Information for law enforcement.

1Purpose and scope

This page explains how public authorities can ask Augis for information, and how Augis answers. It applies to police, gendarmerie, judicial authorities, prosecutors, financial intelligence units and other bodies with the legal power to require information. It is a summary of our practice, not legal advice, and it does not replace the law that applies to the request.

Augis is a research tool. We hold little data about people, and we protect what we hold: we answer a request only when it is made in the proper legal form, is specific, and is limited to what the law allows.

2What we hold, and what we do not

We may hold, for an account:

• the username and the email address given at sign-up;
• the date the account was created, its plan and credit balance, and payment order identifiers (never wallet keys);
• the IP address of recent sign-ins, kept for a limited time;
• the history of lookups the user chose to save, which is deleted automatically when the retention period of the plan ends (it is never written in incognito mode);
• messages the user sent to our support.

We do not hold:

• passwords in readable form: they are stored only as salted hashes;
• private keys or the funds of any user;
• a copy of the public sources, breach records or blockchain data a lookup reads: the information in a result belongs to its original source, and we do not keep a separate store of it;
• the content of lookups run in incognito mode.

We can only provide what exists at the time we process a valid request. We do not create data, and we do not monitor accounts in real time.

3What a valid request must contain

• the name, rank or title, official email address and telephone number of the requesting officer or magistrate;
• the issuing authority and its country;
• the legal basis: the order, warrant, requisition or statute that authorises the request, with its reference and date. In France this is typically a judicial requisition or an order from a judge or prosecutor;
• a case or reference number;
• the exact identifiers concerned (username, email address, order number) and the period they cover. Requests that are broad, speculative or open-ended cannot be answered;
• the precise categories of data requested;
• whether the request is urgent, and why. For an ongoing cyber incident, use an emergency data request (EDR), described below.

A copy of the official document should be attached to the email we reply to. We will not act on a request that cannot be tied to a legal power.

4How to send a request

Use the form at the bottom of this page, or write to contact@augis.eu from your official government or institutional email address. A request from a personal or free email address (for example Gmail or Outlook) will not be treated as official until it has been verified another way.

The form only starts the process. It is not itself a legal order, and sending it does not oblige us to disclose anything. For an emergency, choose the EDR type: it is flagged as urgent for us.

5How we verify a request

Before we disclose anything, we check that the request is genuine. We look at the sender’s domain, we may call the authority back on its publicly listed switchboard, and we may ask for the original order or for a second signatory. Do not give us a direct telephone number as the only means of verification.

We assess each request for legality and proportionality. We may refuse, narrow or challenge a request that is unlawful, too broad, or lacks a sufficient legal basis, and we may ask the authority to use a more suitable procedure.

6Emergency data requests (EDR)

An emergency data request (EDR) asks us to release limited information quickly, without waiting for a formal order, because a serious cyber incident is under way or about to happen and waiting would let the harm grow or the evidence disappear. Examples: an active ransomware attack, an ongoing intrusion, stolen funds being moved right now, an ongoing fraud or extortion campaign. It is not available for ordinary investigations, or for a case that can wait for a court order. Here EDR means emergency data request, as in law enforcement, and not endpoint detection and response.

What an EDR must contain. Choose Emergency data request (EDR) in the form below, or write to contact@augis.eu with EDR at the start of the subject line, from your official email address, and give:

• your name, rank or title, agency, and a telephone number on the agency’s official switchboard, so that we can call back;
• what the incident is, and why it is urgent: what will be lost or made worse if the request waits for a formal order;
• the exact account identifiers concerned (username, email address, order number);
• the specific information you ask for, limited to what could help stop or limit the incident;
• a statement that you will follow with the formal legal process, with its reference, as soon as it can be issued.

What we do. We read emergency requests before the others, and we verify the request by a call-back on the agency’s official switchboard, as quickly as we can. Fake emergency requests sent from a compromised official mailbox are a known abuse, so we release nothing before this check, even when the sender looks genuine. If the request meets the conditions, we may release the minimum information that can help stop the incident: for an account, typically the email address given at sign-up, the date it was created and recent sign-in IP addresses. We keep a record of the request and of what we released, and we ask for the formal order afterwards. We may decline an EDR that we cannot verify or that does not describe an urgent incident.

What we cannot do. We hold no funds and no wallet of any customer, so we cannot freeze, recover or move crypto-assets. We cannot watch an account as things happen. Wake reads public blockchain data: a request about stolen crypto-assets should also go to the exchange or the stablecoin issuer concerned.

7Preservation requests

An authority that has asked, or is about to ask, for data may ask us to preserve it while the formal order is prepared. We will preserve the data of the account named in a valid preservation request for 60 days, which we may extend once on a further written request, or for as long as a European Preservation Order requires. Preserving data is not disclosing it.

8Telling the user

Our policy is to tell a user when we receive a legal request about their account, before we disclose their data, so that they can object. We do not tell them when the law forbids it, or when a court has ordered us to stay silent. If you need us to withhold notice, say so in the request and cite the legal basis.

9Orders under European Union law, and requests from other countries

European orders. Augis accepts European Production Orders and European Preservation Orders under Regulation (EU) 2023/1543, sent as a certificate (EPOC or EPOC-PR) to contact@augis.eu. We assess each certificate and we answer within the periods the Regulation sets. If a certificate is incomplete, wrong or does not meet the conditions, we say so and we ask for what is missing.

Contact points. For the Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, Article 11) and for the Regulation above, the single point of contact for authorities is contact@augis.eu. You may write to us in English or French.

Other countries. A request from outside the European Union should come through the channel that treaty and law provide, such as mutual legal assistance. We may ask a foreign authority to go through that channel before we answer.

10Access to the tools for agencies

Separately from any data request, an agency can ask for verified access to the Augis tools. This is done from a signed-in account in the dashboard, under Account, by describing the agency, the role and the purpose. An administrator verifies the agency by calling its official switchboard before approving the account, and every use of a restricted function is logged. Verified access gives no access to other users’ data.

11Misuse

Using a false identity, forging an order or making a false emergency claim is an offence in most countries. We keep a record of requests, we refuse those we cannot verify, and we report abuse to the competent authorities.