Legal Question in Technology Law in Virginia
internet privacy
My husband and I are in court at the moment with CPS trying to decide whether the baby is to be placed with me or my husband's parents. I am in a wheelchair, and the court already ordered I be supervised with the child, so my mom and sister who are staying with me to help me are doing that.
Hubby's lawyer however got ahold of my online journal and is wanting to use that in court to prove this an unfit environment, based on personal feelings I wrote about my mother and sister at earlier times.
Can they do that?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: internet privacy
The answer probably will depend upon how you posted the journal. You say it was "online" which suggests it might have been publicly available. If so, then you had no reasonable expectation of privacy in it and it can legitimately be used against you in court. The same is true if you produced the journal to your ex during discovery, unless you had a privacy stipulation in place. However, if you had it password protected and your ex was not authorized to look at it, you will have a good argument for keeping it out.
Please note that my answer addresses only the general issues of internet privacy and admissibility of evidence, which seems appropriate for a question posted under Computer & Technology Law. I do not know whether the family courts in Virginia have non-standard rules of evidence, so you might want to re-post this question under family law to see whether there are additional issues I did not recognize.
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