---
title: "Cryptography"
chunk: 11/11
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptography"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:56:23.628158+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

In the United Kingdom, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act gives UK police the powers to force suspects to decrypt files or hand over passwords that protect encryption keys. Failure to comply is an offense in its own right, punishable on conviction by a two-year jail sentence or up to five years in cases involving national security. Successful prosecutions have occurred under the Act; the first, in 2009, resulted in a term of 13 months' imprisonment. Similar forced disclosure laws in Australia, Finland, France, and India compel individual suspects under investigation to hand over encryption keys or passwords during a criminal investigation.
In the United States, the federal criminal case of United States v. Fricosu addressed whether a search warrant can compel a person to reveal an encryption passphrase or password. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argued that this is a violation of the protection from self-incrimination given by the Fifth Amendment. In 2012, the court ruled that under the All Writs Act, the defendant was required to produce an unencrypted hard drive for the court.
In many jurisdictions, the legal status of forced disclosure remains unclear.
The 2016 FBI–Apple encryption dispute concerns the ability of courts in the United States to compel manufacturers' assistance in unlocking cell phones whose contents are cryptographically protected.
As a potential counter-measure to forced disclosure some cryptographic software supports plausible deniability, where the encrypted data is indistinguishable from unused random data (for example such as that of a drive which has been securely wiped).

== See also ==
Collision attack
Comparison of cryptography libraries
Cryptovirology – Securing and encrypting virology
Crypto Wars – Attempts to limit access to strong cryptography
Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security – Book by Technische Universiteit Eindhoven
Global surveillance – Mass surveillance across national borders
Indistinguishability obfuscation – Type of cryptographic software obfuscation
Information theory – Scientific study of digital information
Outline of cryptography
List of cryptographers
List of multiple discoveries
List of cryptography books
List of open-source Cypherpunk software
List of unsolved problems in computer science – List of unsolved computational problems
Pre-shared key – Method to set encryption keys
Quantum cryptography – Cryptography based on quantum mechanical phenomena
Secure cryptoprocessor
Strong cryptography – Term applied to cryptographic systems that are highly resistant to cryptanalysis
Syllabical and Steganographical Table – Eighteenth-century work believed to be the first cryptography chart – first cryptography chart
World Wide Web Consortium's Web Cryptography API – World Wide Web Consortium cryptography standard

== References ==

== Further reading ==

== External links ==

 The dictionary definition of cryptography at Wiktionary
 Media related to Cryptography at Wikimedia Commons
Cryptography on In Our Time at the BBC
Crypto Glossary and Dictionary of Technical Cryptography Archived 4 July 2022 at the Wayback Machine
A Course in Cryptography by Raphael Pass & Abhi Shelat – offered at Cornell in the form of lecture notes.
For more on the use of cryptographic elements in fiction, see: Dooley, John F. (23 August 2012). "Cryptology in Fiction". Archived from the original on 29 July 2020. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
The George Fabyan Collection at the Library of Congress has early editions of works of seventeenth-century English literature, publications relating to cryptography.