PGP, Encryption and Law(s)

Hello;

Can anyone give precisions on the topic of encryption and law, say in Europe and USA, present day ?

Which lengths of key are allowed for private (non-commercial) use ?

For example, I think that France allows individual users to utilize keys which are 128 bits-long maximum. Does this mean that PGP users are not allowed to use public keys since the length of such a PGP key may vary from 1024 to 2048 and beyond ? Or does this restriction only applies to Symetric Cryptography ?

How about UK, where the state seems to put such an emphasis on monitoring the Web ? Is encryption allowed overthere ? On which terms ?

Is Europe on its way to adopt a common position on this topic ? Is it good or bad news for surfers ?

Thanks, Crockett

 

Good questions. I'm not aware of any encryption restrictions in the UK, but I wouldn't be surprised. I hope someone with more actual knowledge than me comes along!

 

Encryption used to be illegal in France - the link says that the law changed in 1990, I haven't waded thru the detail:http://web.cnam.fr/reseau/Crypto/ (in French). You may find the answers you seek there. There are other links at http://www.pgpi.org/links/www/

Euro 'harmonisation' - none as yet.

Crypto is illegal in China (what a surprise!)

No restrictions in the UK.

The Gnu Privacy Guard (GPG) is now at the van of the development of what is now called OpenPGP, so you may find some useful links if you do a google search on 'Gnu Privacy Guard'.

I thought I'd found a link which answered your question directly - but its dead...... Sorry!

Let us know what you find!