An appellate court has upheld the conviction of a woman who was sentenced by a lower court on charges of intrusion of privacy.
The Swiss woman from Aargau, in northern Switzerland, logged into a personal email account of her husband on a shared computer and found different details of many extramarital affairs.
She then confronted him and the confrontation erupted into an argument that led him to vacate their matrimonial home.
She was then sued for invasion of privacy.
She had been convicted by a court in Muri, northern Switzerland in February and fined approximately £7,500 which was suspended for two years and additional £3,250 to cover police costs.
The prosecutor said the woman intentionally and repeatedly invaded her husband’s account and downloaded material that was not her own.
The computer, an external hard drive and a USB stick were confiscated.
The appellate court upheld the judgement of the lower court but handed down a reduced sentence.
The court upheld the conviction on the grounds that reading password-protected data without the account owner’s permission is illegal under Article 145 of the Swiss criminal code and punishable with a fine or up to three years in prison.
The court reduced the initial sentence of £7,500 to £1,150 because the woman merely had to “exploit her husband’s carelessness” and thus exert “minimal criminal energy ” to gain access to the information.
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