Its not about freedom, its about infrastructure (Score 1)

This announcement from the German government has little to do with freedom. As some pointed out, use of strong crypto was not restricted before in Germany (and not in most countries either, the notable exception being France). Hence it is not about a new freedom. What it is about is that Germany, like a growing number of countries, have laws regulating digital signatures to make them legally binding. One may argue that is unnecessary to make laws about this, but it seems to be the German way. As part of the package the German government is sponsoring an official national infrastructure for certificate authorities. It only seems natural that they want to encourage people to use it.

Part of making digital signatures successful is to instill trust among the people in this technology. Digital signatures can never be trusted if there is the slightest doubt that the private key can be disclosed (unknowingly to the owner). Hence different schemes for mandatory national key recovery are totally contrary to a successful deployment of digital signatures in e-commerce.

One can also argue the national key recovery schemes are never going to a) be manageable b) be of any use to law-enforcement or intelligence. (If you were a terrorist, would you submit your keys?)

A philosophical issue is whether the freedom of expression would cover encrypted expressions. If my freedom to express myself is guaranteed by the constitution, does it matter if you can understand me?