Could a Court force an email encryption provider to perform a surveillance function?
One of the email encryption providers like SwitchMail encrypts all incoming emails by default.
However, a ruling by the Cologne Regional Court is now forcing the company to install a function with which investigators can monitor individual mailboxes and read emails in plain text.
In the summer, the Hanover Regional Court decided that email encryption providers do not provide or participate in any “telecommunications services” in the legal sense. And therefore cannot be obliged to monitor telecommunications. The Hanoverian judges again referred to a landmark judgment of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) from 2019. According to this, e-mail services are not communication services. What do you think? Should Email Encryption Providers with end-to-end encryption build in a backdoor for surveillance purposes?
Read more about this:
Gericht zwingt Mailprovider Tutanota zu Überwachungsfunktion | heise online (German)