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In 1949, British novelist George Orwell wrote 1984, creating Big Brother, the ruler with a thick moustache who watches people everywhere, even in their bedrooms.
In one passage, Orwell writes: “There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. As for how often, or by what system, the Thought Police might plug in on any individual wire, that was guesswork.”
The novel’s vision of surveillance has become a reality in many countries, including Tunisia. There is one difference, however: Tunisians know “how the Thought Police can intrude on your private life”. Police use several laws that suppress freedom of expression, including Decree-Law No. 54 on combating cybercrime, which gave them broad powers to seize and search phones.
Phones that can land you in prison
About three and a half years ago, police arrested graffiti artist Rashad Tamboura, then in his 20s, after he stencilled a mural depicting Tunisian President Kais Saied alongside the word “racist”. He painted it at the height of the official attacks on undocumented migrants.
Tamboura spent two years in prison after being accused of insulting the president. Speaking to Noon Post, he recalled the first hours of his detention: “My phone was confiscated, and officers surrounded me as I entered the station. They asked me to hand over the password, but I refused, and they told me they would unlock it by their own means. At that point, I needed to call my boss at work, so I asked them to give me the phone. When I entered the password, one of them lunged to snatch it, but I beat him to it and broke the phone over my knee, so they were unable to access it.”
He added: “That was not the only time the police wanted to search my phone. Before that, I was walking in the street when police officers stopped me, checked my ID, and asked me to hand over the phone, but I refused.”
Tamboura now faces another case, with charges of insulting a public official, defamation and rioting. The charges followed his display of a banner reading “Down with military rule” during a match between Egypt’s Al Ahly and US Monastir, which the Egyptian ambassador to Tunisia attended.
A photograph of the mural that led to Tamboura’s two-year imprisonment also led to the prosecution of another young man, Diaa Hamdi.
In September 2024, officers spotted two young men preparing to vandalise an advertising billboard as part of a campaign to boycott companies that support Israel. A police car stopped in front of the billboard, and officers surrounded the men and seized their phones. Hamdi was one of them. He and his companion were detained without knowing what charge they faced.
Hamdi told Noon Post: “We refused to hand over our phones, but the police officers threatened us and we could not resist, so we gave them the passwords. We remained standing in the street for about half an hour while our phones were opened and our social media accounts and conversations were searched. Then they examined the photos on our phones and found a picture of the mural painted by Rashad Tamboura, in addition to archived videos criticizing President Kais Saied’s policies. Although I did not post the graffiti image on social media, that was enough to put me and my friend on trial. My phone was confiscated for technical testing, and I still have not been able to get it back.”
Mobile phones appear to offer Tunisian police a way to obtain data and frame it to support criminal prosecutions. Officers also sought access to the phones of journalists at Nawaat, a platform specialising in investigative journalism.
Two weeks ago, a Nawaat photojournalist received a call from someone claiming to be a delivery worker, asking her to leave her office to collect a package. Suspicious, she took two colleagues with her. All three were abducted and taken to the headquarters of the National Guard’s Central Brigade, which specialises in financial crimes.
Police had set the trap to question the photojournalist about a friend who was wanted in a case involving freedom of expression. Officers tried to obtain her phone to search it, but she said she had left it at the office and denied any connection to the wanted woman. They then confronted her with a detailed record of calls between the two.
Officers also confiscated one colleague’s phone and threatened the other to try to force him to unlock his, but he refused. The three journalists were released after three hours of interrogation.
Saied issued Decree-Law No. 54 on combating cybercrime in 2022. Since then, police have had free rein to seize phones and inspect their contents, using the broad investigative powers the decree grants for the cybercrimes it defines.
Broad powers, few safeguards
After four years of controversy, Saied issued a decree amending Article 24 of Decree-Law No. 54. The article had provided for prison sentences of up to 10 years for defamation and disseminating false news when the offences targeted state employees.
The amendment retained prison sentences but reduced them to six months, rising to one year when the defamation concerned state agents.
Rights organisations have no definitive count of people prosecuted under Article 24. Some of those referred for prosecution have not reported their cases for fear of judicial retaliation. In a report published in 2024, the rights group Intersection put the number at 32. The head of the National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists, however, said 24 journalists and 400 citizens had been referred for prosecution under the article.
Rights organisations criticise the criminalisation of online expression. They argue that the cybercrime law reinforces the older laws the authorities use to prosecute people, including Article 128 of the Penal Code and Article 86 of the Telecommunications Code.
Critics of the authorities greeted the amendment to Article 24 with some relief. Rights advocates and information technology experts, however, warn that other provisions of the decree are no less dangerous.
