VPNs with servers in Mauritania

The investigating judge may also have a provider collect traffic data in real time, within its technical capabilities (art. 45), and intercept content for offences punishable by at least four years (art. 46). Judicial police may carry out the steps of articles 39 to 45 themselves; the interception needs the prosecutor’s authorisation (art. 47). Providers are bound by professional secrecy. This law sets no standing retention period.

Article 33 of Law No. 2018-022 on electronic exchanges requires service providers to keep, for a determined period, the data that identifies anyone who helped create content of the services they offer to the public. A decree of the Council of Ministers sets the data and the length of retention. Breach is fined 500,000 to 50,000,000 ouguiyas (art. 36). Whether either law reaches a VPN operator is not established.

Under article 36 of the cybercrime law, a court that has convicted someone of an offence committed through an electronic medium may order the person legally responsible for the site, and any qualified person, to bar access to it, bar its hosting or cut access to it. Breaching the order is punished by one week to one month in prison and a fine of 50,000 to 500,000 ouguiyas.

Article 29 of Law No. 2018-022 on electronic exchanges requires service providers to offer the public technical systems for restricting access, among them filtering of illegal content by category and making pornographic sites inaccessible; those two kinds of filtering run automatically in the services offered to users.

The statute also criminalises making pornographic images available by computer system (arts. 15–16, two to four years) and child sexual material (arts. 17–20, three to seven years).

Article 21 punishes sending or making available by computer system any text, image or sound offending the values of Islam, with one to four years’ imprisonment and a fine of 200,000 to 3,000,000 ouguiyas, alongside article 306 of the Penal Code. Articles 22 and 23 punish online racial insults and incitement to racial hatred (one month to one year). Article 27 reads doubt in favour of free expression, except for Islam’s sacred principles.

The law on the protection of national symbols, adopted by the National Assembly on 9 November 2021, provides in its article 2, as civil-society organisations describe it, two to four years’ imprisonment for using digital platforms to undermine the “constant values and sacred principles of Islam”, national unity or territorial integrity, or to insult the President, the flag or the anthem.

An account holder is identified through the subscriber-data order of article 44, and through the identification data that article 33 of Law No. 2018-022 requires service providers to keep.

The Constitution guarantees the honour, private life, home and correspondence of the citizen (art. 13) and declares the judiciary independent of the legislature and the executive (art. 89). The President is guarantor of that independence, assisted by the Higher Council of the Magistracy that he chairs.

The cybercrime law requires its procedural powers to respect proportionality and the applicable safeguards, including judicial supervision where appropriate (art. 49). The order of the rows is the security score, and a server’s location is not a recommendation.