A husband in Taiwan who used a robot vacuum to gather evidence that his wife was cheating has ended up with a criminal conviction after recording her through the device without consent.
The man, from Taoyuan, was sentenced to five months in prison for unlawfully recording intimate images.
The couple married in 2021 and sometimes stayed at a holiday property in Guishan. In 2023, the husband became suspicious after noticing belongings inside the home that appeared to belong to another man.
His suspicions were confirmed on Christmas Eve when he remotely accessed the property's robot vacuum through an app. He initially intended to communicate with his wife using the device, but its live camera showed another man inside the home.
The husband then activated the vacuum's recording function and captured footage of his wife with the other man.
The recordings later helped him succeed in a separate civil case. He initially sought NT$2 million in compensation, but the court ultimately ordered his wife and the other man to jointly pay NT$500,000 after determining their relationship had gone beyond that of ordinary friends.
However, his wife later filed a criminal complaint over the way the footage had been obtained.
The husband admitted recording the video but argued that he had done so to collect evidence of an affair. The Taoyuan District Court rejected that argument, ruling that his wife still had a reasonable expectation of privacy while inside the home.
The court found that deliberately recording the footage went beyond what was reasonably necessary to prove the affair and sentenced him to five months in prison.
The sentence can reportedly be converted into an NT$150,000 fine, equivalent to more than $4,700, and the ruling can still be appealed.