German "Bundesnetzagentur" requesting Fastmail to register in Germany
 

The German "Bundesnetzagentur" (German government organization for network regulation) has requested Fastmail to officially register with them (see German article here).

Germany requires all email providers to offer remote interfaces for government agencies to conveniently and secretly access all their customer's email. Also, Germany has just passed aggressive laws to spy on their citizens, requiring network providers to store citizen's communication metadata and allowing the deployment of trojan software to hack into the computers of citizens even for minor offenses. In addition, Germany is about to pass an aggressive internet censorship law.

In the light of these developments, please, Fastmail, do not make any concessions to any German government organization. It will be used to force you into spying on your German customers. Please resist!

See:
https://www.fastmail.com/help/accoun...available.html

Bill

Yes. Please resist.

But what about google and other companies. Did they already give their ok? Why only fastmail? And why in general? They do not offer any German services at all?

Does it mean that posteo.de is also compromised? :( They store the emails encrypted (if you choose this option) but I don't know if they can be forced to do the opposite or read them before they are encrypted.

Any sources for this? Never heard about such a law (which doesn't mean it doesn't exist).

The quoted article at Heise says the trouble would be about whether FastMail has to officially identify themselves to Bundesnetzagentur as a "commercial provider of telecommunication services".

GOOD GAWD!... were back to FEDERAL/CENTRAL/GOV/FASCIST TYRANNY AGAIN in Germany!!!??? YOU THINK they would have learned from the first time they got brainwashed and let NAZI party TAKE oVER and nearly burn all of Europe to the ground, never mind the rest of the world...
:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:


Then there is the CIA/NSA/etc agencies in the USA an ALL the domestic spying they doing ALL IN THE NAME OF NATIONAL SECURITY
:( :( :mad: :mad: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

This is the law since 2005. See here.

Yes, but with the "registration" come all the other "goodies" like having to provide the mentioned interfaces for snooping on user's emails. This is what the request really is about.

German government interception (also) happens on the protocol level (they intercept SMTP, IMAP, HTTP, etc)

If you do not encrypt the email content before(!) it leaves your own computer, then, yes, you can be targeted by these interfaces.

Therefore, encrypt in your own local mail client, do not rely on web browser interface encryption.

So it took you 12 years to get worked up about it....

Whatever the legal requirements are, I see no reason why Fastmail should be made a special case and be exempted. If FM prefers to withdraw from the German market, there is no shortage of alternative providers.

GOOD GAWD.. GERMANY HAS GONE FULL INSANE/EVIL AGAIN!!
So Germany does not protect its citizens RIGHTS?

ERhh SERIOUSLY!! :mad: :mad: :mad:
$22,588.10 US Dollar... THAT IS A LOT OF $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

So have some users here

lol haha... :D:confused::cool::p:p;);)

In a nutshell, with emphasis on the first syllable.

The Joker is Wild.

No, it bothered me since the law was conceived. And this is why I did not use a German email provider since.

The attack vector the German government found seems to be Fastmail's app offered in the German app stores. The app has been pulled now it seems. Hopefully, that will suffice.

Oh, and btw.: Germany now requires Youtube bloggers to get a German broadcasting license. No kidding!

GOOD GAWD, Germany IS INSANE!
AND..! NEEDS SOME FREEDOM BROUGHT TO IT AGAIN!
WMwhaha ;p :rolleyes:;):p


German regulator says Twitch and YouTube streams are considered broadcasts, must apply for broadcasting license
- $1,132.95 US Dollar
to
- $11,334.50 US Dollar
NO individual COULD EVER AFFORD THAT...! :mad::mad:

IF THE GERMAN PEOPLE ARE INCAPABLE OF STANDING UP TO THIS TYRANNY AGAIN..!!

THEN IT WOULD SEEM THAT THEY ARE IN OF NEED SOME "FREEDOM"
FREE of CHARGE courtesy of the USA! ;) ;) ;) lol
LOL Bwhahaha :rolleyes::D;);););)

If you cannot trust your email provider, I cannot see how any encryption helps. If you trust your provider, then I cannot see how an encrypted IMAP connection is any more secure than an encrypted HTTP connection using the same algorithm and key lengths.

