Online safety & content laws in Algeria (2026)

President Tebboune signed Decree No. 25-321 approving Algeria's five-year National Information Systems Security Strategy; a companion Decree No. 26-07 (January 7, 2026) mandated dedicated cybersecurity units across all public institutions, and the strategy's content was publicly unveiled by the Ministry of National Defence on 3 March 2026.

Algeria's Law on Audiovisual Activity came into force requiring online audiovisual services to host all content exclusively on servers physically located in Algeria and to use the national .dz domain, imposing binding data-localisation obligations on streaming and digital media providers.

Authorities imposed daily multi-hour internet and social-media disruptions (June 9-13) during national baccalaureate examinations, a practice established after mass answer-leaking in 2016, documenting a pattern of state-directed content blocking estimated to cost businesses ~500 million DZD per shutdown hour.

Algeria's Organic Law on Information criminalises online content deemed contrary to Islam, national identity, or territorial unity; bars dual-nationality Algerians from owning media shares; and creates a president-appointed High Council of Ethics for journalism, ARTICLE 19 and MENA Rights Group condemned the law as violating international freedom-of-expression standards.

Five years after enactment, Law 18-07 became operative one year after the ANPDP's formal installation; within its first three months, the ANPDP received 228 files for declarations, authorisations, and opinions, marking the start of active data-protection enforcement in Algeria.

Following the appointment of its president and members on 18 May 2022, the ANPDP was officially inaugurated on 11 August 2022, starting the statutory one-year countdown before Law 18-07 would become enforceable and triggering mandatory registration obligations for data controllers.

Algeria's first comprehensive data-protection statute established data-subject rights, controller obligations, and created the ANPDP as an independent supervisory authority; enforcement was deferred pending the Authority's installation, which did not occur until 2022.

This updated telecoms law renamed the ARPT as the Regulatory Authority for Post and Electronic Communications (ARPCE), codified a statutory definition of cybersecurity, and broadened the regulator's mandate to cover internet service providers and electronic platforms, the institutional backbone for all subsequent online safety regulation.

President Bouteflika signed amendments criminalising use of ICT in terrorist recruitment, requiring ISPs to store and surrender user data, and expanding prosecution of online speech deemed offensive to state officials or religion, provisions subsequently deployed against bloggers, activists, and social-media users.

A decree published in the Official Journal of 8 October 2015 established a dedicated national authority under the Ministry of Justice for preventing and combating ICT-related offences, operationalising the institutional mandate first sketched in Law 09-04 and forming Algeria's first dedicated cyber-law enforcement body.

Algeria's first dedicated cybercrime law criminalised hacking, data theft, online terrorism incitement, blackmail, and ICT-facilitated copyright infringement; authorised electronic surveillance with judicial oversight; and established a national cybercrime prevention body, remaining the core criminal framework for internet offences for over a decade.

Article 14 of Decree 98-257 made internet service providers legally liable for hosted sites and required them to take 'all necessary steps' for 'constant surveillance' to block material contrary to public order and morality, Algeria's earliest internet content-control measure, predating the broadband era and establishing the ISP-liability model still reflected in later statutes.