Cybersecurity veteran John Morgan Salomon dismantles the arguments behind "Chat Control" and similar encryption-breaking laws. In our Hybrid Analog Digital Society, privacy isn't about hiding — it's about democratic survival. When governments can read your thoughts, the targets aren't just terrorists. They're anyone who thinks differently.
John Morgan Salomon said something during our conversation that I haven't stopped thinking about. We were discussing encryption, privacy laws, the usual terrain — and he cut through all of it with five words: "It's none of your goddamn business."
Not elegant. Not diplomatic. But exactly right.
John has spent 30 years in information security. He's Swiss, lives in Spain, advises governments and startups, and uses his real name on social media despite spending his career thinking about privacy. When someone like that tells you he's worried, you should probably pay attention.
The immediate concern is something called "Chat Control" — a proposed EU law that would mandate access to encrypted communications on your phone. It's failed twice. It's now in its third iteration. The Danish Information Commissioner is pushing it. Germany and Poland are resisting. The European Parliament is next.
The justification is familiar: child abuse materials, terrorism, drug trafficking. These are the straw man arguments that appear every time someone wants to break encryption. And John walked me through the pattern: tragedy strikes, laws pass in the emotional fervor, and those laws never go away. The Patriot Act. RIPA in the UK. The Clipper Chip the FBI tried to push in the 1990s. Same playbook, different decade.
Here's the rhetorical trap: "Do you support terrorism? Do you support child abuse?" There's only one acceptable answer. And once you give it, you've already conceded the frame. You're now arguing about implementation rather than principle.
But the principle matters. John calls it the panopticon — the Victorian-era prison design where all cells face inward toward a central guard tower. No walls. Total visibility. The transparent citizen. If you can see what everyone is doing, you can spot evil early. That's the theory.
The reality is different. Once you build the infrastructure to monitor everyone, the question becomes: who decides what "evil" looks like? Child pornographers, sure. Terrorists, obviously. But what about LGBTQ individuals in countries where their existence is criminalized? John told me about visiting Chile in 2006, where his gay neighbor could only hold his partner's hand inside a hidden bar. That was a democracy. It was also a place where being yourself was punishable by prison.
The targets expand. They always do. Catholics in 1960s America. Migrants today. Anyone who thinks differently from whoever holds power at any given moment. These laws don't just catch criminals — they set precedents. And precedents outlive the people who set them.
John made another point that landed hard: the privacy we've already lost probably isn't coming back. Supermarket loyalty cards. Surveillance cameras. Social media profiles. Cookie consent dialogs we click through without reading. That version of privacy is dead. But there's another kind — the kind that prevents all that ambient data from being weaponized against you as an individual. The kind that stops your encrypted messages from becoming evidence of thought crimes. That privacy still exists. For now.
Technology won't save us. John was clear about that. Neither will it destroy us. Technology is just an element in a much larger equation that includes human nature, greed, apathy, and the willingness of citizens to actually engage. He sent emails to 40 Spanish members of European Parliament about Chat Control. One responded.
That's the real problem. Not the law. Not the technology. The apathy.
Republic comes from "res publica" — the thing of the people. Benjamin Franklin supposedly said it best: "A republic, if you can keep it." Keeping it requires attention. Requires understanding what's at stake. Requires saying, when necessary: this is none of your goddamn business.
Stay curious. Stay Human.
Subscribe to the podcast. And if you have thoughts, drop them in the comments — I actually read them.
Marco Ciappelli
Subscribe to the Redefining Society and Technology podcast. Stay curious. Stay human.
> https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7079849705156870144/
Marco Ciappelli: https://www.marcociappelli.com/
John Salomon
Experienced, international information security leader. vCISO, board & startup advisor, strategist.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsalomon/
Marco Ciappelli speaks with John Morgan Salomon, a 30-year information security veteran, about the ongoing battle over encryption, privacy, and democratic rights. The conversation centers on "Chat Control" — a proposed EU law that would mandate government access to encrypted communications — and expands into a broader examination of why privacy matters in a surveillance-capable society.
Marco Ciappelli:
John Morgan Salomon: