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> " For security reasons, from the beginning of 2014 the initiative partners will only transport SSL-encrypted e-mails to ensure that data traffic over all of their transmission paths is secure."

That's the most significant part of this announcement-- it means there's finally a push to phase out plaintext email transport, which allows passive surveillance to intercept mail.

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Yes, because there is no reason to believe that the german government has any interest in the active surveillance of digital communications.

/* sarcasm */

I am not saying that this specific service is good for the privacy of their users. I am saying that this move, phasing out non-SSL email, will _force_ the rest of the world to add SSL to outgoing email connections, thereby protecting all email worldwide from passive interception.

Right now, I think about 75% of email traffic is encrypted between sender and recipient, so this would protect that remaining 25%. (Percentages _greatly_ dependent on who and where you measure.)

I agree with that view. I think this is largely a bit of opportunist advertising, but also that this specific measure is actually useful. Like with more companies moving towards HTTPS-by-default, it's useful in cutting down the number of places where things can be easily intercepted. Even cutting down the number of places where non-government parties can intercept something is useful, because: 1) that's in itself good for privacy; and 2) non-government parties are a major source of government information, because some of them voluntarily turn over or sell the information to governments, and others end up being forced to hand it over.

It's better to be subject to just your government instead of both your government and the self-proclaimed world police. The US terror machine needs to be avoided at all costs as it's the greatest threat to peace and freedom worldwide.

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