Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award - The New York Times

A nicely-timed recognition of the primacy of privacy

"Named for Alan Turing, the British mathematician and computer scientist, the award is particularly noteworthy because it comes at a time that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is locked in a bitter feud with Apple over the agency’s inability to unlock the cryptographic system that protects digital information stored in the company’s iPhones.

While private information can be protected with a so-called “symmetric” key, or a single digital code, that is used to mathematically scramble the data, the problem becomes much more difficult when two parties who have not met physically wish to have a secret interaction.

The privacy protection technology that is now used extensively to protect modern electronic communications is based on Mr. Diffie’s and Mr. Hellman’s original research that led to the creation of “public-key cryptography” technology."

Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award - The New York Times