Relying on privacy to avoid liability for inadvertently breaking laws does not seem to me to be a good solution to the real problem: that laws can be so numerou

Relying on privacy to avoid liability for inadvertently breaking laws does not seem to me to be a good solution to the real problem: that laws can be so numerous and obscure that one can inadvertently become a criminal. Privacy does have a role in helping to avoid prosecution: if the government doesn't know about my lawbreaking, it can't prosecute me for it. But privacy should also limit government's power to legislate and prosecute: Government should not make criminal what is not its business. A citizen ordinarily should not have to live in fear that he could be prosecuted if only the government knew what he was doing. In this sense, privacy can harm freedom because it allows government to expand its claims without public resistance. Privacy has enabled the government to make most American teenagers potential felons because they share music. If there were less privacy, if the government knew and prosecuted all the file sharers to the full extent of the law, the resulting public backlash would cause the law to be repealed. The best way to change an unjust law is to enforce it.