[sergiosgc]

This is the German implementation of the European Data Retention Directive [1]. The legal landscape across the EU is bound to be similar. The gist of the directive, regarding email is: providers must retain sender, recipient, date and IP address information for a period (6 to 24 months, depending on the country). This data may be requested by a court order, and only by court order.

The directive says nothing about the secrecy of the request, so this is up to the specific implementation in member states. In Germany it is secret, in Portugal it is public except for complex cases in investigative phase (a specific, well defined situation meant to deal with large organized crime). I don't know about other countries, but since our laws are usually modeled on the French version, I'd wager France is similar to Portugal (actually, it's the other way around)

[1]http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

[aw3c2]

No, it is a different thing but the DRD is another thing that they should mention indeed.