Cryptography pioneer Marty Hellman calls for compassion in personal, cyber, and international threats

It’s been a long time since Marty Hellman and his collaborator Whitfield Diffie ushered in a new era of private communication with their invention of public key cryptography — but better late than never when it comes to winning the Turing Award, referred to by some as the Nobel Prize for technology.

The two shared the 2015 award, only recently presented to them, along with the million dollar prize (Google sponsored the fourfold increase last year) that now accompanies it. I got to speak with Hellman shortly before he left for the ceremony.