One of the most powerful tools a spouse had to monitor assets or other activities is to look at the shared computer of the spouse under investigation. We have written before in When You’re Allowed to Look Through Your Debtor’s Computers and Phones that as long as a person can show ownership of the computer, anything on that computer is probably fair game to look at, subject to some exceptions.

Hacker in old warehouse.

Sending the contents of what you find to the cloud (a remote server controlled by someone else) is another question. A new case in the Sixth Circuit this month held that software that monitors keystrokes and content amounts to illegal wiretapping under both federal and Ohio statutes. You can read the case, Luis v. Zang here.

This case involved a technology called WebWatcher, which allows a person to monitor a computer’s activity. Where it got the company and the husband in trouble was that WebWatcher allows you to look at the material in nearly real time once the content of the computer activity is stored on the company’s server. The fact that WebWatcher appears captures the information contemporaneously is what turns this into wiretapping, the court held.

The critical distinction in wiretapping jurisprudence is between instantaneous access and access to information that’s stored. If all WebWatcher did was to store a record of the emails sent and received on the computer, that would not have been wiretapping.

The decision applies to the Sixth Circuit, although all the circuits agree that to have wiretapping you need contemporaneous capture of the information. Depending on the kind of software you use to log keystrokes and the transmission (if any) of that information, you could end up with what the Sixth Circuit calls wiretapping or just storage of information you have a right to see.

What’s certain is that it’s incumbent on any lawyer using such information to know how the program works. Just because it comes out of a small box you buy at a big box store doesn’t mean it will produce admissible evidence.

Want to know more?

  • Visit charlesgriffinllc.com and see our two blogs, The Ethical Investigator and the Divorce Asset Hunter;
  • Look at my book, The Art of Fact Investigation (available in free preview for Kindle at Amazon);
  • Watch me speak about Helping Lawyers with Fact Finding, here.