That's not what Posteo says about it, maybe you misunderstood that law, and I know that Posteo had some problems with authorities before and always defending their users.
https://posteo.de/en/site/faq



Is Posteo affected by the reintroduction of data retention in Germany?

No, Posteo is not affected by data retention. You don't need to be concerned about the privacy of your Posteo emails. The law on the reintroduction of data retention ("Gesetz zur Einführung einer Speicherpflicht und einer Höchstspeicherfrist für Verkehrsdaten") completely excludes email providers. The entire area of email is excepted from retention.
In short, Posteo is not one of the affected parties. At Posteo, therefore, it remains the case that no data is retained.

https://posteo.de/en/blog/transparen...edly-decreased

https://posteo.de/en/site/transparency_report

First of all, you can indeed no longer trust your email provider if they are forced by law to conspire against you. There is nothing they can do about that.

Second, encrypted IMAP or HTTP connections do not help in this case: they only protect you from outside eavesdroppers. They hide nothing from the email provider and so they do not help against a government forcing the provider to cooperate.

However, encryption properly done on your machine, with only your communication partner (and not the email provider!) holding the decryption key, is practically unbreakable, even by the government infiltrated email provider.

Use PGP or S/MIME and the content of your email is safe! (The subject line, sender, and recipient address are always revealed, though).

But do not rely on web clients provided by your email provider to do the encryption - these will be infiltrated also!

This is what I was trying to get across.

Posteo does the best they can.They do a great job in fact!

You are correct in stating that "data retention" does not apply to email providers, only network providers (and I already wrote that in my first post).

But, like I wrote, Germany also requires all email providers to offer remote interfaces for government agencies to conveniently and secretly access their customer's email on demand.

No exception for Posteo: Posteo does a very good job trying to fend of the usage of these interfaces, but they can not in all cases as their transparency report shows.

So, to summarize: data retention applies to German network providers, eavesdropping interfaces apply to German email providers, inclusing Posteo, but hopefully not Fastmail.

Now, I understand you. Of course, there is some leak of information even if the main content of your email is encrypted. The big problem, though, is that almost none of my correspondents are willing to go to the trouble of using client-to-client encryption. I have had PGP keys for such purposes for about 15 years, but (in that time) have used it with less than 1% of my email communications.

Moderator's Comment
 

Folks, cool down the rhetoric and refrain from political comments.

Some news concerning the issues with germany?

As a german user (willing to bring fastmail to my whole family) it's not easy to decide what to do... No answer from fastmail at this point :(

As long as the help link below remains the same, I don't think you can expect any difference. You can always file a support request by clicking the link shown on this page.
https://www.fastmail.com/help/accoun...available.html

Bill

You could be right about it, I am not sure.
Posteo answered me that they don't post about these things in forums..., I told them that I only wanted to know the answer, not in forums, and that I was dissapointed with that answer but no reply until now... Suspicious.

But, for example, Tutanota posted about this here:

https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/data-protection-germany

Please read:

https://airvpn.org/topic/12766-whats...e-7#entry64210

FastMail apps and signup available in Germany again
 

FastMail blog, posted by everyone's favorite, Bron! :cool:

https://blog.fastmail.com/2017/08/02...germany-again/

I wonder what the legal situation is for your email stored on Fastmail servers that are based in the USA? Sure, the company personnel are in Australia, but they own a nexus in the USA (POBox.com) and store data in the USA. I can't claim to be a legal expert on this, but that would seem to indicate that at least some US laws would apply as they do to any other foreign company doing business in another country.

OT a bit, but let's pretend we are government spies and we are looking for something suspicious and we have a list of everyone and their email services they are using. My own attention might be immediately drawn to those using services like Proton Mail or Tutanota as obviously those people feel they have something to hide. Maybe the spies can't directly read the email, but knowing who is sending messages and to whom might be information equally as valuable. Not saying this is right or wrong, but it just makes sense.