Lei Carolina Dieckmann (Law 12.737/2012)
termgovernance & riskprivacy
The Brazilian statute of November 2012 that made unauthorised access to a computing device a crime in its own right, inserting article 154-A into the Penal Code. It took effect in April 2013.
It is named after the actress whose device was compromised and whose private photographs were published in an extortion attempt - a case that made the legislative gap impossible to ignore, since prosecutors until then had to stretch general statutes to reach conduct that was obviously criminal. The pattern is the same one that produced the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in the United States: a public incident, a fast legislative response, and a text the field then lives with for decades. It was later reinforced by Law 14.155/2021, which raised penalties for electronic fraud and device intrusion.
Also known as: lei 12.737, invasão de dispositivo informático, brazilian computer crime law