Kuwait Law No. 63 of 2015 on Combating Information Technology Crimes — unauthorised access, online fraud, and the online extension of press-law and state-security speech offences

The law was issued on 7 July 2015 (20 Ramadan 1436) and took effect six months after its publication in the Official Gazette (Art. 21).

SYSTEM OFFENCES. Unauthorised access to a computer, system or network is punishable by up to six months and KD 500–2,000. The penalty is up to two years if data is deleted, destroyed, disclosed, altered or republished, and more if the data is personal (Art. 2). Unauthorised access to obtain government data that is confidential by law carries up to three years. It carries up to ten years and KD 5,000–20,000 if that data is destroyed, published or altered, and the same applies to data on bank accounts and electronic payment instruments (Art. 3). Obstructing access to services or disabling or defacing websites is covered by Art. 4. Card fraud: accessing card data carries up to one year; obtaining others' money with it, up to three years (Art. 5).

SPEECH OFFENCES.
- Art. 6 applies the penalties in items 1–3 of Art. 27 of the Press and Publications Law to anyone who commits, online or by any information-technology means, one of the acts in Arts. 19, 20 or 21 of that law.
- Art. 7 applies the penalty in Art. 29, first paragraph, of Law No. 31 of 1970, the state-security provisions amending the Penal Code, to anyone who commits online an act listed in Art. 28 of the Press and Publications Law.

The content of those press-law articles is not reproduced in this law, and was not reviewed for this entry. A report relying on Arts. 6–7 must set out the text of the press-law article concerned.

OTHER OFFENCES. Creating a website or publishing information to traffic in persons or promote drugs carries up to seven years and KD 10,000–30,000 (Art. 8). Laundering money through networks carries up to ten years and KD 20,000–50,000 (Art. 9). Creating a site for a terrorist organisation or person, or publishing information to facilitate contact with it, promote its ideas, finance it, or explain how to make incendiary or explosive devices, carries up to ten years and KD 20,000–50,000 (Art. 10).

GENERAL PROVISIONS. Penalties may not fall below half the maximum where the offence involved an organised gang, abuse of public office, exploitation of minors, or prior similar convictions (Art. 11). An offender who reports before the authorities know of the offence may be exempted (Art. 12). Devices and proceeds may be confiscated, and premises or sites closed for up to a year; closure is mandatory on repetition with the owner's knowledge (Art. 13). Legal representatives who knowingly contributed by breach of duty bear the same financial penalties, and legal persons are liable for fines and compensation (Art. 14). The Public Prosecution alone investigates and prosecutes (Art. 17). Proceedings are time-barred after two years for offences punishable by up to three years and five years otherwise, from the date of the offence (Art. 18). Heavier penalties in other laws still apply (Art. 16).

USE IN A REPORT: in cases involving prosecution for social-media posts, identify which route is used: Art. 6 (press-law content offences), Art. 7 (state-security penalty) or a Penal Code provision directly. Set out the underlying article. The penalty ranges differ substantially between them, and a report that cites "the cybercrime law" without the article cannot be tested.

SOURCE: the Arabic text was read in full on lawskw.com (Kuwait Laws Portal), a private publisher of consolidated Kuwaiti legislation. The authoritative text is the Official Gazette (Kuwait Al-Youm); gazette numbers and dates above are as shown by the source.

The law's own offences are largely conventional cybercrime. Its significance for expression cases lies in Arts. 6–7, which carry over offences defined elsewhere to anything published online, including social-media posts. Those articles are the link between online posts and the press and state-security laws. Their operation in particular cases — which posts are charged, and under which article — is documented in reports by UN bodies and NGOs elsewhere on this record, and should be cited from those, not inferred from this text.