If You're Not Doing Anything Illegal, You Have Everything To Worry About

Something that's struck me time and again in the past couple of years is the way officials from government and law enforcement will introduce intrusive new surveillance measures. They say, "If you're not doing anything illegal, you've got nothing to worry about." This statement discourages real debate and argument because people who publicly voice their concerns are made to look like they are criminals, terrorists, child molesters or similar. It creates the idea that anyone who would defy the new security measures has some sort of anti-social agenda.

I must say that this line is quite clever, as it generally does achieve its purpose of allowing the authorities to implement policies that people would not normally accept. It is good at helping to avoid criticism.

My issue is that this criticism-dispelling slogan is completely wrong. To say that "If you're not doing anything illegal, you've got nothing to worry about" is contrary to the underlying principles of Democracy. One of the underlying tenets of Democracy is that leaders are elected and held accountable by the People. It is the People's job to remain vigilant and constantly monitor the elected leaders to ensure that the Rules, Laws and Constitution are constantly being upheld in word and spirit. It is also the People's responsibility to remove leaders who do not adhere to the Rules of society. If the elected leaders abuse their power or act inappropriately, the People must immediately act to change the leadership. That is what gives Democracy its worth.

To get back to the point at hand, this anti-criticism slogan erodes the People's ability to exercise one of the purposes of Democracy; It allows leaders to slowly prevent people from dissenting and working to remove corrupt government officials.

In the extreme case, the most corrupt of despots must be removed by the People, and the people have to take actions that such tyrants would clearly find to be illegal and offensive. (Obviously, despots would take offence at actions whose purpose is to make them accountable to the People.) This is where the anti-criticism slogan becomes most brilliant; Since it gives leaders leeway to force Big-Brother surveillance onto the law-abiding masses, it allows corrupt leaders to sniff out dissent.

Thus, the line "If you're not doing anything illegal, you've got nothing to worry about" is completely wrong because it gives governments leeway to slowly push their society into a place where it becomes impossible to hold leaders accountable for their actions. Therefore this slogan is anti-Democratic, and should be considered to be the calling-card of despot-wannabes and other dangerous, power-hungry characters. It is a warning sign to the People that their leaders are trying to manipulate them, and that the People should move swiftly to remove such dangerous persons from power.