Penal Code, Illegal Access to a Computer System
Penal Code No. 26/NA (17 May 2017), arts. 164-165
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 6 September 2026.
What it requires
- Do not defeat a special protection system to access a computer system with intent to obtain commercial, financial or privately held data.
- Reading a public, unauthenticated page without defeating any special protection system has not itself been held to violate this provision.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Private right of actionNo
Criminal exposure note
Imprisonment for three months to one year and a fine of 2,000,000 to 5,000,000 kip, on conviction (Penal Code, art. 165).
Penalty structure
Fine only, as the ceiling of the stated range; the same article also allows imprisonment of three months to one year instead of or in addition to the fine.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- 6 September 2026
- Currency
- LAK
- Fixed cap
- 5,000,000
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Article 165 criminalises using electronic instruments in a computer system that has a special protection system, with intent to illegally obtain commercial, financial or individuals' privately held data, punishable by three months to one year imprisonment and a fine of 2,000,000 to 5,000,000 kip. Article 164 separately criminalises disclosing the special protection measures themselves.
Because the offence's trigger is defeating a special protection system, a scraper reading a public, unauthenticated page without circumventing any access control falls outside a plain reading of the provision, and no reported Lao case has tested the point.
The Penal Code also criminalises, in the same chapter, illegal interception of non-public computer data transmissions (art. 167) and interference with a computer system (art. 170), neither of which is addressed to reading a page a publisher has made public.
When LexLint raises it
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Read the law
Official Gazette text of the Penal Code
Law No. 26/NA (17 May 2017), preserved in an Internet Archive capture of the Lao Official Gazette's PDF