LWN has a good writeup on the audit situation as of 2014: https://lwn.net/Articles/590879/

> [You certify to LetsEncrypt that] …

> You are not a person or entity that is: (a) located in, organized under the laws of, or ordinarily resident in any country or territory that is the target of comprehensive U.S. sanctions; (b) a prohibited or restricted party under U.S. or other applicable sanctions and export control laws and regulations; or (c) owned or controlled by or acting on behalf of anyone described in (a) or (b). You agree to use Let’s Encrypt Certificates and any services provided by or on behalf of ISRG in compliance with applicable U.S. export control and sanctions laws and regulations.

Europe starts to shield itself from the risk since Nicolas Guillou, the French ICC judge who issued a warrant against bibi got sanctioned (France officially protested about this case)

China is being successful at blocking US firms out of their supply chains (they already use Linux on Loongarch processors with some homemade architecture and pioneer RISC V), since a bunch of their companies also got sanctions for supplying the governement

US stands so much for freedom that it's the first country to refuse immigration to FIFA world cup teams and athletes, with Iranians not allowed to stay between games and Somali goalkeeper being turned away at the border. Germany itself didn't do for the 1936 Olympics.

So at best, they're only shooting themselves in the foot by showing any US component in a supply chain is a risk, while using US clouds were already a risk of loss of revenue from FISA requests to undercut your bid and rot your company and using US dollars for trade was already a liability

In the meantime, US companies can do anything, break any financial law and abuse every human right, they'll just sign DPAs to avoid prosecution

I can't comment on the EU part though - not that relevant in my case.

That’s a pretty steep increase. I would almost be more interested in a monthly fee per cert.

This is the main reason letsencrypt is so popular.

I think the "digital tyranny" is a side effect, not the main goal. They're "mainly a means" to prevent certain kinds of MITM attacks.

> Also known as a monster-in-the-middle,[1][2] machine-in-the-middle,[3] meddler-in-the-middle,[4] manipulator-in-the-middle,[5][6] person-in-the-middle[7] (PITM), or adversary-in-the-middle[8] (AITM) attack.

Let me also just leave this masterpiece right here https://blog.barracuda.com/2025/10/02/beyond-mitm-rising-dan...

HID was acquired by Assa Abloy in 2000. No idea whether that means we now consider it Swedish.

ZeroSSL used to be Austrian until their acquisition in 2024.

I used to work for a company that got acquired by HID. It looks like HID has retained their original offices in some form.

Note that phones already try to prevent you from using a certificate that you provide yourself.

> "Across 2018-2019, the RISC-V community has reflected on the geo-political landscape and we have heard concerns from around the world that investment in RISC-V must come with IP access continuity to ensure a long-term strategic investment. We first mentioned our intentions to move at the December 2018 summit. Incorporation in Switzerland has the effect of calming concerns of political disruption to the open collaboration model. RISC-V International does not maintain any commercial interest in products or services as a non-profit, membership organization. There have not been any export restrictions on RISC-V in the US and we have complied with all US laws. The move does not circumvent any existing restrictions, but rather alleviates uncertainty going forward.

> In March 2020, the RISC-V International Association was incorporated in Switzerland. Along with this, we shifted to a new, more inclusive membership structure. Members of RISC-V International have access to and participate in the development of the RISC-V ISA specification and extensions as well as related hardware and software. RISC-V has a Board of Directors composed of member representatives as well as a Technical Committee of work group leaders."

> RISC-V International has not incorporated in Switzerland based on any one country, company, government, or event. This move is reflective of community concern and managing strategic risk for our community investing in RISC-V for the next 50+ years.

> The IP contributed and produced by RISC-V International is held under industry and global standard licenses that are already open to leverage by any company regardless of jurisdiction. This licensing is a common open source approach to foster collaboration that is not tied to any geographic regulation. IP in the public domain has not been subject to export control.

https://riscv.org/about/

> By using ZeroSSL's ACME feature, you will be able to generate an unlimited amount of 90-day SSL certificates at no charge, also supporting multi-domain certificates and wildcards. Each certificate you create will be stored in your ZeroSSL account.

[0]: https://zerossl.com/documentation/acme/

- We’re based in Austria (ZeroSSL GmbH). The company was acquired by HID in 2024, which is part of Assa Abloy (Sweden).

- We’re not positioning ourselves as a purely EU-based CA substitute, and we generally don’t market it that way.

- For DV certs specifically, we act as a distributor. Under the hood these are Sectigo-issued certificates, similar to how other providers (for example Namecheap) operate.

Happy to clarify further if useful.

Maybe we should have solve the ISP snooping problem by making that illegal instead.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that there is some lack of "who actually runs/controls this", especially on the about page where I expect such things to be.

At the very least it's not as transparent as I'd wish from a CA. E.g their Certificate Agreement is from Sectigo, so are they involved? No mention anywhere else from what I can see.

Only to people who have a need to be offended.

Then I graduated in International Relations and understood that the hole is much deeper than that.

Now it's pretty obvious with all the shit that trump has been doing, but back then me and much of the people I know were oblivious to what US power really means.

It is more of an example of how the internet/software industry is too consolidated to the US, and thus other countries are too dependent on the US in those areas. If the internet infrastructure was well distributed, then people in sanction countries could simply get certificates issued by a different CA, and in some cases they can. However, this is complicated by the fact that the list of trusted CAs is dominated by US organizations (Google, Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft). If you want to reach western audience you must use certs from a CA approved by them.

There's no reason to believe they're any less subject to US jurisdiction than LetsEncrypt.

OK, but in the context of this topic thr interesting part isn't your marketing but your jurisdiction.

Could you clarify which jurisdiction you operate under and a link on the ZeroSSL website that collaborates that?

Thank you <3

With all the problems with Web PKI, at least the bad actors are getting distrusted, and this provides a very strong enforcement on the rest. And Certificate Transparency makes sure the mis-issuance would be caught. It is not perfect by any means, but things are getting better.

With DANE (or other country-issued certificates), every government will absolutely double-issue certificates to police, secret service and friends of goverment, and no one will have any recourse. (In the past I'd say that only countries like Russia would do it.. but with today's climate, I am sure both US and many European countries will do that too)

They also don't like states that threaten business by turning workers into a commodity that you have to compensate each month ; Spain sunk the Maine ; and they had manifest destiny given from God to get rid of natives

If they don’t have any business in the US and any financial ties to the US they won’t be subject to the sanctions. But I believe it will create issues if they want to enter the US market.

Countries already have CA that issue certificates with more legal force than a handwritten signature. I can open a bank account, pay my taxes and sign up to all government services. But I can't use them for a webpage.

> With DANE (or other country-issued certificates)

DANE isn't a country-issued certificate. It's a scheme where you store your public keys on DNS records. Of course, now we have the issue that DNSSEC (signed DNS records) isn't widespread and the whole issue with DNS registries.

And things only gotten better since - we now have CT logs, and browsers require them, so any mis-issuance can be detected automatically, by any interested third party.

If we go to DANE, we lose this all. "Oops, our CT uploader process failed, we will fix Real Soon(tm) we promise" - and what are browsers going to do? Distrust the entire country?

[0] https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2011/09/02/diginotar-remov...

I didn’t realize the slapped their face on the pavement right after being acquired.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiNotar