Michigan resident Leon Walker faces a peculiar predicament: he’s been charged with a felony for secretly checking out his wife’s email account.

Using his wife’s password, Walker accessed her Gmail account and learned she allegedly was having an affair, according to this article in the Detroit Free Press.

State prosecutors in Michigan have charged Walker under a statute used typically to prosecute identity theft or theft of trade secrets, the Free Press Reports. (Hat tip: JonathanTurley.org)

워커, who divorced his wife this month, faces a criminal trial in February and up to 5 감옥에서 년.

A few weeks back, we noted that the Sixth Circuit had ruled that people have a reasonable expectation that their emails will remain private and further that the government needs a search warrant to snoop through emails stored by Internet Service Providers.

But criminal charges for surreptitiously checking out a spouse’s emails?

It’s a legal gray area, the Free Press reports, and Walker could be helped by the fact that he was still living with his wife and had routine access to her computer. “It was a family computer,” Walker told the Free Press.

Oakland County, Michigan prosecutor Jessica Cooper told the Free Press that she was justified in charging Walker.  “The guy is a hacker,"고 말했다. The email account “was password protected.”

를 통해 Is Email Snooping a Crime? – 법률 블로그 – WSJ.