Wife should not have read emails, says court

SWITZERLAND: A Swiss woman has had her conviction upheld for reading her husband’s emails, in which she discovered details of his extramarital affairs.

The woman, who was not named in media reports, was charged with unauthorised intrusion into her husband’s data after temptation got the better of her and she logged in to a new email account he had created on their shared computer.

The couple shared many passwords and had noted some of them down, the court heard.

‘‘He had been in contact with several women for a long time. I confronted him with his affairs, and he moved out of our flat relatively quickly,’’ the woman, said during the court hearing.

The charges were brought in February when she was convicted and handed a 9900-franc (NZ$14,341) fine, suspended on the condition that she commit no further offences for two years, and a 4300-franc fine to cover police costs.

The prosecutor said the woman intentionally and repeatedly invaded her husband’s account and downloaded material that was not her own. The computer, an external hard drive and a USB stick were confiscated.

On appeal to a district court, the defence argued that their client had not technically ‘‘hacked’’ into her husband’s account, given she already knew his password.

However, even though the woman’s search history revealed that she had checked beforehand whether it was an offence to read the emails, and the court upheld the conviction, it significantly cut the suspended financial penalty from 9900 francs to 1500 francs because the woman merely had to ‘‘exploit her husband’s carelessness’’ and thus exert ‘‘minimal criminal energy’’.

– Telegraph Group