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Germany Builds Encrypted, Identity-Confirmed Email

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the wo-ist-jones dept.

jfruhlinger writes "Looking to solve the problems of spam, phishing, and unconfirmed email identities, Germany is betting very, very big. The country will pass a law this month creating 'De-mail,' a service in which all messages will be encrypted and digitally signed so they cannot be intercepted or modified in transit. Businesses and individuals wanting to send or receive De-mail messages will have to prove their real-world identity and associate that with a new De-mail address from a government-approved service provider. The service will be enabled by a new law that the government expects will be in force by the end of this month. It will allow service providers to charge for sending messages if they wish. The service is voluntary, but will it give the government too much control?"

3 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. No end-to-end encryption though by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As far as I've read, they decrypt messages in the middle "to check the messages for viruses".

    1. Re:No end-to-end encryption though by bemymonkey · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Hmmm, I haven't gotten much info about this, but IIRC it's not really about replacing or upgrading E-Mail, but rather about replacing snail-mail entirely. Documents with signatures and so on can now be sent as e-mail instead of in quaint old envelopes...

  2. Czech govt. already did by jmak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And it's been a failure, for a number of reasons:

    - it cost a fortune to deploy
    - one message costs an equivalent of about 1 USD, which means no one uses it except for communicating with the government
    - it relies on a proprietary (although free as beer) rather obscure application for Windows, fortunately a non-profit foundation later developed a cross-platform library for accessing the mailbox
    - once you register into the system, any official letter you get is automatically considered delivered, so you cannot deny receiving it, that's why any sane lawyer will discourage from getting such an account ever unless you are obligated to

    Obviously, because so much money already burnt, the mailbox system is here to stay.