Assembleia da República (Assembly of the Republic)
Law no. 109/2009, of 15 September
Approves the Cybercrime Law, transposing to the national legal order Council Framework
Decision 2005/222/JHA, of 24 February, on attacks against information systems, and adapts
to national law the Convention on Cybercrime of the Council of Europe.
Pursuant to article 161 c) of the Constitution, the Assembly of the Republic hereby decrees as
follows:
CHAPTER I
Subject-matter and definitions
Article 1
Subject-matter
This law lays down the substantive and procedural criminal provisions, as well as provisions
on international cooperation on criminal matters, concerning cybercrime and collection of
electronic evidence, transposing to the national legal order Council Framework Decision
2005/222/JHA, of 24 February, on attacks against information systems, and adapting to
national law the Convention on Cybercrime of the Council of Europe.
Article 2
Definitions
For the purposes hereof, the following definitions shall apply:
a) ''Computer system'' shall mean any device or group of inter-connected or related devices,
one or more of which, pursuant to a programme, performs automatic processing of computer
data, as well as the network supporting the communication between them and computer data
stored, processed, retrieved or transmitted by them for the purposes of their operation, use,
protection and maintenance;
b) ''Computer data'' shall mean any representation of facts, information or concepts in a form
suitable for processing in a computer system, including programmes suitable for causing a
computer system to perform a function;
c) ''Traffic data'' shall mean any computer data relating to a communication by means of a
computer system, generated by a computer system that formed a part in the chain of
communication, indicating the communication’s origin, destination, route, time, date, size,
duration, or type of underlying service;
d) ''Service provider'' shall mean any public or private entity that provides to users of its
service the ability to communicate by means of a computer system, as well as any other entity
that processes or stores computer data on behalf of such communication service or users of
such service;