It seems that there are enough idiots in the world who are willing to reelect that treacherous pile of smelly shit impersonating a federal government at the moment.
It isn't going to stop a German police warrant or BND investigation requiring these companies to hand over your emails, and the EU data retention polices are still in place, but it does stop the foreign spooks sticking their noses in where it isn't wanted. DE-MAIL, is as you say, bullshit, but that isn't why this is really about.
I know that from my GMX account I can email someone on a Web.de account, and even if the Internet decides to route my email over the Atlantic first or through Frankfurt where I hazard a guess the NSA will be doing they optical splitting, it doesn't matter.
If they want to read my emails they have to brute force that or have a copy of the keys.
This is a small, but great step forward in my opinion.
Using TLS for smtp (which seems to be what you're referring to for the 'route over the Atlantic' thing)?
Using TLS for submission/the client? Every respectable site and certainly every web mail client that isn't utterly broken offers https / TLS already.
I see nothing but a stupid media campaign and fishing for scared and clueless end users that read about this in their favorite tabloid. A.k.a. the BILD/Computer BILD target crowd.
> I don't see what a bunch of corporate entities have to do within election campaign
> I don't see what a bunch of corporate entities have to do within election campaign
Read. that. again. Good god.