Codigo Penal, articulo 231, Espionaje informatico
Codigo Penal (Ley No. 4573), art. 231, segun reforma por Ley No. 9048
A citation is an address, not a summary. The first part names the law; what follows narrows it to the exact section, article or paragraph.
In force.
A computer misuse rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 5 September 2026.
What it requires
- Do not use a computerized manipulation to appropriate, copy, or transmit information of economic or commercial value without the authorization of the system's owner or the party responsible for it.
- Reading a page the operator has made public and unauthenticated has not itself been held to violate this article.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Private right of actionNo
Criminal exposure note
Imprisonment of three to six years on conviction (Codigo Penal art. 231).
What it reaches
Obligation class
Access restriction
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Article 231, added by Ley No. 9048, punishes with three to six years of imprisonment a person who, without the authorization of the owner or the party responsible, and by means of any computerized or technological manipulation, appropriates, transmits, copies, modifies, destroys, uses, blocks, or recycles information of value to the economic traffic of industry and commerce.
The offense's trigger is the absence of authorization from the system's owner or responsible party rather than the circumvention of a specific technical access control, so a plain reading leaves open whether reading a page an operator has made publicly and unauthenticated available is conduct the owner has thereby authorized.
The Legislative Assembly approved Ley No. 9048 on 7 June 2012 and the President signed it on 10 July 2012; the pgrweb consolidated text states it takes effect on publication without itself stating that publication date.
When LexLint raises it
crawls_webtrains_models
Read the law
Consolidated Codigo Penal text as reformed by Ley No. 9048
Sistema Costarricense de Informacion Juridica (SCIJ), Procuraduria General de la Republica