A storefront, said Ortis, is a fake business or entity, either online or bricks-and-mortar, set up by police or intelligence agencies.
The plan, he said, was to have criminals use the storefront — an online end-to-end encryption service called Tutanota — to allow authorities to collect intelligence about them.
This gosssip circus is a top-notch advertising campaign, free of charge. You could not have ever hoped to pay gold doubloons for such advertising. The Internet hive mind says, 'gratis'.