T.J. McIntyre blogs about Irish law. Spousal snooping in password-protected computers or illegal acquisition of evidence is a problem everywhere. How will the Irish courts handle it?
… The High Court gave a recent judgment in the family law case P v. Q [2012] IEHC 593 which offers some guidance. In this case the applicant (the husband) sought a judicial separation and attempted to introduce evidence relating to the respondent’s (wife’s) sexual activities since the breakup of their marriage, including details of material on her laptop and posted by her to certain websites. The respondent gave evidence that the passwords for her laptop and the access codes for the sites were kept in a locked safe which the applicant must have accessed illegally. Consequently she sought to ensure that the information obtained by the applicant was not used in the proceedings and in particular was not used as the basis to obtain an order for discovery against her.
Read more about the case and the court’s ruling on IT Law in Ireland