Autor

His Wife’s E-mail
In 2009, Leon Walker, a 33-year-old computer technician living in Rochester Hills, Michigan, in the north-central US, noticed something strange on his telephone bill. His wife,Clara, had been making a lot of calls to her former husband. This made Leon suspicious so he decided to look at Clara’s e-mails to see if he could find out what was going on. That is how he discoveredthat she was having a love affair.
Leon was actually Clara’s third husband. She had two children — one, a boy, with her first husband and the other, a daughter, with Leon. The man she was having anaffair with was her second husband. Clara had left him — and got a divorce — after he had beaten her up in front of her young son.
When Leon found out what was happening, he got in touch with Clara’sfirst husband and showed him the e-mails. He said that he did this because he knew the second husband was violent and felt the boy’s father should know he was in danger. When the first husband found outwhat was going on, he immediately started legal action to get custody of his son.
One result of all this is that Leon and Clara’s marriage came to an end; their divorce became final in December2010. Another result was that Clara went to the police and had Leon charged with “computer abuse” under a Michigan law that was originally meant to be used against people who were guilty of identity theftor stealing intellectual property. If he is convicted , Leon could go to jail for up to five years. This would be the first time someone was sent to prison in the US for invading the privacy of afamily member by snooping into their correspondence.
Leon admits that he snooped into his wife’s e-mails, but he defends himself by saying he was doing so for the sake of the children. And he alsodenies Clara’s accusation that he used his professional skills to “hack” into her e-mail account. He says that he got her password from a list she always left sitting beside the computer, and he adds...