Electronic Crimes Act, 2013, access and interference
Electronic Crimes Act, 2013 (No. 14 of 2013), s. 3
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 intentionally access, or download, copy or extract data from, an electronic system or network without a lawful excuse or justification.
- Accessing and copying a page a service has published for open, unauthenticated public access has not itself been held to lack a lawful excuse under this section.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Private right of actionNo
Criminal exposure note
A fine of up to two hundred thousand dollars or imprisonment of up to three years, or both, on summary conviction, or a fine of up to five hundred thousand dollars or imprisonment of up to seven years, or both, on conviction on indictment (s. 3(2)).
Penalty structure
Five hundred thousand dollars is the indictment ceiling under s. 3(2)(ii); the same subsection also allows imprisonment of up to seven years instead of or in addition to the fine, and sets a lower two-hundred-thousand-dollar, three-year ceiling on summary conviction.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- 5 September 2026
- Currency
- XCD
- Fixed cap
- 500,000
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Section 3(1) prohibits a person from intentionally, without lawful excuse or justification, accessing an electronic system or network, downloading, copying or extracting data or an electronic database from it, introducing a contaminant or malicious code, damaging or disrupting the system, denying an authorised person access to it, or destroying or altering source code with intent to cause damage.
The trigger is the absence of a "lawful excuse or justification" for the access, rather than a requirement to infringe a security measure, so the provision reads on its face more broadly than a statute limited to defeating an access control; a service that publishes a page for open, unauthenticated public access would ordinarily give a visitor a lawful excuse to access and copy it.
The offence carries a fine of up to two hundred thousand dollars or imprisonment of up to three years, or both, on summary conviction, or a fine of up to five hundred thousand dollars or imprisonment of up to seven years, or both, on conviction on indictment.
When LexLint raises it
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