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A friend of mine installed a keystroke capture program on his computer to record AOL Instant Messenger traffic between our wives. From that, he determined that they were involved in a homosexual relationship. Is it legal to do that?
Thanks for your thoughts!
grandfist
It would be an invasion of privacy if he did it without consent and there was an expectation of privacy. I would suggest that he talk with a cyber lawyer. While there is "technically" no privacy laws in the US, I suspect that one could probably extrapolate the idea of privacy from opening mail (ie., email)
I would not think it illegal if the computer is his. If it was not his then that may very well be illegal.Quote:
A friend of mine installed a keystroke capture program on his computer to record AOL Instant Messenger traffic between our wives. From that, he determined that they were involved in a homosexual relationship. Is it legal to do that
As for the expectation of privacy issue. I think you would definetly need a lawyer to answere that question. Companies have authorised user policies in place that allows, pretty much anything that goes on, on there networks to be monitored and logged. This may include key logging. On the other hand users have to agree to these policies and therefor should be aware of any lack of privacy.
The legalities may be a bit blurred. This side of the pond it would be a breach of human rights. To my mind it's a breach of trust, which speaks volumes for their relationship in my opinion. I'm no lawyer, so I'd recommend getting legal advice if needed.Quote:
Originally posted here by grandfist
A friend of mine installed a keystroke capture program on his computer to record AOL Instant Messenger traffic between our wives. From that, he determined that they were involved in a homosexual relationship. Is it legal to do that?
Thanks for your thoughts!
grandfist
Personally, I'd be inclined to say this friend(?) is full of the brown smelly stuff. Unless, of course he has irrefutable evidence. Unlikely!
Hope he's not recorded your wife and his doing anything sexually explicite using webcams.
Perhaps you should discuss this with your wife?
Good Luck.
Who cares if it's legal? Your wives wanna dike out, get on it!! :P :D
Seriously though, there isn't much on the legal side you can do about this. As the other members have already stateted. However I am curious if something like this would be helpful in a divorce court.
hatebreed2000, I'm guessing here (since I'm not a legal begal type) but I have a feeling it would be legal in divorce proceedings and such but not legal for criminal court. In some ways, it might be viewed similar to the private detective taking naughty photos of adultery.
i am currently pre-law in college and we went over this type of law last year... so here it goes....
as long as the computer belong's to your family then it is legal, it is similar to hiring a private eye to spy on your wife.
however, it is more difficult to use the information gained in court because unless you could prove that you did not fabricate the evidence (which with computers is very easy) you would not be able to use it. the best way to do this would be to have the keylogger write to a usb key and turn the keylogger off after the conversation and don't touch the file, then bring in an expert in computer forensics who has looked at the file -- this way you have an expert witness in court. also, you may need a security camera with a time/date stamp so that you can prove that the file time/date creation time matches up with when your wife was on the computer.
i do have to agree with a previously statement though -- talk to your wife, confront her with his "evidence" and see what happens -- if she is, and you are cool with that, now you know the truth, otherwise, the rest is up to you --
good luck
I have read a few cases where one spouse was spying on the other. In all situations it was a breech of privacy because the spouse "expected" privacy while on her time at the machine. Now if there was some dialog before hand that said we are installing software on the machine to track usage then the expectation of privacy is gone.
however, in a place where the living environment is shared, there is less of an expectation of privacy expecially if the computer is in a common walking space... it would depend on how the lawyer presents the evidence and how good the two lawyers are (while we all have the right to an attorney, we don't have the right to a good one... lol)
plus, in a civil case, more stuff is allowed in than in criminal cases...
if you are interested in persuing this grandfist, you may want to look up how the police use IM convo's against child molesters because there will be a greater burden of proof for that than there would be for what you would be looking to do
Sounds like a great Jerry Springer episode.Quote:
Originally posted here by grandfist
A friend of mine installed a keystroke capture program on his computer to record AOL Instant Messenger traffic between our wives. From that, he determined that they were involved in a homosexual relationship. Is it legal to do that?
Thanks for your thoughts!
grandfist
On a side note I used a keylogger to find out the same thing on my personal Pc at home. My issue was it was my PC but her IM account. So she bugged out and called me a Haxor. LOL. There in was the problem.
But also they are married so the computer is 50/50 right?
To expand on scribble's post:
The expectation of privacy indeed comes from the computer's location and who had access to / regularly used it and by what methods. Meaning: Did they have separate logins? If they did, there might be an implied right to privacy. If it was just the family computer that was just turned on and used, there is not.