Privacy advocates' concerns are fear-mongering - at least according to Otto Orwell:
Concerns about biometric passports, RFID technology, and tele-surveillance, expressed for example by privacy advocates, are fear-mongering that one should not fall for, said Federal Interior Minister Otto Schily at the symposium "Computers in everyday life - opportunities for Germany" in Berlin. The mentioned technologies are not used to monitor or suppress citizens, but to increase their security.
Funny. I rather believe that Otto Orwell's talk is simply fear-mongering - what security is increased by massive and widespread spying on citizens? Certainly not the citizens' security - but they are being fed pseudo-risks and alleged solutions for them, just like the Bush administration, to reduce their civil rights in Germany. Without regard for facts, without regard for proportionality.
The ignorance he attributes to the critics is probably on his side. Because he may still be considered competent as a lawyer (I can't judge his competence there), he has no clue about cryptography and its risks - as they come into play, for example, in the context of passports valid for 10 years.
Who wants to make statements about the security of cryptographic methods today if they have to make this statement for a point in time 10 years from now? Yes, I know, Otto Orwell does - as I said, he simply has no idea what he is talking about. SHA1 was once described as a secure alternative to MD5 signatures - and has essentially failed. MD5 signatures are now completely unusable - as scientists have proven when they produced two real texts with meaningful content and identical MD5 signatures. I've had enough of pathetic politicians with brains too small, who want to impose their alleged doctrines on citizens with absurd claims. And I've long had enough of their idiotic argumentation loops with which they want to sell total surveillance as a security feature to citizens.