Student Surveillance and a Constitutional Court Chief’s Shocking Message: “Why Should You Worry?”

The disclosure that two more law students in Niš were allegedly targeted with Pegasus spyware was followed by a comment from the president of Serbia’s Constitutional Court that stunned students and critics: why worry about surveillance if there is nothing to hide?

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If you have nothing particularly to hide, especially violent activity or behavior with criminal consequences, why should you worry whether someone is listening to you or not?

Vladimir Petrov made the remark during an appearance on Pink television. He said that students involved in blockades should not assume nobody was listening to them, adding that he himself assumed various people were probably monitoring him because of his position. If people had nothing particularly secret to conceal, especially violent conduct or behavior carrying criminal consequences, he asked, why should they worry about being listened to?

Students in Belgrade and Niš condemned the statement as an attempt to normalize unauthorized surveillance. “It is shameful for the president of the Constitutional Court and a law professor to say that,” Belgrade law students in a blockade said. Milica Najdanović, a student in Niš, said, “We as students have nothing to hide and for more than a year and a half we have clearly and openly stood behind all our positions and demands. It is shameful to hear this from a man who should be on our side and should defend us, rather than attack us further as if we were guilty.”

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It is shameful for the president of the Constitutional Court and a law professor to say that.

The Serbian intelligence agency, BIA, entered the debate even though no student had accused it of carrying out the surveillance. The agency commented on allegations it said it normally never discusses, calling them trivial sensationalism and saying those making the claims were working for foreign services.

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We as students have nothing to hide and for more than a year and a half we have clearly and openly stood behind all our positions and demands. It is shameful to hear this from a man who should be on our side and should defend us, rather than attack us further as if we were guilty.

Constitutional law professor Tanasije Marinković said Petrov’s words raised a broader question about whether senior public officials were also being monitored. He said the remarks revealed what he described as the mechanisms of Aleksandar Vučić’s rule, arguing that surveillance of political allies would point to a climate of fear extending even to those within the government. The report ends as it turns back to students opposing the authorities, describing them as targets of alleged spyware surveillance.

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If he monitors political friends and they are aware of it, then that is a reign of fear, a fear imposed on his own people.