So damn true , it’s quite said if you think of it and realise your country is being run by someone who is a high school drop out (and is complaing he should earn more becase it’s a responsible job).

Moral of the story anyone who want to be a politician should not be politicians.:)

It’s exactly this implementations that is bothering.
With many of these privacy and surveillance related the bureaucrats seem to go for the ’security by obscurity’ approach. In the Netherlands there is talk about a big electronic ‘patient’ database, this to reduce possible mix-ups when handing out drugs or performing therapy. They do discuss what is needed for the system to work, but are reluctant to disclose the actual protective measurements. I an kinda worried that is is just as crappy as our ‘transport card’ system (recently a tech student cloned a day pass, it is rumored the German CCC has data on cloning a full blown card.

Scream ‘terrorist’ and the majority of people will rather have one false positive behind lock and key instead of a false negative running about.
It’s worrying me that, even among better educated people, the idea of trading in some privacy for potentially more security is gaining ground.
Again educations seems to be key to demistifying the FUD that is being spread about to justify the reduction of privacy in general.

The UK has or will be following soon.

This restrictive German law has been in the making for quite some time now, the early signs where prohibition of software enabling people to circumvent copy protection mechanisms (even getting past the really lame protection schemes) making software like Alcohol 120%, etc illegal. I tend to travel to Germany quite oftent, guess I will have to break my Knoppix cd/dvd in two at the border (funny though, the Schengen treaty mentions free travel of people/goods/knowledge/and to some extend money between Schengen countries. This all seems one big contradiction)