Lawyers now predictably claim that Josef Fritzl - the Austrian accused of fathering seven children by the daughter whom he imprisoned and raped over 24 years - is suffering from a “mental disorder”. To judge by the paranoid reactions to this horror story, he is not the only one.

There has been a crazed rush to draw sweeping conclusions about society from this unique crime, to claim that the secret life of one madman means we must police all private lives. After every tragedy from Shipman to Soham, pundits demand: what does this say about us? The answer should be - nothing. But responses to the revelations about Fritzl's cellar do seem to say a lot about the claustrophobic climate of mistrust and misanthropy under which we all live now.

Many say that Fritzl's crimes and the failure to spot them show “the real face of Austria”, supposedly to do with its Nazi past. Only the brainwashed could believe that. Worse, others suggest that it's not just the Austrians, it's all of us, asking: “Could it happen here?” They claim that the enemy is “too much” privacy, so we need more official prodnoses to pry into people's affairs, and neighbours to watch one another. Lorraine Kelly, the morning TV presenter, spoke for many when she demanded that Austrian police arm themselves “with pickaxes, torches and strong stomachs” and search “every single cellar in their entire country”. But why stop at Austria? There are plenty of locked cellars here.

Anything that goes on “behind closed doors” is now deemed under suspicion.

After all, as the Government always tells us, if we have nothing to hide, we have nothing to fear. Yet our privacy is too important to be sacrificed because of an individual's actions, however heinous. It is the basis of a civilised society and the flipside of a healthy public life. That is why every authoritarian regime wants to invade it.

As it happens, Austria is a decent and civilised nation. But the parochial side of Austrian society does encourage a tendency to report neighbours to the authorities for anything from noise or litter to untidy hedges or parking. This is what many would like to see in Britain today, as we are encouraged to shop a smoker, grass up a hosepipe user or simply report anything suspicious. The fashion is for nosiness rather than neighbourliness, surveillance rather than solidarity. Amid all the talk of the “Orwellian nightmare” of CCTV and ID cards, it is worth recalling that the other horror of 1984 was that “everyone could be surrounded day and night by informers who knew him intimately”.

We all have something to hide. It is called our private life, and behind closed doors is where it belongs.

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