The best way to keep your emails out of the NSA’s sights may be to have them never cross over US soil. For many residents of Germany, that’ll now be easy to ensure. One of Germany’s leading communication companies, Deutsche Telekom, announced a new initiative on Friday to keep domestic emails safe and secure. Under the new plan, called “E-mail made in Germany,” all messages going directly between three German email services — GMX, T-Online, and web.de — will never leave local servers. They’ll also be encrypted, and users of those services will see a notice when they’re composing an email to tell them whether or not the recipient’s email falls under the program’s protections.
Deutsche Telekom reacts to NSA spying with initiative to protect German emails
is The Verge’s executive editor. He has covered tech, policy, and online creators for over a decade.
"Germans are deeply unsettled"
“Germans are deeply unsettled by the latest reports on the potential interception of communication data,” Deutsche Telekom CEO René Obermann said in a statement. While the protection can only be ensured when an email is traveling between those three services, the initiative is open to any other German email providers that wish to join. But even with those protections, it’s not clear if they’ll go far enough to guard users from government snooping. Germany’s intelligence community reportedly takes advantage of the same tools that the NSA does, and it’s even said to have a close relationship with the US agency.
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