Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic depicts a surveillance drone telling a citizen "Hello citizen. I'll be monitoring you on your walk today! Enjoy your safety." When the man protests that this is a violation of his privacy, the drone delivers the classic surveillance-state retort: "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide." The man then gives an articulate counterargument: everyone has something to hide, and universal surveillance catches benign breaches of law and taboo; if the public are all guilty, the executive branch can selectively enforce laws, essentially giving them both judicial and legislative power, defeating the whole point of separation of powers. The drone dismisses this with "So you're saying you have something to hide!" The man simply responds "Yes." In the final panel, the man reveals he has been recording the conversation, and the drone protests "That's a violation of my privacy!"

The comic makes a sophisticated political argument about the dangers of mass surveillance, specifically the problem of selective enforcement. The man's monologue articulates a genuine concern in civil liberties discourse: when everyone technically breaks some law or norm, universal surveillance gives authorities the power to prosecute anyone they choose while ignoring others, which is a form of unchecked power. The punchline -- the drone objecting to being recorded -- exposes the fundamental hypocrisy of surveillance states: those who insist that privacy is only needed by the guilty suddenly demand privacy for themselves. This mirrors real-world debates where government agencies that conduct mass surveillance object to transparency and whistleblowing.