Cyberharassment, violations of privacy, cybercrime, actual violence

Law 24-97

This law sanctions any action that affects anyone’s privacy by stating that it should be punishable:

• Arts. 337, 338-1. Anyone who voluntarily attempts against the privacy of private life, particularly by capturing, recording or transmitting, without the person's consent, words pronounced by the person in a private or confidential manner.
• Who voluntarily attempts against the privacy of private life, particularly, capturing, recording or transmitting, without the person's consent, the image of the same in a private place.
• Who retains recordings or documents obtained as a result of voluntarily attempting against the privacy of the private life of one or more persons.
• Who over the phone, identified or not, disturbs the peace of people with threats, obscene, abusive, defamatory or deceptive interventions against the caller or any family member.

These crimes are penalized with imprisonment of 6 months to 1 year and fines of 25 to 50 thousand pesos.

• Article 338 also sanctions the Publication by any means of the image or assembly made with the word or with images of a person without their consent is penalized with imprisonment of 1 to 2 years and a fine of 50,000 to 100,000 pesos.

Cybercrime act of 2007, Law 53-07 has several articles related to cyberviolence. These range from Article 12 - Attack against the Life of the Person, Article 19 - Use of Equipment for the Invasion of Privacy and Article 23 - Sexual Attempt.

• Article 12- Attack against the Life of the Person. It will be sanctioned with the same penalties of intentional or unintentional homicide, the attack on life, or the provocation of the death of a person committed using electronic, computer, telematic or telecommunications systems, or its components.
• Article 19- Use of Equipment for Invasion of Privacy. The use, without legitimate cause or authorization of the legally competent entity, of electronic, computer, telematic, telecommunications, or devices that may be used to carry out operations that undermine privacy in any of its forms, shall be sanctioned with the penalty of six months to two years in prison and a fine of five to five hundred times the minimum wage.
• Article 23- Sexual Attempt. The fact of exercising a sexual attack against a child, adolescent, incapacitated or mentally alienated, through the use of an information system or any of its components, will be punished with the penalties of three to ten years in prison and fine from five at two hundred times the minimum wage.

This past few months a multi-stakeholder group of national actors in the process of revising Law 53-07. One of the biggest changes in this law is the Title dealing with Content-related offenses. In this regard, aside from updating articles 12, 19 and 23 there are proposals for criminalizing other types of cyberviolence acts, such as: threats, stalking, bullying and revenge porn.