A Michigan man has been charged under anti-hacking legislation designed to protect trade secrets after logging on to his wife’s e-mail account and discovering she was having an affair.
Leon Walker, 33, is to face trial in an unusual move that lawyers say could have significant repercussions given that nearly half of all divorce cases in the US involve some form of snooping, such as reading e-mails, text messages or social networking.
Walker was charged after opening up the Gmail account of his wife, Clara, who was married twice previously. Walker discovered that his wife was having an affair with her second husband, who had once been arrested for beating her in front of her young son from her first husband.
Walker then handed the e-mails over to the boy’s father, saying he was concerned for the child’s safety. The father then sought custody.
“I was doing what I had to do,” Leon Walker told the Detroit Free Press. “We’re talking about putting a child in danger.”
When Clara Walker discovered the e-mails had been read and passed on, she went to the authorities.
Oakland County prosecutor, Jessica Cooper, said that Walker was charged because he broke the law by hacking in to his former wife’s account.
Walker says the computer was shared. His former wife claims it was hers alone.
Walker’s lawyer said that the prosecutor is “dead wrong” about the law.
“I’ve been a defense attorney for 34 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” he told the Detroit Free Press. “This is a hacking statute, the kind of statute they use if you try to break into a government system or private business for some nefarious purpose. It’s to protect against identity fraud, to keep somebody from taking somebody’s intellectual property or trade secrets.”
“I have to ask: ‘Don’t the prosecutors have more important things to do with their time?’” the lawyer asked.
The Walkers were divorced earlier this month. Leon Walker is scheduled to stand trial in February.
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