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Law / Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago

4 of 5 named instruments researched to a stage, across three of the six areas of law we track: 3 in force and 1 enacted but not yet in force. As of 5 September 2026.

  1. AI law none researched
  2. Privacy law 1
  3. Scraping law 2
  4. Cybersecurity law none researched
  5. Age gating law none researched
  6. News aggregation law 1

in forceenacted but not yet in forceproposedrepealed, withdrawn or blocked

Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.

Privacy law1 instrument, 1 enacted but not yet in force

Research summary (151 words)

Trinidad and Tobago's personal-data statute is the Data Protection Act, 2011 (Act No. 13 of 2011, Chap. 22:04), assented to on 22 June 2011.

Only Part I and specified sections of Part II, which state the General Privacy Principles and establish the Office of the Information Commissioner, came into operation on 6 January 2012 under Legal Notice No. 2 of 2012; Part IV, which would bind private-sector organisations to those Principles, and Part V, which states the Act's offences and penalties, have not been proclaimed and are not in force.

The Principles already in force require a person handling personal information to identify the collection purpose, obtain the individual's knowledge and consent for collection, use, or disclosure, retain the information no longer than necessary, keep it accurate, protect it with appropriate safeguards, and condition any disclosure of personal information outside Trinidad and Tobago on comparable safeguards existing in the receiving jurisdiction.

Comprehensive regime

Data Protection Act, 2011

Act No. 13 of 2011 (Data Protection Act), Chap. 22:04Consolidated text of the Data Protection Act

Commencement not set. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Section 6 states the General Privacy Principles, applicable to all persons who handle, store, or process personal information belonging to another person: an organisation is responsible for personal information under its control, must identify the collection purpose before or at collection, needs the individual's knowledge and consent for collection, use, or disclosure, must retain the information no longer than necessary, keep it accurate, and protect it with safeguards appropriate to its sensitivity, and may disclose it outside Trinidad and Tobago only where comparable safeguards exist in the receiving jurisdiction.

Section 69 (Part IV) would apply the General Privacy Principles to any person who collects, retains, manages, uses, processes, or stores personal information in Trinidad and Tobago, or who collects it from individuals there, and sections 70 to 86 would let the Commissioner require industry codes of conduct and give individuals a right to access and correct personal information held by an organisation.

Section 1(2) provides that Part I and sections 7 to 18, 22, 23, 25(1), 26, and 28 came into operation on 6 January 2012 under Legal Notice No. 2 of 2012; Part IV and Part V, which state the private-sector duties and the Act's offences and penalties, are not listed among the commenced provisions and have not been proclaimed.

What it requires

Scraping law2 instruments, 2 in force

Research summary (244 words)

Trinidad and Tobago has no scraping-specific statute, so general law governs each dimension separately.

The Computer Misuse Act, Chap. 11:17, criminalises knowingly and without authority causing a computer to perform a function to secure access to a program or data, and access is without authority where the person is not entitled to control it and lacks the consent of the person who is; unlike some computer-misuse statutes, the offence does not require defeating a technical security measure, and no reported case has tested whether reading a public, unauthenticated page satisfies it.

No Trinidadian court has ruled on the enforceability of a browsewrap or clickwrap terms-of-service against a scraper.

The Copyright Act, Chap. 82:80, protects an original collection of works or of mere data (a database) by the selection, coordination, or arrangement of its contents, which is compilation-style protection rather than a sui generis database right, and the Act predates the concept of a text-and-data-mining exception, so no such exception or opt-out mechanism exists; its general quotation and teaching-reproduction exceptions (ss.

10-11) are the closest analogues and do not reach bulk copying for model training. The Data Protection Act, 2011 would reach personal data scraped from a public Trinidadian website once its private-sector Part IV is proclaimed, but that Part has not yet been brought into force.

No Trinidadian statute or reported case establishes a scraping-specific unfair-competition, misappropriation, or trespass doctrine, and none assigns legal weight to a robots.txt directive or imposes an AI-training-specific rule.

Computer misuse

Computer Misuse Act 2000, Unauthorised Access

Act 26 of 2000 (Computer Misuse Act), Chap. 11:17, s. 3 (Unauthorised Access to Computer Program or Data)Official consolidated Act text, Ministry of Legal Affairs, reproduced by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

In force since 2 November 2000. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Section 3(1) prohibits knowingly and without authority causing a computer to perform any function for the purpose of securing access to a program or data held in that computer or another one, on pain of a fine of $15,000 and imprisonment for two years, rising to $30,000 and four years on a second or subsequent conviction.

Section 2(2) defines access as unauthorised where the person is not entitled to control access of that kind and does not have the consent of the person who is; the offence does not require infringing a security measure, so it is drawn more broadly than a computer-misuse statute that turns on circumvention.

Section 3(2) adds a further fine and imprisonment where the access causes damage, and section 9 enhances the penalty to $150,000 and ten years' imprisonment where the offence involves a protected computer. No reported Trinidadian case construes whether reading a public, unauthenticated page without defeating any access control falls within the section absent the consent element being read narrowly.

What it requires

News aggregation law1 instrument, 1 in force

Research summary (212 words)

Trinidad and Tobago has no press-publisher neighbouring right and no mandatory platform-to-publisher bargaining code; the general copyright framework of the Copyright Act, Chap. 82:80, is the only law reaching an aggregator's reproduction of news content.

Its quotation exception permits, without the copyright owner's authorization, reproducing a short part of a published work, including a newspaper article, as a quotation, subject to a fair-dealing and purpose-justified-extent test and a duty to indicate the source and the author's name; the provision carries no headline-length or short-extract cap distinct from that test, and no reported Trinidadian decision applies it to a systematic news aggregator rather than an individual quoting a published work.

A collection of works or of mere data, including a compilation of news content, is separately protected where original by its selection, coordination, or arrangement, which is compilation-style protection rather than a press-publisher neighbouring right of the kind the European Union's Digital Single Market Directive Article 15 creates.

No statute or case law addresses whether a hyperlink is itself a communication to the public, or whether framing or inline display changes the answer, and no hot-news or misappropriation doctrine distinct from ordinary copyright law exists. The Act predates the concept of a machine-readable text-and-data-mining reservation, so no opt-out mechanism of that kind exists.

This page covers the instruments LexLint has researched to a stage. Instruments named in the corpus but not yet researched are counted in the head and are not listed here. Every entry carries its own primary source on its note page. This is a research index, not legal advice.