Mohamed Wurie Bah, Esq.
Freetown, 20th July 2026- On Wednesday 8th July, I joined Truth Morning Devotion on Truth FM 103.9 to speak on Understanding the Cyber Crime Act, Cyberbullying, Addictive Platform Designs and the Call to Ban Teenagers from Social Media.
We got to teenagers and platform design. But the calls that followed me out of the studio, and they have not stopped, were about something I said almost in passing:
That going into your partner’s phone without permission may amount to a criminal offence, and that this is worth saying loudest to those who are not married, because that is where the confidence that no law applies is greatest.
Some callers were indignant. “So if I suspect my man is cheating, I should fold my arms?” Others asked whether marriage changes the answer. One asked, quite seriously, whether a wife owns her husband’s phone.
Let me now do what a radio segment does not permit. Let me open the statute.
- A phone is a “computer system”
Parliament said so expressly.
Section 1 of the Cyber Security and Crime Act, 2021 defines a computer system as any physical or virtual device, or set of associated devices, which performs automatic processing of data — and the definition expressly extends to “mobile devices,” and to “part of a computer system.”
There is no argument to be had here. Your partner’s smartphone is a computer system within the meaning of the Act. Every offence that follows applies to it.
- Section 33: you commit the offence merely by reading
Section 33(1) provides that a person who intentionally and without authorisation causes a computer system to perform a function with intent to secure access to the whole or part of a computer system commits an offence — punishable by a fine of not less than Le 100,000,000 and not more than Le 250,000,000, or imprisonment of not less than 2 years and not exceeding 5 years, or both.
Now read section 33(2), which tells you what “securing access” means. A person secures access if he:
- alters or erases computer data; or
- copies, transfers or moves computer data to another computer system or storage medium, or to a different location in the same medium; or
- has the computer data output from the computer system in which it is held, whether by having it displayed or in any other manner.
You do not need to copy anything. You do not need to delete anything. You do not need to forward anything. Causing the messages to be displayed on the screen is enough.
The offence is complete the moment you unlock the phone and read the WhatsApp. That is not my interpretation. That is the plain wording of section 33(2)(c).
And if you screenshot it, you have engaged 33(2)(b) — copying. If you delete the incriminating message before he wakes up, you have engaged 33(2)(a) — and, as we shall see, section 36 as well.
- Section 34(3): the answer to “but I know his password”
This was the single most common objection from callers. “He gave me the code himself.”
Parliament anticipated you.
Section 34(3) provides: “The absence of authority to secure access to the whole or any part of any computer system… includes instances where there may exist general authority to access a computer system but a specific type, nature or method of access may not be authorised.”
And section 34(2) makes it an offence for a person who has been authorised to access specific data in a computer system to, without lawful excuse, cause that computer system to perform a function other than that authorised.
General authority is not specific authority.
- Knowing the PIN is general authority. It is not authority to read the messages.
- Being handed the phone to play music is authority for that function. It is not authority to open the gallery.
- Being permitted to use the phone is not being permitted to search it.
Consent to use is not consent to search.
- So what, in law, does marriage change?
Nothing in the offence. Everything in the evidence.
Search the Act from section 1 to the end. There is no marital exemption. There is no “we have been together six years” exemption. Section 33 does not say “provided that the accused and the complainant are not romantically involved.” The Act asks one question: were you authorised?
Marriage changes the factual terrain on which authorisation is contested. A shared household handset, a jointly-paid line, a phone the children watch cartoons on — these facts make an argument of general authority more available to a spouse than to a boyfriend.
But section 34(3) tells you exactly how far that argument travels: not very far.
- What you do afterwards is where the sentences get long
Deleting or altering what you find — section 36 criminalises acts causing the destruction, damage, deletion, erasure, deterioration, modification or alteration of data, or which obstruct, interrupt or interfere with its use.
Installing a spy app or tracker — section 38 criminalises intentionally or without authorisation procuring for use, receiving, possessing, or otherwise making available a device designed or adapted primarily for committing an offence under the Act. This carries the heaviest penalty: a fine of not less than Le 500,000,000 and not more than Le 1,500,000,000, or imprisonment of not less than 5 years and not exceeding 10 years, or both.
Sharing what you found — section 46 makes it an offence to take or share an intimate image or voice material without consent, with intent to humiliate, alarm or distress. Motive is irrelevant.
Sending the abusive follow-up — section 44 reaches messages that are grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing, or false messages sent to cause insult, injury, intimidation, hatred, ill will or needless anxiety.
- One thing the Act does not do
Section 35 (Unauthorised data interception) is not, in my view, the provision for the ordinary domestic case. Its terms are qualified — the intercepted transmission must result in significant financial loss, threaten national security, and so forth. Sections 33, 34, 36, 38, 44 and 46 are more than sufficient.
- “But he is cheating. What am I supposed to do?”
If you break into your partner’s phone and find proof of adultery, you may still use the evidence in matrimonial proceedings. But you may also be prosecuted for how you got it.
Winning the argument and surviving the proceedings are not the same thing.
The lawful route exists: sections 10 to 15 of the Act set out the machinery — search warrants, production orders, preservation notices — reserved to enforcement officers and authorised persons acting on the order of a High Court judge.
If the State needs a High Court judge to look inside a phone, what exactly is your authority?
- Five sentences to carry away
- A mobile phone is a “computer system” under section 1. The Act applies to it in full.
- Under section 33(2)(c), merely causing the data to be displayed is securing access. The reading is the offence.
- Under section 34(3), general authority — knowing the PIN — is expressly not authority for a specific method of access. Consent to use is not consent to search.
- Marriage is not authorisation. Intimacy is not authorisation. Suspicion is certainly not authorisation.
- What you do with what you find carries the longer sentence: section 38 (spyware) and section 46 (intimate images) both reach ten years.
Above all of this sits section 22 of the Constitution of Sierra Leone, 1991, protecting the privacy of the home and of other property — and the long title of the Act itself, which declares its purpose to include the protection of “electronic communications, data and computer programs, intellectual property and privacy rights.”
Betrayal is painful and the instinct to verify is deeply human. But Parliament made a choice — that the confidentiality of a person’s private communications does not dissolve simply because someone loves them, married them, or suspects them.
That choice is worth understanding before you find yourself explaining it to a magistrate.
Mohamed Wurie Bah is a Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of Sierra Leone and Head of the Department of Law at IMATT College, Freetown. He teaches and writes in the field of cyber law and technology regulation.
This article is general commentary on the law and not legal advice on any particular facts. If you are affected by these issues — on either side of them — see a lawyer.
