@spydon In 2020, the Hanover District Court had ordered the telecommunications surveillance of a Tutanota mailbox, and the public prosecutor's office had also applied for a penalty payment and preventive detention against the managing director of Tutanota. However, Tutanota lodged an appeal against all of this, and the regional court cancelled the district court's surveillance order entirely. Also, there are no gag orders under German law.

spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/tutano…

heise.de/news/Gerichtsurteil-S…

Krypto-Dienst Tutanota: Staatsanwaltschaft wollte Zugriff auf verschlüsselte E-Mails

In einem internationalen Erpressungsfall wollten Ermittler auf verschlüsselte E-Mails zugreifen. Laut Anbieter hätte das die Sicherheit aller Kunden gefährdet. Das Amtsgericht lehnte die Herausgabe am Ende ab.

^{Max Hoppenstedt (DER SPIEGEL)}

@spydon In June 2019, @Curia ruled that e-mail services are not telecomunication providers, meaning they cannot be subjected to telecommunication surveillance. Before that, Itzehoe District Court had forced Tutanota to forward certain incoming unencrypted e-mails (directed to inboxes of suspected criminals) to law enforcement. End-to-end encrypted e-mails had not been affected at any point, though.

golem.de/news/europaeischer-ge…

sueddeutsche.de/digital/tutano…

Gericht zwingt E-Mail-Anbieter, Daten herauszugeben

Verschlüsselung: Der Fall des deutschen Anbieters Tutanota zeigt, wie viel Einblick Ermittler in die E-Mails von Nutzern verlangen können.

^{Max Hoppenstedt (Süddeutsche Zeitung)}

@pixelcode thanks for the information! I might very well have read a FUD article.

It would be interesting to know more about how the recovery key is generated and stored (if it is), because there seems to be a lot of unanswered potential fud around that.