Privacy offences and social networks (particularly in the most recent case-law)

Social networks constitute new windows for displaying one’s own private life, while also being particularly suitable channels for exposing the privacy of others. In this last sense, they have recently become a most frequent vehicle for the crime of disclosing secrets, contained in Article 197 of the criminal code in its different forms (the conduct’s specific classification among them depends on how the shared intimate material was obtained). Here, the user of the network is the perpetrator of the privacy offence (section 1). On the other hand, social network users also place themselves in a vulnerable position (section 2), since everything they intend to show to a closed circle of recipients (their “friends”), which may eventually affect their privacy, can afterwards be passed on by any of these people—a conduct which, despite everything, we do not consider criminal. Thirdly, the most recent case-law has begun to deal with cases of non-consensual access to a user’s space in a social network (section 3), where article 197 bis crime of computer hacking comes into play.