Law / United States / 
Arkansas
Unlawful interference with access to computers; unlawful use or access of computers
In force since .
A computer misuse rule binding public and private bodies.
- Enforcement body
- Arkansas prosecuting attorneys, through ordinary criminal prosecution
- Obligation class
- Access restriction
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Do not knowingly and without authorization interfere with, deny, or cause the denial of access to a computer, system, or network to a person who has the duty and right to use it.no control in the NIST AI RMF
- Do not knowingly and without authorization use, access, attempt to access, or cause access to be gained to a computer, system, network, telecommunications device, telecommunications service, or information service.NIST AI RMFMAP 4.1
- Either offense becomes a Class C felony where it is committed to devise or execute a scheme to defraud or illegally obtain property.
- A reasonable, good-faith belief that you were authorized, or that the person able to consent would have authorized you, is an affirmative defense, but it must be noticed to the prosecuting attorney at least fourteen calendar days before trial or hearing.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
In the frameworks
- NIST AI RMF
- MAP 4.1Approaches for mapping AI technology and legal risks of its components – including the use of third-party data or software – are in place, followed, and documented, as are risks of infringement of a third party’s intellectual property or other rights.
- NIST AI 600-1
- GAI-RISK-09Information Security
- GAI-RISK-12Value Chain and Component Integration
- OWASP LLM Top 10
- LLM03:2026Excessive Agency
- OWASP Agentic Top 10
- ASI03Identity and Privilege Abuse
- MIT mitigations Draft
- FINOS AIGF
- AIR-PREV-018Agent Authority Least Privilege Framework
- AIR-PREV-023Agentic System Credential Protection Framework
- ETSI EN 304 223
- 5.1.2-6Access the AI system gets to other systems and data sources is minimal and risk assessed.
Our reading of where this law's duties sit in each framework, and in the NIST AI RMF, line by line beside each duty above. It never says that running a control meets the law. How we read a framework against the law
Identifiers refer to ETSI EN 304 223 V2.1.1 (2025-12), © ETSI 2025, all rights reserved. ETSI owns the standard; no ETSI text (titles or sentences) is reproduced here. The standard is free to download from ETSI.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
Unlawful interference with access to computers and unlawful use or access to computers are each a Class A misdemeanor, rising to a Class C felony where the violation was committed to devise or execute a scheme to defraud or illegally obtain property.
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Subsection (a) defines unlawful interference with access to computers and subsection (b) unlawful use or access to computers, each a Class A misdemeanor, and subsection (c) raises either to a Class C felony where committed to devise or execute a scheme to defraud or illegally obtain property. Subsection (d)(2) obliges a defendant who will plead the affirmative defense to file and serve a notice on the prosecuting attorney at least fourteen calendar days before trial or hearing; that is a pleading notice in a criminal case, not a duty to keep or produce a record of computer activity. The section states no territorial hook.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
A person commits unlawful interference with access to computers by knowingly and without authorization interfering with, denying, or causing the denial of access to or use of a computer, system, or network to a person who has the duty and right to use it, a Class A misdemeanor.
Separately, a person commits unlawful use or access to computers by knowingly and without authorization using, accessing, attempting to access, or causing access to be gained to a computer, system, network, telecommunications device, telecommunications service, or information service, also a Class A misdemeanor, rising to a Class C felony where either violation is committed to devise or execute a scheme to defraud or illegally obtain property.
It is an affirmative defense that the person reasonably believed they were authorized and acting within the scope of that authorization, or that the person able to consent would have authorized the access; a defendant who intends to raise this defense must give the prosecuting attorney written notice at least fourteen calendar days before trial or hearing.
This section is sometimes cited under the caption "unlawful computerized communications," which is instead the name of a different, unrelated section, Ark. Code Ann. § 5-41-108, a harassment statute covering threatening or obscene electronic messages and having no bearing on unauthorized computer access.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web.
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