[privacy] Tell-All PCs and Phones Transforming Divorce

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () computerbytesman com>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/business/15divorce.html?_r=1
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/business/15divorce.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ore
f=slogin&ref=business&adxnnlx=1189857846-QkGdFWCOZbgTd5Lwm43nbQ>
&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=business&adxnnlx=1189857846-QkGdFWCOZbgTd5Lwm43nbQ
 
Tell-All PCs and Phones Transforming Divorce 
By
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/brad_stone/ind
ex.html?inline=nyt-per> BRAD STONE

The age-old business of breaking up has taken a decidedly Orwellian turn,
with digital evidence like e-mail messages, traces of Web site visits and
mobile telephone records now permeating many contentious divorce cases.

Spurned lovers steal each other's BlackBerrys. Suspicious spouses hack into
each other's e-mail accounts. They load surveillance software onto the
family PC, sometimes discovering shocking infidelities. 

Divorce lawyers routinely set out to find every bit of private data about
their clients' adversaries, often hiring investigators with sophisticated
digital forensic tools to snoop into household computers. 

"In just about every case now, to some extent, there is some electronic
evidence," said Gaetano Ferro, president of the American Academy of
Matrimonial Lawyers, who also runs seminars on gathering electronic
evidence. "It has completely changed our field."

Privacy advocates have grown increasingly worried that digital tools are
giving governments and powerful corporations the ability to peek into
peoples' lives as never before. But the real snoops are often much closer to
home.

"
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/google_inc/index.html
?inline=nyt-org> Google and
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/yahoo_inc/index.html?
inline=nyt-org> Yahoo may know everything, but they don't really care about
you," said Jacalyn F. Barnett, a Manhattan-based divorce lawyer. "No one
cares more about the things you do than the person that used to be married
to you."

Most of these stories do not end amicably. This year, a technology
consultant from the Philadelphia area, who did not want his name used
because he has a teenage son, strongly suspected his wife was having an
affair. Instead of confronting her, the husband installed a $49 program
called PC Pandora
(http://www.top5softwarereviews.com/pcpandora/?id=pcpandora) on her
computer, a laptop he had purchased.

The program surreptitiously took snapshots of her screen every 15 seconds
and e-mailed them to him. Soon he had a comprehensive overview of the sites
she visited and the instant messages she was sending. Since the program
captured her passwords, the husband was also able to get access to and print
all the e-mail messages his wife had received and sent over the previous
year.

What he discovered ended his marriage. For 11 months, he said, she had been
seeing another man - the parent of one of their son's classmates at a
private school outside Philadelphia. The husband said they were not only
arranging meetings but also posting explicit photos of themselves on the Web
and soliciting sex with other couples.

...

 

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