Goodbye freedom, goodbye privacy

Holy crap, some politicians have completely snapped. As heise online reports [google translation], the minister of the interior of North Rhine-Westphalia, Ingo Wolf, and the federal minister of the interior, Wolfgang Schäuble, have proposed new attacks on informational freedom and privacy. In a "program for strengthening homeland security" and in the revision of a law regulating the competencies of the Verfassungsschutz, the intelligence service operating on the level of a federal state, Wolf and Schäuble want to enable the Verfassungsschutz and the BKA (federal police agency) to conduct covert online searches of private computers. Because physical confiscation of computers proved to be "expensive in personnel and technology" they want to have an easier means of surveillance. It is not stated how this is supposed to be technologically implemented (Windows system possibly being easy prey) but the mere idea is scary enough. But wait, I forgot: the measure are only directed against terrorist and pedophiles, so I have nothing to be afraid of. If you don't believe them: update your firewalls, use anonymizers and encrypted e-mail, install Linux, encrypt your files!