Offence 2: Unauthorised Access with Intent

Offence 2 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 is committed when a person gets into a computer, or into data held on one, without permission and does so intending to carry out a further crime of their own — or to help somebody else carry one out. Two things must both be true: the access is unauthorised, and the reason for getting in is criminal. Because the unauthorised access always happens too, Offence 2 also includes Offence 1.

The further offence can be almost any other crime, including fraud, theft, identity theft, blackmail or burglary. For example, imagine a person gets into a courier company's computer system without permission and studies its delivery records to work out which houses will be empty on a particular day, planning to burgle one of them. The access is unauthorised, and the burglary they intend to commit is the further offence.

Intention is enough

For Offence 2, the person's intention is enough. The further offence does not have to be completed, or even started beyond the access. If the person is caught before they ever get inside the house, they can still be guilty of Offence 2 because they accessed the system with that criminal purpose in mind. Intending to help somebody else commit their crime counts too: this is called facilitating the offence.

This is different from Offence 1, which is unauthorised access on its own with no further criminal purpose. It is also different from Offence 3, which is about intending to damage or interfere with how a computer operates. Offence 2 points towards another crime, such as fraud or blackmail, rather than at breaking the computer's operation.