The German privacy paradox

As a group, Germans are more private than anyone I know. My German grandfather-in-law used to lecture me: "People do not need to know that." Germans complain about Google Streetview taking pictures of them … in public. They're going after Facebook on privacy. They say that Google Analytics violates privacy. They even enable convicted killers to expunge their names from Wikipedia out of privacy. And now they're up in arms about airport body scanners.

Yet go into a German sauna, and there the G...