If I lose all my git-annex repositories is it possible to restore the content of a repo from a special remote in which encryption was enabled? I know git-annex isn't designed to be a backup solution but more for the archive and/or nomad use case. I do like the idea of being able to restore the files from an S3 special remote though. I imagine part of the answer to this question has to do with what type of encryption is used (hybrid and shared key rely on information stored in the repo but pubkey doesn't rely on the repo at all) and would probably be easier if there were an option to disable hashing the filenames of the files (less secure, but maybe ok in some cases).
Thoughts?
It is not possible to recover just from a special remote. You need at least one copy of the git repository. This drive doesn't need to carry around the actual payload. Consider using an encrypted thumb drive as an additional destination. You can even fully encrypt this repo and sync it up once in a while to keep the information up to date. You can have a look at fully encrypted git repositories with gcrypt for detailed information.