UgandaComputer Misuse Act, 2011, unauthorised access
archived copy
Read from a public archive copy, not the publisher directly. The publisher does not serve this page to automated readers, so a direct fetch was not an option here; how we access sources. Archived 2024. Publisher's page: https://ulii.org/en/akn/ug/act/2011/2/eng@2023-12-31A computer misuse rule binding public and private bodies.
What it requires
- This provision is not currently enforceable: Uganda's Constitutional Court declared the Computer Misuse (Amendment) Act, 2022 void for lack of parliamentary quorum and permanently enjoined enforcement of section 11 on .
- Before this ruling, the section made it an offence to access, intercept, or cause a computer to output another person's program or data without authorisation, whether or not the person accessed the data for a scraping or training purpose.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Private right of actionNo
Criminal exposure note
Before being struck down, the offence carried a fine of up to 750 currency points (UGX 15,000,000) or imprisonment of up to ten years, or both, on conviction (s. 11(7) as renumbered by the 2022 amendment; s. 12(4) as originally enacted).
Penalty structure
The cap that applied under section 11 before it was struck down on ; the provision currently carries no operative penalty because its enforcement is permanently enjoined.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- Currency
- UGX
- Fixed cap
- 15,000,000
What this law does
As originally enacted, section 12 (renumbered section 11 by the Computer Misuse (Amendment) Act, 2022) made it an offence to access or intercept another person's program, data or information without authorisation, and the 2022 amendment added voice or video recording of another person and sharing information about another person without authorisation to the same offence, carrying a fine of up to 750 currency points (UGX 15,000,000) or imprisonment of up to ten years, or both.
On , in a consolidated ruling on three petitions filed in 2022, Uganda's Constitutional Court held that the Computer Misuse (Amendment) Act, 2022 was passed without the quorum of one-third of all members required by the Rules of Procedure of Parliament and Articles 88 and 89 of the Constitution, and separately found section 11, along with sections 23 and 26 to 29, vague, overbroad and inconsistent with the constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and access to information.
The court declared the Computer Misuse (Amendment) Act, 2022 null and void and issued a permanent injunction restraining its enforcement of section 11, so no unauthorised-access offence under this Act currently binds a person accessing a computer system in Uganda.
When LexLint raises it
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