De-Mail

De-Mail is a German E-Government communications service that makes it possible to exchange legal electronic documents between citizens, agencies, and businesses over the Internet. The project called Bürgerportal is realized by the German government in cooperation with private business partners in an effort to reduce communication costs of administration and companies.

The project was announced in 2008 and has been accepted by Bundestag and Bundesrat in early 2011. It is expected to go into law during the first half of 2011.

Background

With the introduction of De-Mail the German legislation implements the EU Directive on services in the internal market which demands that authorities accept legally binding electronical communication until the end of 2009.

The government only specifies legal and technical requirements for the services, but is not going to provide these. This role will be taken by private companies which will be allowed to provide De-Mail services after an official certification process.

Services

Besides email communication, other services are specified that support the communication process.

• De-Mail the email communication service which also specifies several options commonly known from postal mail, such as registered mail, personal delivery (delivery only to the recipient, not to any representatives), delivery and pick-up notifications.

• De-Mail Accounts can be registered by individuals and companies and require identification of the applicant. Email addresses for individials will have the form <Firstname>.<Lastname>@<De-Mail-Provider>.de-mail.de (but can also be registered for pseudonyms if marked as such), companies can also register subdomains in the form of <Domain-Name>.de-mail.de.

• De-Ident allows users request signed proof of identity from their provider (based on the identification during the account signup process) which can then be forwarded via De-Mail to eg online shops to provide proof of identity, age, etc.

• De-Safe provides users with an encrypted online storage for documents. Usage of this service does, however, not fulfill the legal storage and archiving requirements for documents.

Usage

Usage should be voluntary all users, and should only be an additional option to postal mail.

Criticism

Several aspects of the law have sparked criticism of the system.

• Communication between De-Mail and regular email addresses will not be possible. The same applies to clients using the electronic court and administration mail (Elektronisches Gerichts- und Verwaltungspostfach) which already provides legal electronic communication between courts and other participating governmental organizations.

• End-to-end encryption can be offered by the providers but is not mandatory. However, users can still apply encryption before sending De-Mail messages. This would make it possible for providers to read emails before transmission and can constitute a possible point of attack.

• The data provided during the identication process for the account creation will be centrally stored and available to the authorities. The draft law ^[1] even specifies naming the account owner to private individuals.

• Official notifications are delivered once they are available in the recipient's mailbox. This is contrary to the postal mail, where a letter is only seen as legally delivered after it has been accepted by the recipient.

Current Providers

The following companies are currently certified as De-Mail providers

• Deutsche Post
• United Internet AG (brands GMX and Web.de)
• Deutsche Telekom AG
• Mentana
• T-Systems

See also

• E-Government
• E-mail privacy
• E-mail encryption

References

1. ^ netzpolitik.org: De-Mail Draw Law, July 2nd 2010

External links

• English description of the project, from the German government
• de-mail.de - Official Website (German)
• State-of-the-art De-Mail (26. January 2011) (German)
• The Register (7. March 2011)