Functional cryptography, meaning something that works, is feasible for the masses and suits a purpose. Spoiler: They (not only Germany) want to remove that right from you once again.
I remember, back then I used loop-aes for my whole disk encryption. I like this clean module, because it is fully functional. It fulfills the purpose of creating perfect noise over the whole block storage media. No cryptography header or anything else which could raise a flag. Why else would one apply whole disk-encryption if not to at least attempt full deniability? Conventional wisdom dictates that a system is compromised if hardware access has been achieved. Deniable disk encryption is one last resort in these cases. Sadly the Linux kernel community didn’t include this module in its base tree and one would suspect politics were the issue at hand. Instead, we have some soft disk encryption per default, which IMHO is useless as deniability can’t be achieved.
Besides whole disk encryption to protect your privacy against physical intruders, we have end-to-end encryption of our communication to maintain our online privacy. The only functional way is to never disclose the private keys, performing asymmetric encryption using 1 or more listener’s public keys or negotiating a symmetric key for forward secrecy. Any other architecture trusting a middle man is void. Therefor, a functional end-to-end encryption only uses the medium internet and optional remote storage devices as a means to transport and store noise for Eve. Any service provider managing cryptography keys would render the whole effort useless at best – worse, it gives a false feeling of privacy.
Yes, it happens again – the German government is openly debating to prohibit the people to use end-to-end encryption. No, not just Germany – as you can read, this is being driven by most 5 Eyes and EU Governments including France, UK and Germany. This drive is also nothing new, they relaunched it more than two years ago. The people are being boiled alive like frogs and under the right circumstances they will take this last tool of privacy from us. It is like a new tax, once established it will never ever be lifted.
Only problem to their task is, will they make transmitting and storing noise a crime? The UK government obviously thinks this way:
You’re not going to be sent to jail for refusal to give up encryption keys (only, ed.). You’re going to be sent to jail for an inability to unlock something that the police think is encrypted. Yes, this is where the hairs rise on our arms: if you have a recorded file with radio noise from the local telescope that you use for generation of random numbers, and the police ask you to produce the decryption key to show them the three documents inside the encrypted container that your radio noise looks like, you will be sent to jail for up to five years for your inability to produce the imagined documents.