Ayman Zaghdoudi, a professor specialising in cybercrime, told Noon Post that some articles could be even more dangerous than Article 24. They allow surveillance of personal data and undermine citizens’ right to protect their information and refuse searches of their phones by police or other government employees, he said. He warned that the decree lacked sufficient safeguards for privacy and the confidentiality of sources.
Zaghdoudi added: “Article 9 of Law 54 gives the judicial police the authority to request access to the digital data stored by telecommunications service providers. This law requires companies or centers that provide telecommunications services to store all customer data, which the judicial police are entitled to request. In the absence of sufficient safeguards to protect that data, this law opens a wide door for the authorities to target their political opponents and those who oppose their policies. In addition, Article 6 requires service providers to retain the data of internet or phone users without specifying the period for which that information may be stored, allowing people’s privacy to be violated.”
Article 6 specifies the data providers must retain, including information identifying users of communications services, their communications traffic and their geographical locations. Articles 27 and 28 provide for a one-year prison sentence for service providers that fail to retain the data or refuse to hand it over. Under Article 19, anyone who deletes or destroys digital data faces three years in prison.
These provisions give police and the judiciary broad access to conversations, photographs and communications traffic. They have led to the imprisonment of many people or the fabrication of charges tailored to the data police obtain, including by confiscating phones or forcing their owners to hand them over.
Private conversations used against opponents
On 24 February 2023, Saied began a crackdown on his leading opponents. Police and judicial proceedings began in what became known as the conspiracy against state security case, handled by the judicial anti-terrorism unit.
The case implicated 52 people, including politicians, lawyers, businesspeople and trade unionists. They faced charges relating to forming a terrorist group, preparing to commit murder, violent assault, disclosing information to a terrorist organisation and money laundering.
The severity of the charges caused alarm in Tunisia. A leaked closing order from the investigating judge, however, revealed that the charges rested on two things: denunciations by unidentified people and private WhatsApp conversations.
The investigating judge’s closing report, reviewed by Noon Post, stated that private conversations he had examined substantiated the charges. These included a message that Saied opponent Chaima Issa sent to a group of friends.
According to the report, the conversation included “casting doubt on Qatar’s promises to Tunisia to build the health city and hospital it had pledged to the country, and that she praised European Parliament member Javier Tart, Spain’s representative, who said at a meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs that the economic situation in Tunisia is catastrophic, that state institutions have been destroyed by President Kais Saied, and that the latter has autism,” citing her message to fellow suspect Bochra Belhaj Hmida: “This deputy is wonderful.”
Among the material the judge relied on to bring the conspiracy charge against opposition figure Ahmed Nejib Chebbi was a news link he had sent to his brother, Issam Chebbi, who was detained in the same case. The link concerned US concern over Saied’s decision to dissolve parliament in 2021.
Samir Dilou, a lawyer on the detainees’ defence team, told Noon Post: “Police arrested the suspects in the case known as the conspiracy against state security case without clear charges, and it was initially based on a report from the director of the judicial police stating that the police had been informed of suspicions of a conspiracy against state security. The case file then began to grow gradually, relying on witnesses whom none of the defense lawyers met, and on ordinary conversations on social media in which the accused discussed the political situation. The closing order relied in large part on private conversations after the phones of some of the accused were seized, and these were ordinary conversations that in no way prove the charges brought against them.”
Dilou said that “the authorities’ policy is clear: seize phones, search their contents, then gather evidence and pile on charges. The police deliberately carry out arbitrary arrests without a formal summons so they can ensure that those to be investigated do not resort to destroying or deleting data.”
The defendants received prison sentences of up to 45 years. All stages of litigation have been exhausted, and the rulings are final and cannot be appealed.
Tunisia is increasingly turning to advanced technological tools under the guise of combating cybercrime, through the Interior Ministry and the National Cybersecurity Agency. In March 2026, the agency purchased tools for recovering mobile phone data and conducting digital forensic examinations.
In 2023, a few months before Decree-Law No. 54 was issued, the United Nations Global Marketplace website, which handles procurement for the UN system, listed a tender to help Tunisia’s Interior Ministry acquire a Cellebrite UFED Touch device. The device can extract mobile phone data, including locked and encrypted data.
In March 2026, the same website posted another tender for the ministry. It included MOBILedit Forensic ULTRA software, which allows users to crack passcodes, decrypt phones, perform in-depth data extraction and recover deleted applications. The tender also included BelkaSoft X software, which can extract encrypted app conversations and recover deleted files.
The authorities use 11 legal provisions against Tunisians, all of which criminalise freedom of expression. The slogan “All Tunisians are suspects at large” captures the expanding reach of surveillance in the name of combating cybercrime.