The Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife has sentenced a man to one year in prison for considering him responsible for a crime of revealing secrets, since he accessed his wife's computer in order to know the economic situation of the woman's company "and thus pay less in the divorce."
The ruling imposes a fine of almost 2,200 euros and takes for granted that the 55-year-old man, without authorization, accessed the terminal that was in the common home of Las Galletas while they were in the process of separation.
Then he introduced a USB storage device and copied "sensitive" information, such as invoices, receipts, payment notices and billing squares.
The company is owned by his wife and a sole administrator who also claimed compensation for damages caused to the company, a request that was rejected.
Before the Court, the defendant alleged that it could never be proven that the data was transferred or revealed to other people, which had not been maintained, or raised and therefore punished in the first instance.
He also argued that the computer was not protected by a password and that despite being privately owned by the complainant and her partner, its content was always accessible to the family.
The Court alleges that access to reserved personal data or family data stored on a computer support is punishable and none of the criminal modalities requires that the computer system or device in which it is stored has any security barrier to prevent unauthorized access.
It is also not a requirement that the computer system in which the information is located is owned by the injured party.
"The fact that third parties are authorized to access a computer system does not imply authorization to access reserved files or copy them without authorization from their owner," the Court responds to reject the second argument. Nor is the use of force required, but it is enough to access a computer system without permission and its copying to have committed a crime, beyond whether or not force has been used.
The man also alleged that it had not been proven that he caused economic damage to his wife and her partner, which is also ruled out since the ruling does not include any type of compensation.
The appellant presented a series of allegations about the operation of the security camera and the alarm of the house that the Court does not quite understand, nor what its purpose is.
Finally, it is added that in order to impose a conviction in this type of crime, it is enough to have knowledge that reserved information is known that is not generally available to other people, there is no authorization for access or copying and that the privacy of its owner is undermined."
