German Email Provider Pulls Servers from United States

[drmike]

Deutsche Telekom snubs U.S. email servers after snooping scandal

(Reuters) - Germany's leading telecoms operator will channel email traffic exclusively through its domestic servers in response to public outrage over U.S. spy programs accessing citizens' private messages, Deutsche Telekom said on Friday.

Deutsche Telekom launched the "E-mail made in Germany" initiative after a month of public indignation over reports on U.S. snooping based on documents leaked by fugitive former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

The spying scandal, which has filled German newspapers for weeks, has become a major headache for Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of a September 22 election. Government snooping is a sensitive subject in Germany due to the heavy surveillance of citizens in the former communist East and under Hitler's Nazis.

"The spying campaign has deeply rattled Germans," Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Rene Obermann said at a news conference in Berlin on Friday to launch the initiative aiming to make email communication in Germany "more secure".

Deutsche Telekom and its partner United Internet, which account for about two-thirds of all email users in Germany, said they would protect clients' emails via so-called SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption. This is an option already offered by Google.

Whole story: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/09/net-us-germany-spying-telekom-idUSBRE9780L020130809

 

[RiotSecurity]

Good. I think everyone should pull out of the USA and come to a land of freedom.

 

[Tux]

Good. I think everyone should pull out of the USA and come to a land of freedom.

There's not many choices left.

 

[Oliver]

I wonder if someone will question why they had email traffic going via the US in anyway in the first place if it was for their domestic customers?

 

[MannDude]

Good. Wish more would too.

 

[MannDude]

I wonder if someone will question why they had email traffic going via the US in anyway in the first place if it was for their domestic customers?

Possibly reduced cost / cheaper power and bandwidth? Not sure.

 

[RiotSecurity]

There's not many choices left.

There is many choices left! I'd rather live in a world with freedom and one that does undercover operations to spy on people. The day that  PRISM was leaked I moved everything out of the USA, changed all ips and changed encryption keys on my data.

What I'm working on right now is a side project for myself, that it's a email and data encryption system. Key changes every 60 seconds to a completely random key, hence making it hard if not impossible to crack the encryption key.

Land of freedom:

Russia (EvroHoster.ru, a few others)

Romania (Voxility.com)

Netherlands (Ecatel.net)

Sweden (forget the name, I'll search)

CyberBunker (the true land of freedom)

and many more...

 

[drmike]

I'd beware of Ecatel.  They were said to have given log data in a case involved Anonymous.  Voxility is alleged to have done similar deeds.

The others are promising.

 

[RiotSecurity]

I'd beware of Ecatel.  They were said to have given log data in a case involved Anonymous.  Voxility is alleged to have done similar deeds.

The others are promising.

Voxility does fuck all (excuse my language !). How do I know? I've gotten over 300 takedown requests and on avg. are getting a 40Gbps ddos, all they do is inform me of the takedown requests, they never presue it, same with ecatel. Ecatel hosts a fair share of illegal material, however voxility does the same.

 

[drmike]

40Gbps DDoS on average?  Nifty.  

Your endorsement is indeed a good one.

Cyberbunker's new website is pretty good:

CITY HALL

Strikes Back
SPAMHAUS

BLACKMAIL WAR
SWAT TEAM

RAIDS BUNKER

Read those three on their site.  Pretty impressive.  They've fought some real battles and won or survived.

 

[Oliver]

Swedish prq.se has a pretty solid reputation I think.

 

[tonysala87]

Almost all bandwidth providers across the EU operate in the USA also or are owned by US companies. (level3, above.net, cogent, etc). You think just because the network is in Germany that they're not running prism? lol. pulling out their USA servers probably has zero effect on the percentage of their traffic being monitored.

 

[MannDude]

Fuck it. I'm getting carrier pigeons.



Actually used to help raise pigeons. Though they were tumblers =/

 

[drmike]

 You think just because the network is in Germany that they're not running prism? lol

Well there are many issues with foreign countries sniffing your citizens.

By domesticating their servers (putting them in the homeland) they comply with pre-existing domestic privacy laws.  By putting them abroad, Germany is probably spying along with a basket of other countries.  Could be held liable / bothered.

At best it's a change of face to protect against lawsuits and citizen backlash.

It's a TOUGH puzzle to crack and do properly.

 

[tonysala87]

Yeah, fair points, definitely seems like a saving face tactic. Though I wouldn't want to be an email provider pulling out of somewhere with (presumably) a large established/assigned IPV4 pool from the datacenter... and taking my services back the EU where there are no massive ip blocks to be had (other than the stupidly priced/ip markets). But maybe these big players have all the IPs they need.

Fuck it. I'm getting carrier pigeons.



Actually used to help raise pigeons. Though they were tumblers =/

faster than my dsl with that 2gb memory card on it's back

 

[drmike]

Deutsche Telekom isn't a small outfit  They are supposedly a Tier 1 provider and claim to have one of the largest networks..

http://www.peeringdb.com/view.php?asn=3320&peerParticipantsPublics_mOrder=Sorter_speed&peerParticipantsPublics_mDir=ASC

Oddly, they use T-Mobile USA (a company they own) as a case study and they say:

Success story: T-Mobile USA

T-Mobile USA was looking for a solution to provide its multinational corporation (MNC), enterprise and government agency customers and their employees with easy, secure connections to their corporate online resources from across the globe.

Sounds rather funny now doesn't it?

 

[drmike]

And they have a few IPs:

IPs Originated (v4): 34,530,304

 

[Francisco]

I just think it's funny that they're playing SSL off like it's going to secure the data right on the servers.

Sure, they can't wireshark it and get the information but nothing stops them from walking up to the server and, you know, walking out with it.

The "cloud" is the best thing in the world for the NSA and its programs. They don't have to pull down equipment to get snapshots. Hell, they don't even have to make physical trips to the DC's, they can just armchair it and amazon/etc will snapshot them the VM nice and easy.

Francisco

 

[drmike]

@Franciso, my sentiments totally.

The Cloud only means you are going to get rained on eventually.  Last time I checked H2O and electric don't mix.

The Cloud/virtual land is how NSA and other spooks can have nearly unmanned mega datacenters.   That plus built in redundancy/failure takes nothing offline but a bunch of front feeders basically.  Reduced analysis speeds or collection speeds at worst.

Scary times for sure.

Wonder how many FBI, NSA, etc. jobs and full timed multi year contract jobs with armchair superheros have been created in the past 10 years?  10k? 20k? 100k?   Seems like every third well employed person is involved in police state activities.

 

[vanarp]

The Cloud only means you are going to get rained on eventually.  Last time I checked H2O and electric don't mix.

LOL