--- title: "A Private Journal for US Writers" description: "An offline, encrypted journal for Americans who would rather their inner life not be a data-broker asset or a subpoena target. No cloud copy exists." canonical: "https://sealedjournal.com/j/private-journal-usa" category: "By Location" --- # A private journal with no cloud copy to subpoena. _No data brokers, no de-identified telemetry sold downstream, no second copy sitting on someone else's disk waiting to be requested._ The United States has no comprehensive federal privacy statute. It has a patchwork: the CCPA and CPRA in California, the Virginia CDPA, Colorado, Connecticut, Texas's Data Privacy and Security Act, and a growing list behind them. Nearly all of them regulate businesses that collect personal information. The Sealed Journal collects none from your entries, so the substantive obligations do not attach — there is no "do not sell my information" toggle because there is nothing to sell. The subpoena question is the one American readers ask most, so here is the plain answer: a court could compel us to produce what we hold, and what we hold of your journal is nothing. Your entries were encrypted in your browser and stayed there. The same is true of a data-breach scenario, an acquisition, or a change of ownership — there is no corpus to hand over. There is no third-party analytics, no SDK, no pixel, and no AI model inside the journal file. Nothing you write becomes training data, because nothing you write is transmitted. The file is unminified: open it in any editor and read the encryption flow yourself, then confirm in your browser's network tab that it contacts nothing. It runs the same on an F train under the East River, in a fifth-floor walk-up at three in the morning, at a desk in Echo Park between meetings, or on hotel Wi-Fi that has already failed twice. It is a local file. Connectivity is not part of the design. Pay once — $24 introductory, rising to $29 — keep it forever, and gift the second untouched copy to someone who needs it. ## Questions ### Could a court compel you to hand over my entries? No, because we never receive them. A subpoena to us would return nothing of yours. The only copy is the encrypted one on your device. ### Does CCPA, CPRA, or my state's law apply? Those laws regulate businesses that collect personal information. We collect none from journal use, so most provisions have nothing to attach to. There is no 'do not sell' switch because there is nothing to sell. ### Is anything I write used to train AI? No. The journal has no AI features and makes no network calls. Nothing you write leaves your machine, so there is nothing to train on. ### Can I audit the source myself? Yes. The HTML file is unminified and readable. You can trace the AES-256-GCM and PBKDF2 flow and confirm zero outbound requests in your browser's network tab. ### Is there sales tax at checkout? Paddle acts as merchant of record and calculates any applicable US sales tax for your state at checkout. ### Does it work offline on a plane or subway? Yes. Once the file is on your laptop or phone there is no network call to make, in the air or under the river. ## Price The Sealed Journal is a one-time purchase of $24 (introductory price, rising to $29). No subscription, no account, lifetime updates, 30-day refund. Buy at https://sealedjournal.com/#pricing ## Elsewhere - Hub: By Location — https://sealedjournal.com/journals/by-location - All journals — https://sealedjournal.com/journals - HTML version of this page — https://sealedjournal.com/j/private-journal-usa