Do email providers have to tell me which (inter)national agencies/institutes are requesting legal access to my account data?

Posted by Juve on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Juve
Published on 2011-01-10T23:43:09Z Indexed on 2011/01/10 23:55 UTC
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user-accounts

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privacy

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legal

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provider

I know this question is not technical, but i did not find the "stackoverflow for legal issues" and I guess all you super users out there might know the answer.

Here is my (potential) problem:

I have a free email account at a (inter)national email provider.
I used the words "wikileaks" and "twitter" lately in my email.
Some over-ambitious national security organization legally requests access to all accounts that behaved similarly.

Q1: Can I request the who-, when-, and why-information related to this legal request from my provider? Does he have to tell me which (inter)national organizations (legally) requested my account data?

Q2: Does the situation change if I live in Germany (and have a German provider)? I guess here are some German users. And I know that such a legal policy exists for our national credit rating agency. I can request who got access to my data, they have to tell me.

Please answer only if you know a good answer, I don't want to start a long discussion on this none-technical question.

Best regards, Juve

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