Tutanota is a Germany-based secure email provider. As you would expect, they are very interested in privacy-affecting legislation, especially in Germany, so they were quick to announce a change in government policy regarding data retention on their blog.
The TL;DR is that the new German government would like to do away with data retention not required for business purposes except when presented with a legal warrant. There’s the usual bureaucratic wrangling but it looks like it’s going to happen. For years, the government kept passing data retention laws and the courts kept striking them down. Now, maybe, Germans can rest assured that the Government isn’t willy nilly snooping on their communications without a warrant supported by a finding of probable criminal activity.
It’s easy to take a “Meh, BFD” attitude about this but it’s not often I get to report such an improvement. Certainly here in America things are getting worse, not better. The Fourth Amendment seems pretty clear on the issue but the courts apparently have special glasses that allow them to read the tea leaves in a way that we hoi polloi don’t have access to. Still, Irreal will take its victories where it can find them and celebrate this step forward for privacy. I just hope that my own government will do likewise. For health reasons, I’m not holding my breath.