I Spy. You Spy. We All Spy. Is it a crime?

Meet Leon Walker. You'll like him. He's very pleasant, nice looking, well spoken and polite. Smart too. Landed himself a very successful job as a computer technician for Oakland County, the wealthy community north of Detroit, where a lot of the automotive and high tech money is. We call it Automation Alley. Leon, 34 single, and a resident of the tony suburb of Rochester Hills, fits right in.

If law enforcement has its way, though, Leon will soon be a convicted felon. His crime? He snooped in his wife's email. Yep. You read that right. Suspicious that his wife Clara was cheating, he used her password to log onto to her gmail account, and discovered that yes! She was cheating and not just cheating with anyone! Leon was Clara's third husband and he discovered she was cheating with her second husband, a man who had been arrested for beating her in front of a child she shared with her first husband.

If you need to grab a pen and paper just to chart this tawdry mess you may be excused for the moment.

Leon, upon discovering the tryst, immediately notified the first husband, worried about the child Clara and the first husband shared. And since Leon and Clara also shared a young daughter, Leon was also worried about that child as well. It appeared from Clara's email that both children had been exposed to the man Clara claimed had once been violent toward her. The first husband immediately filed for a change of custody and attached the purloined emails to his motion.

Clara, once she realized that her email had been accessed contacted the Oakland County Sheriff's Office. At first, investigators told her it was a civil matter. That was how they handled all such complaints in the past. But Clara, whose persistence is matched only perhaps by her ability to acquire, then discard husbands, continued to complain.

Eventually, the Oakland County Prosecutor's office charged Leon, who has no prior criminal record, with computer hacking, a five year felony. The Detroit Free Press covered the story. The outrage was immediate and worldwide, with thousands of people demanding that the case be dropped and plenty admitting that they too had been guilty of the very felony Leon was now facing.

What makes this case so interesting - above and beyond the deliciously awful facts - is that it is a case study of what happens when law can't keep up with technology. The hacking statute under which Leon Walker is charged was written more than two decades ago, and appears to be designed to prevent employees from walking off with trade secrets or to punish people who steal other people's identities. It is unlikely legislators were anticipating the ongoing reality show that is Clara and Leon. (They have since divorced.)

And snooping - particularly among warring spouses - is not at all uncommon. Just ask any divorce attorney. In fact some experts estimate about 45 percent of divorces involve some sort of clandestine behavior - reading emails, hacking Facebook accounts, opening snail mail, spying. So the Leon Walker case begs a bigger question. How nosey can you be in your marital home?

Leon's pugnascious and highly entertaining attorney, Leon Weiss - who appears to always be on the verge of a cerebral hemorrage over the treatment of his client - trotted the matter up to the Michigan Court of Appeals and at first it seemed he'd found a sympathetic ear, with the higher court issuing a stay, and the judges noting they had "serious concerns" about whether the statute applies to cases of domestic snooping.

But by the time Leon and Leon got before the three membert panel in December for oral arguments, those judges appeared to have a change of heart. Under the strictest reading of the law - you can't access another person's computer or computerized accounts without their permission - Leon's actions might very well be criminal, they said, ordering that the case proceed to trial. It is now set to go befoer a jury in March.

Oakland County prosecutor Jessica Cooper has been steadfast in defending her decision to charge Leon Walker, despite almost universal criticism. The fact that he'd discovered Clara back with a man she once said beat her is inconsequential, she told me in December. And she questioned whether the public reaction would be different if Walker had been snooping in email about Clara's bank accounts, or had been reading email exchanges she might have been having with her divorce attorney. Walker, Cooper says, is a computer hacker who should face the consequences.

So what will twelve of Leon Walker's peers decide when they hear the facts? And what will you do the next time your spouse - or even your kid - leaves a Gmail account open on the screen?

Better think twice.


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