Setting up cameras and monitoring employees’ toilet breaks, as the supermarket chain Lidl did; keeping a “black money” fund for kickbacks to officials in developing countries, as Siemens allegedly did; diverting money to pay for call girls for refractory board members, as Volkswagen did ... German executives have not been at their best lately. But nothing has so shocked the public as allegations over the past two weeks that Deutsche Telekom, the largest telephone group in Europe, used a private investigator to spy on journalists and board members.

Germany has had, in general, an admirable system for protecting privacy. It is crumbling not because its elite has made a few mistakes, but because of new economic and social pressures that businesses in all countries face.