End-to-end encryption presents a vital tool for users to protect their communications against third parties. To ensure a good user experience it is important to agree on shared standards which are widely rolled out and adopted by implementations.

There already exists a number of encryption protocols with different properties and scopes. It is necessary to coordinate the efforts of further improving those standards to identify and unify common problems and patterns.

The role of the SIG shall be as follows:

• Produce, or coordinate the production and maintenance of relevant XMPP Extension Protocol (XEP) documents as described below under Deliverables.
• Represent the interests and requirements of the XMPP community during the development of end-to-end encryption protocols that are non-exclusive to XMPP. Note: Only elected members of the XSF may act as ambassadors.
• Provide recommendations for implementers.

The SIG-E2EE shall not itself approve XMPP extension protocols (XEPs), which tasks shall remain under the purview of the XMPP Council.

The scope of the SIG is limited to end-to-end encryption in contexts which are useful for instant messaging.

The SIG-E2EE shall be open to the public and shall not be limited to elected members of the XMPP Standards Foundation. Anyone who works with, or is interested in encryption protocols is invited to take part. Only elected members of the XSF however may act as ambassadors.

Discussions shall be conducted in a dedicated openly accessible mailing list.

The SIG-E2EE shall be a standing SIG, and shall exist as long as the XMPP Council deems it useful.

The SIG-E2EE should maintain active existing end-to-end encryption specifications and keep them up to date.

It should also coordinate the production of future end-to-end encryption specifications to keep up with the state of the art.