About

Encryption Laws tracks the laws and orders, country by country, that weaken or restrict encryption: notices to providers, duties to trace or scan messages, and orders to hand over keys.

Who it is for

People who want to know what their government can ask of the apps they use, journalists and researchers, and teams that build encrypted products. It describes laws. It is not legal advice.

Who makes it

Encryption Laws is made by Secria, which makes Secria Mail and Secria VPN. Secria makes encrypted products, so laws in this area matter to our own work. We describe what each law does and where it stands, with sources, and leave the judgment to you. We never suggest a VPN as a way around any country's law.

How we check

Every status comes from a primary source we opened on the date shown: the statute or regulation, an official gazette, a parliament's record, a court judgment, or the government department that runs the law. Reports from news outlets and advocacy groups only point us to those sources, date a change, or record a step we could not read at the source, and we name them when we do. Where they disagree with the law, we use the law and say so. When an official site does not load for us, we read the Internet Archive's copy and say so in the source list, with the copy's date.

The European Union's proposed Child Sexual Abuse Regulation appears here in one row only, with its stage.

Corrections

Spotted something wrong or out of date? Tell us with a link to the source at secria.me/contact.