By contrast, in France for example, secrecy of correspondence is the default. It has been explicitely extended in 2004 to e-mail, but the law as it was after a change in 1988 certainly already covered that. Tampering with e-mail is thus punished the same way as tampering with a physical letter. Being an agent of the government constitutes aggravating circumstances.

Circumventing those protections requires the intervention of an independent (as in independent from the executive) judge.