The new law on cybercrime, approved by His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and enacted recently, seeks to reduce crimes by establishing penalties to protect public interest.
Under the law, illegal access to an IT system or part of it carries a maximum of one year jail sentence or a maximum fine of BD30,000, or both, while tapping carries a jail term or a maximum of BD100,000 fine, or both.
Anyone threatening to cause damage for personal gains will face a jail sentence or a maximum of BD30,000 fine, or both, according to the Gulf Daily News GDN today.
Anyone convicted of entering, damaging, disrupting, cancelling, deleting, destroying, changing, modifying, distorting or concealing IT device data concerning any government body will face a maximum of 10 years in jail.
Anyone convicted of embezzlement of funds, receiving favours for oneself or others, forging documents by impersonation or interfering in IT system work will face a prison sentence.
Online distribution of pornographic material carries a minimum one-year jail term or a maximum fine of BD10,000, or both. The jail sentence is doubled if the pornographic material targets children, GDN reported.