Germany has very strong privacy laws which is one of the reasons Amazon dropped an AWS region there. Customers are paying a premium for the jurisdiction.
Those laws protect against commercial exploitation, but not against endeavours of law enforcement or intelligence services. "Vorratsdatenspeicherung" (data retention) law just took effect. In fact the BND doesn't care about the law at all. Fear driven neo-con politics are en vogue as everywhere else. I think the main difference is the civil opposition which is probably a tad more vocal and active than in non-EU or soon to be non-EU countries.
I think he means "dropped" as in "the rapper dropped his mixtape today", not as in "the service provider dropped their service due to lack of profitability".
Yes, because I agreed with you that it was perhaps a poor time for a colloquial usage of "dropped" considering that, in the context, it was fairly likely to be interpreted as my counter-example, or your initial interpretation.
I'd like to think my wording was completely unambiguous to make up for any context-switching your brain might have tried to pull on you, and if not I apologize.
Think "drop a pin" like in Google maps parlance. To "drop something" is to release something. In that context it's really American hip-hop slang. Although its used widely by the music press when discussing a new release from any type of artist.
A band or artist might be "getting ready to drop something new" - a new single, a new album, video etc.
