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Law / United States / North Dakota

Computer fraud and computer crime

N.D. Cent. Code § 12.1-06.1-08

In force.

A computer misuse rule binding public and private bodies.

Obligation class
Access restriction
Audit expectation
none

What it requires

  • Do not gain or attempt to gain access to, alter, damage, modify, copy, disclose, take possession of, or destroy a North Dakota-connected computer, computer system, or computer network in excess of the authorization you were given or without authorization at all; unlike some other states' statutes, no fraud, malice, or deception is required for this to be a class A misdemeanor.
  • A separate, more serious class C felony applies if the same conduct is done with intent to defraud, deceive, prevent authorized use of, or control property or services by false or fraudulent pretenses.
  • The owner or lessee of the affected computer, system, or network may bring a private civil action for damages, restitution, and attorney's fees.

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
OWASP LLM Top 10
OWASP Agentic Top 10
  • ASI03Identity and Privilege Abuse
MIT mitigations Draft
  • 2.1Model & Infrastructure Security
  • 3.2Data Governance
FINOS AIGF
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. 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

Private right of actionYes

Criminal exposure note

Unauthorized or in-excess-of-authorization access, alteration, copying, or disruption is a class A misdemeanor (computer crime); the same conduct done with intent to defraud or deceive is a class C felony (computer fraud). The section states these classifications only; it does not itself state a dollar fine or a term of imprisonment.

Who enforces it

Enforcement body

The owner or lessee of the affected computer, computer system or computer network, by a private civil action under section 12.1-06.1-08(3); the class C felony and class A misdemeanor are criminal offences.

Settledness

As of
Open questions
Does automated access to a public web page contrary to the site's terms of use occur "in excess of authorization given" under section 12.1-06.1-08(2)?

What it makes you log

Logging duty

Section 12.1-06.1-08 creates computer fraud and computer crime offenses and a civil action for damages, restitution and attorney's fees. It imposes no duty to create, keep, produce or review a log or record, and states no territorial clause.

Kind
None
As of

What this law does

Drafted with AI

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

Research summary

Legal information, not legal advice. This is LexLint's own research summary of a public legal source, and it creates no attorney-client relationship. For decisions that matter, consult qualified counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. About LexLint

A person commits computer fraud, a class C felony, by gaining or attempting to gain access to, altering, damaging, modifying, copying, disclosing, taking possession of, or destroying a computer, computer system, or computer network, without authorization, with the intent to defraud, deceive, prevent authorized use of, or control property or services by false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises.

A person separately commits computer crime, a class A misdemeanor, by intentionally and either in excess of authorization given or without authorization gaining or attempting to gain access to, altering, damaging, modifying, copying, disclosing, taking possession of, introducing a computer contaminant into, destroying, or preventing the authorized use of a computer, computer system, computer network, or any software, program, or data within one; this misdemeanor tier carries no fraud, malice, or deception element, so intentional access in excess of or without authorization is itself enough, closer to a bare authorization test than the malicious-intent-or-deceptive-means standard some neighboring states use.

Subsection 3 gives the owner or lessee of the affected computer, system, or network a civil action for damages, restitution, and attorney's fees. The current codification of this section traces to House Bill 1038, chapter 164 of the 1987 North Dakota Session Laws, which amended and reenacted the section and carried no emergency clause.

The Century Code carries no history note stating the day this section came into force, and no record of the enacting session's general effective date has been located.

When LexLint raises it

When your app profile says your app crawls the web.

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