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The order to release the mails for April 2020 came from the Hanover public prosecutor
Photo: Holger Hollemann / picture alliance / dpa
The Hanover public prosecutor's office tried to force the Tutanota e-mail service to surrender data.
The operator of encrypted e-mail accounts should forward all incoming and outgoing messages from a specific e-mail account from April 2020, as the documents available to SPIEGEL show.
Investigators from other European countries had assigned the account to a suspect who wanted to extort a million euros from a large food company.
Tutanota encrypts mails between its customers in such a way that even the operator cannot read the customer's messages.
In order to decipher emails, Tutanota would have to program a kind of back door.
The Hanover mail service, which claims to have several million customers, is defending itself against this.
"It is not technically possible for us to program such a function without the encryption becoming fundamentally insecure," says Managing Director Matthias Pfau.
The district court set a fine against Pfau, and days later the public prosecutor applied for detention.
Pfau reports that the police even stood at his door to question him.
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Tutanota managing director Matthias Pfau
Photo: photographer
Of course, corrected inquiries from law enforcement agencies are supported, Pfau emphasized.
In the current case, however, Tutanota opposed the publication of the news and relied on a ruling by the European Court of Justice.
Accordingly, a surrender obligation only applies to telecommunications providers such as Telekom.
In the case of services that do not establish a connection between customers themselves, but instead use lines from third parties, the regulation does not apply.
The Hanover Regional Court saw it that way too;
Pfau did not have to pay any fine.
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