Letter from Berlin: Germany's Bild am Sonntag tabloid was even more breathless than usual last March with the front page headline: "Merkel Secretly Filmed!" The story told how it was possible to see into the chancellor's apartment using a security camera installed on the roof of the Pergamon museum opposite, writes Derek Scally
The external camera was installed 10 years ago to monitor the entrances to the museum that houses the famous Pergamon altar and other historical treasures. But bored security men showed a Bild reporter how, with a yank of the joystick, they could check out what was going on chez Merkel.
That the reporter saw nothing more exciting than Merkel's husband watching television was beside the point: the report reinforced the common view here that video cameras are inherently evil.
It's not as if further proof is needed: suspicion of video surveillance has been a recurring theme in modern German debates.
Now the surveillance debate has been reopened once more following the plan to bomb two regional trains departing from Cologne on July 31st.
Luckily, the clock-based detonators proved faulty and the bombs failed to go off. Last weekend, police issued video camera stills of the two suspected bombers and within 24 hours one had been arrested and the second identified. Police chiefs and conservative politicians said it was proof of the effectiveness of video cameras and demonstrated the need to increase the camera network in Germany. Even the candid camera chancellor said she hoped it was time to put aside the "old trench battle" surrounding camera surveillance.
The fact that Lebanese secret service information, and not the video images, led to the arrest of one alleged bomber was deemed beside the point.
German hostility to state-controlled surveillance sits deep, framed by the state terror of the Third Reich dictatorship and the East German police state. Targeted state surveillance - and organised opposition to it - became a feature of German life in the 1970s in the fight against the Red Army Faction (RAF), the left-wing terrorist group that conducted a campaign of high-profile kidnappings and bombings.
Heavy-handed police dragnets to catch the elusive RAF instead created resentment among huge sections of the population - in particular students and left-wing groups - placed under general suspicion as a result.
That contributed to the rise in the early 1980s of the concept of the gläserner Bürger, the "transparent citizen" X-rayed in all details of his life by a nosy state.
Then, in 1983, West German civil rights groups and the burgeoning Green Party won a constitutional court case banning the practice of census-taking.
The court agreed with their argument that, although anonymous, the census questions were so detailed as to enable authorities to track them back to individuals. The constitutional court said in its ruling that citizens had the basic right of "information self-determination" - deciding for yourself how much personal information you choose to make public. Germany hasn't had a proper census since and boasts some of the tightest data protection laws in Europe.
With the passing years, the panic of the 1980s has dissipated and Germans are as happy as anyone else to give away their private information to retailers in exchange for a few discount coupons.
Millions more have no problem divulging their most intimate sexual preferences on dating websites at the prospect of a one-night stand.
Video cameras are sprouting up in public like never before, but with tight usage restrictions. In Berlin, for instance, vandals cause €5m worth of damage annually to railway stock. But the public transport company, BVG, has had to jump through countless legal loops to win the right to install cameras because, under German data protection laws, train carriages are considered part of the private sphere.
Germany's powerful federal data protection commissioner is alarmed by the fresh determination of the ruling Christian Democrats (CDU) to use the fear surrounding the near-miss train bombings to loosen laws governing video surveillance.
"It's wrong to think that with video surveillance you can prevent crimes and put off suicide bombers. London is the proof of that," said Mr Peter Schaar, the commissioner.
Germans are often puzzled why, given the security camera saturation in British and Irish cities, there is mass apoplexy at the notion of having to carry a European-style state ID card.
How can a deaf and dumb piece of laminated card be an infringement of your personal privacy, they wonder, when Big Brother already knows where you've been and with whom?