Crypto law in Belgium.

I've always thought that I live in a sane country regarding crypto law—or, at least, one not as insane as the US. Apparently I was a bit too optimistic.

According to this page, or more specifically, the Belgium-specific bits, you need a special license to be allowed to export cryptography outside of the Benelux. This is in relation to the Wassenaar Arrangement, an international agreement on cryptography laws which allows "public-domain" software, but not necessarily other types of software. If I can assume that the term "public domain" here really refers to software of which the source is freely available, then there is no issue; otherwise, I may be doing something illegal.

I guess I'll have to investigate that.

Moreover, and this is really a surprise to me, law enforcement officials in Beligum can, after an order of an investigation judge, order me to "make accessible [...] data in the form ordered by the judge", which might involve decryption; or they can also order someone whom they reasonably suspect to have special knowledge of encryption services to give information on "how to get the data at stake in intelligible form"—how to break the algorithm, if that can be done.

Failure to comply with this might get me between 6 months and a year of imprisonment and/or a fine between 26 and 20 000 BEF (1EUR = 40.3399 BEF)

I had no clue.