Law / United States / 
Texas
Texas Breach of Computer Security, effective-consent and posted-prohibition offenses
In force since .
A computer misuse rule binding public and private bodies.
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Accessing a Texas-connected computer, computer network, or computer system without the effective consent of the owner is a criminal offense regardless of your intent (Tex. Penal Code § 33.02(a)).
- A more serious offense applies when you access a government- or business-owned system in violation of a clear and conspicuous posted prohibition, or a contract you expressly agreed to, combined with intent to defraud or harm someone or to alter, damage, or delete their data; a posted no-scraping notice or a clickwrap agreement carries real legal weight once paired with that intent.
- Ordinary commercial data collection without fraudulent or harmful intent is not elevated to the more serious offense by a posted prohibition alone.
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.
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
Who enforces it
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does a no-scraping clause in a website's terms of use amount to a "clear and conspicuous prohibition by the owner" under Tex. Penal Code section 33.02(b-1)?
- Does a browsewrap notice that a visitor never clicked count as a "contractual agreement to which the person has expressly agreed" under Tex. Penal Code section 33.02(b-1)?
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Section 33.02 makes knowing access without the owner's effective consent an offence (subsection a) and a more serious offence where access violates a clear and conspicuous prohibition or an agreed contract term with intent to defraud, harm or alter data (subsection b-1), and sets grading by amount. It requires no log or record from anyone. The section has no territorial clause.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Subsection (a) makes it a Class B misdemeanor to knowingly access a computer, computer network, or computer system without the effective consent of the owner.
A separate, more serious offense, subsection (b-1), is Texas's own statutory answer to the ToS and robots.txt authorization question: it applies where a person, with intent to defraud or harm another or to alter, damage, or delete property, knowingly accesses a computer system owned by government or a business in violation of either a clear and conspicuous prohibition posted by the owner or a contractual agreement the person expressly agreed to.
A posted no-scraping notice or a clickwrap agreement therefore carries independent legal weight in Texas, but only elevates exposure when paired with fraudulent or harmful intent, not for ordinary commercial data collection alone. No Texas case law applying subsection (b-1) or CUBI's publicly available media clause to a scraping fact pattern was found.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web.
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