it. I didn't really "put" it there either, I "downloaded it"....cnet, I guess, "put" it there).

Please provide copies of any and all emails defendant intercepted? None. (I really didn't "intercept" them...I read them AFTER she had read them and they were sitting in her junk folder...I may have printed copies but they are not in my possession [i gave them to my brother to hold] so I don't have any copies to offer and the emails I read are all in her email database)

Did you snoop on her email? No (again, I consider and considered it "OUR" email account and you keep calling it "HER" email account. We used it jointly for years together on Amazon and other websites. I bet if we opened the email right now and looked in her junk folder their would be email addressed to both of us as husband and wife, I had consent to use OUR email account and well known shared password whenever I wanted....BUT, I don't have to tell you all this because I'm not volunteering anything).

depends what the definition of "is" is?

Wow, how brave.

We have established that the poster who made this post was another alias of an OM who was previously banned under multiple aliases. He has now been banned under this alias. The BH involved in this situation was a forum poster. JBD's posts should be taken within that context.