On April 16, the Senate Public Security Committee began voting on a bill that modifies the law on computer crimes and harmonizes Chilean legislation with the Budapest Convention (File 12192). The bill updates Chilean regulations by incorporating seven new electronic crimes and their respective penalties, including data interception, fraud and computer forgery. Senators received proposals for amendments to the bill, and provided for additional proposals to be submitting until next week’s session, at which point they will start voting on them.

During the session, legislators initiated their so-called particular debate, which means that they began reviewing the text of the bill article by article. In this process amendments can be introduced where deemed appropriate. In the April 16 session, changes were made in the definition of the crime of computer fraud and counterfeiting which, as with other amendments, must be voted on by Senators before being incorporated in the bill. This vote will begin next week.

It should be noted that the bill is an Executive branch initiative, which comes after the 2018 cyber-insecurity incidents that rocked the Chilean financial system. For this reason, it defines new crimes such as sabotage and computer espionage, undue interception between computer systems, illegal collection of computer data, computer forgery and computer fraud. Each of these will have a corresponding criminal punishment.