The Supreme Court in its STS 260/2021, of March 22 has upheld the appeal filed by a person convicted of a crime of disclosure of secrets of art. 197.2 C.P. for having accessed for 1 year to police databases, using his status as a national police officer, in order to obtain personal information of a third party, in this case, his ex-partner.
For these facts, the Provincial Court of Madrid sentenced the defendant as the author of a crime of disclosure of secrets under Article 197.2 of the Criminal Code (CP) to two years and six months imprisonment, a fine of 18 months and absolute disqualification for six years.
The High Court concludes that “In this case, it is not known, as we have said, whether the access to the file of persons allowed to know any personal or family data of the complainant or whether the knowledge was limited to verify the non-existence of antecedents; and, with respect to the other consultations, the knowledge of the ownership of the vehicles was easily attainable by other legitimate means. Consequently, there is no evidence of prejudice, nor is there any relevant impairment of the rights to privacy or to computer self-determination of the owner of the data or of a third party, for which reason the plea is upheld, making it unnecessary to examine the other grounds of appeal.
The Supreme Court points out that in order to convict for the crime of disclosure of secrets it is necessary that the account of proven facts of the sentence includes the information obtained by the active subject when accessing a personal database, as well as detailing the harmful consequences that have been derived from this knowledge. In fact, the crime. And thus, it points out that “What the precept sanctions is not the unauthorized access to the file, but the unauthorized access to the data”. And in the case in question, the High Court ultimately considers that there is a lack of record of the data accessed by the convicted person, that it is non-sensitive data and that there is no harm to the victim.
Therefore, the Supreme Court upheld the appeal filed by the convicted person, acquitting him of the crime of disclosure of secrets to which he had been convicted.
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