Novelist William Gibson tackles the future of privacy, the nuances between personal and state transparency, and the confusion their study can bring in the shadow of the FBI and Apple encryption debate for a "Turning Points" op-ed in The New York Times. "Even this simple consideration of privacy confuses me," he writes. "Is individual privacy and state privacy the same thing? Are they conceptually antithetical? Is it to a state’s advantage to permit its citizens to keep secrets?" Time will slowly erode the safeguards we place around our secrets, as future historians study. "Privy to that information while looking back at us, our ancestors will know us differently than we currently know ourselves, just as we now know the Victorians quite differently from how they knew themselves," he continues. (Registration may be required to access this story.) 
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