This story sounds like a bad Lifetime movie – a suspense/drama thriller that goes beyond the norm of what “normal” people will do. I can’t imagine how this poor woman has lived out such a real nightmare for so many years.

A Seattle-area man was given a 26 1/2-year prison term for waging a 17-year campaign of harassment against a former classmate he met in middle school. Prosecutors are calling this the longest sentence for stalking in memory.

Shawn Moul, 31, passively accepted the sentence last week which came about six months after being convicted on two felony counts of stalking and 19 counts of violating anti-harassment orders.

Moul began stalking classmate Tracy Lundeen in 1994, shortly after Lundeen saw him at the school library struggling with his homework and offered to help him. Lundeen said Moul began following her and wrote her more than 100 letters, alternately threatening her and vowing to kill himself. He also contacted Lundeen’s family members, demanding that she contact him.

Moul has already served prison time for repeatedly violating a no-contact order, having been sentenced to eight years in prison in 2001. Apparently, eight years wasn’t enough to teach him a lesson because after his release, he again initiated contact through Lundeen’s sister.

In court, Lundeen spoke of the long nightmare Moul has made her and her family endure. “We never asked for this,” Lundeen said. “We have, from the beginning, asked for one thing, and that’s to be left alone.”

She also addressed her stalker directly in court, saying: “Mr. Moul , please listen to me. I don’t love you. I don’t like you. I don’t intend to ever be with you. Please quit trying to contact me or my other family members.”

Lundeen added she believes that until Mr. Moul is dead, “nothing changes,” the Seattle Times reported.

Moul also spoke at his sentencing and did not oppose the lengthy prison term. “I don’t mind being in custody for the rest of my life,” he said.

Maybe now Tracy and her family can find some peace. Mr. Moul could use some psychiatric help.

The prosecutor’s office has taken steps to ensure Moul is unable to send Lundeen letters from prison.                                               

I know of a woman who was stalked for one year. It was difficult to collect evidence. For example, she would see his car parked in the front of her house, but when she ran out to take a picture or video, he would drive away.

If you need help building a case, you can contact MSI Detective Services. You should also try to take as many protective measures as possible such as carrying pepper spray and a personal alarm. Some states will allow you to purchase a stun gun. Our U-Spy website, under “Personal Defense/Stun Guns,” has a list of states where we cannot ship stun guns and a link for laws in your area.

Always let someone know where you are going. Stalking is being taken much more seriously than it has in the past. Do not be embarrassed to ask people for help. 
Read story@ msnbc

Other Source: mynorthwest.com

Electronic snooping, however, is a whole different playing field that’s regulated by both State and Federal Law. The easiest ways to find out usually aren’t legal. What type of activities could land a snooping partner in jail? Using a password to illegally snoop through personal email files. In most states, email is considered private conversation, subject to “reasonable expectations” that what’s written between parties on email is protected, even in the case of a husband and wife.

The Orlando Sentinel reported that a spurned Michigan spouse is learning the hard way. The husband is a computer professional, and when signs arose that his wife was cheating, he accessed her email to find evidence. Unfortunately for him, he now faces felony charges that could land him in prison for up to 5 years. Likewise, accessing any private computer account–life Facebook–is illegal.

What’s not okay? Places where we expect privacy: bedrooms, bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, hotel rooms, certain office spaces, doctor’s offices, dental offices, etc. It’s illegal to record in these places while outside of them as well: think of the Erin Andrews stalking case; so, it is not legal to record through peepholes, windows, etc.

Some surveillance laws are vague; for instance, tracking devices (GPS) for private citizens. The courts have ruled both ways on this matter although law enforcement officials must obtain permission to track suspects.

It’s not legal to violate a spouses computer, but it is legal for parents to monitor a child’s online activity. Employers can also check employee’s computer interactions.

What about cell phone eavesdropping? Using cell phone eavesdropping software can be, according to FederalCriminalLawyer.us,  a Federal felony.  ”Under Title 18, Section 2511 of the United States Code, it is a felony to record a conversation unless at least one party to the conversation consents. The crime is called eavesdropping, and a person found guilty can be sentenced to 5 years in prison and fined $250,000.”

A private investigator is your best bet.

He was also sentenced to three years probation and a year of anger management counseling. Following the criminal investigation and man’s arrest at an area airport, Huey served nearly a year’s worth of time in jail after witnesses claimed that his small plane–a 1957 Beech–made eight low-level flights over the ex-girlfriends home, alarming neighbors.

According to witness statements, the neighborhood was also plastered with fliers using racial slurs to describe the former girlfriend. Although the prosecution claimed that they didn’t get to finish presenting their case after the guilty plea, they’re happy with the outcome. Deputy District Attorney Jason Peck said Thursday. “His actions instilled fear and harassed not only the victim, but that entire neighborhood.”

US Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS Device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway – and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre – and scary – rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants – with no need for a search warrant.

It is a dangerous decision – one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS Tracking Device to the vehicle’s underside.

After Pineda-Moreno challenged the DEA’s actions, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled in January that it was all perfectly legal.

More disturbingly, a larger group of judges on the circuit, who were subsequently asked to reconsider the ruling, decided this month to let it stand. (Pineda-Moreno has pleaded guilty conditionally to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and manufacturing marijuana while appealing the denial of his motion to suppress evidence obtained with the help of GPS.)

In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno’s privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the “curtilage,” a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government’s intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.

The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno’s driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited. (See the misadventures of the CIA.)

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month’s decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people’s. The court’s ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.

Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. “There’s been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there’s one kind of diversity that doesn’t exist,” he wrote. “No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter.” The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of “cultural elitism.” (Read about one man’s efforts to escape the surveillance state.)

The court went on to make a second terrible decision about privacy: that once a GPS Device has been planted, the government is free to use it to track people without getting a warrant. There is a major battle under way in the federal and state courts over this issue, and the stakes are high. After all, if government agents can track people with secretly planted GPS devices virtually anytime they want, without having to go to a court for a warrant, we are one step closer to a classic police state – with technology taking on the role of the KGB or the East German Stasi.

Fortunately, other courts are coming to a different conclusion from the Ninth Circuit’s – including the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. That court ruled, also this month, that tracking for an extended period of time with GPS is an invasion of privacy that requires a warrant. The issue is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

In these highly partisan times, GPS monitoring is a subject that has both conservatives and liberals worried. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s pro-privacy ruling was unanimous – decided by judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. (Comment on this story.)

Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. “1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it’s here at last,” he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell’s totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: “Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we’re living in Oceania.”

Cohen, a lawyer, is a former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial board.