A US man is facing felony charges akin to espionage or spying because he poked through his wife’s email and told others about what he found.
The guy in trouble is the woman’s third husband. He suspected his wife was having an affair and her emails revealed that she was, indeed, romantically involved with her second husband. So the third husband told her first husband because her second husband had allegedly been violent with the first husband’s child.
I am not making any of this up! The third husband denies that he was acting out of spite but rather concern for the safety of the child. The third husband now joins the other two as exes because the woman has already divorced him, however the second ex may again become a current spouse. But I digress.
So when is it okay to snoop in your significant other’s email? I’m saying never. I know couples who share an email address and have all of each others’ passwords and while that seems open and honest on the surface it’s too invasive for my liking. I don’t have to be doing anything wrong to be entitled to a bit of privacy and I believe that works both ways. I suppose it all comes down to trust. The man facing charges obviously didn’t trust his wife and he turned out to have good reason. Still he probably should have talked to his wife about his suspicions before picking up the phone and spreading the news like some modern day Gladys Kravitz.
Just because he found the evidence he was looking for doesn’t justify the search. He obviously doesn’t watch enough cop shows but he’ll have lots of time for that if he’s sent to the big house.
As I understand it, the charges laid against husband #3 are for the unauthorized access to a 3RD parties E-mail account, his spouses, nothing more, nothing less. What he did with the information afterwards is irrelevant. As to the issue of privacy, well given that Canadian and US courts have both ruled that there is no expectation of privacy when using a public network such as the Internet, this case will solely depend on the issue of unauthorized access of the account.
Now, should you spy on your partners E-mails, well I’d say no. I don’t believe that being in a relationship precludes having ones own personal private aspects to ones life. Sharing and privacy can co exist, at least I’d like to think so.
This case will have interesting legal ramifications on both sides of the border.