ON FRIDAY, APPLE and Google announced a joint collaboration to make a Covid-19 "contact tracing" framework available for legions of Android and iOS smartphones. Slated for release next month, the platform will give public health organizations the ability to track infections and use Bluetooth proximity analysis to warn people if they've come into contact with someone who has reported that they're infected. The service will be opt-in only and is designed to preserve privacy, the companies say.

Not as close as you might fear, but quantum encryption cracking is on its way. So, it's time to start getting ready for it.

The private information of some 4.5 million Israeli citizens, including biometric facial features, stored in the Transportation Ministry database for drivers licenses and a private database for smart biometric bus cards, is not getting the highest-level encryption and security to prevent data breaches or exploit attempts, found a report by the State Comptroller, writes the Jerusalem Post.

Quantum-resistant or post-quantum cryptography is our best bet against attacks from upcoming quantum computers.

Claims Toshiba is developing secure quantum cryptography should be taken with a quantum of salt, a number of cybersecurity experts say.

By Bruce Schneier.

With the recent announcement by the British Government (specifically David Cameron) on wanting to ban civilian encryption in the UK (or at least requiring ALL encryption used have Government keys or back-doors), it is important to understand the danger in that. NO ENTITY can even be 80% sure that the back-doors (etc.) in any product or network won't be used by/for nefarious purposes. Period. It hurts us all equally in the long run. Today's gov. spy program is tomorrow's organized crime tool.

James Comey, the director of the FBI, told a Senate committee Wednesday that the government should have the right to lawfully access any device or electronic form of communication with a lawful court order, even it is encrypted.

The U.S. government wants to stop terrorists and criminals from 'going dark.' But at what cost?

If it were possible, would proponents of “backdoor” access to encrypted communication also favor equivalent access to the private thoughts in our brains? By Conor Friedersdorf.

Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).

This is how ANC operatives sent encrypted messages to one another in the final years of apartheid.

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said Tuesday that encryption makes it harder for law enforcement to track down “evildoers” — and called for a “much better, more cooperative relationship” with Apple, Google, and other tech companies that are building uncrackable private communication apps into their new products.

Jeb Bush’s conclusions regarding encryption are fundamentally flawed, because they ignore one simple inevitable fact. The Internet is going dark. What does “going dark” mean? It means that because we are arriving at the dawn of a new era — an era defined by the pervasiveness and ubiquity of strong encryption on a global scale — all intercepted Internet traffic will soon be unreadable.

In the last few weeks, I’ve had several interesting conversations concerning email encryption. I’m also trying to develop some concept of what areas Thunderbird should view as our special emphases as we look forward. The question is, with our limited resources, should we strive to make better support of end-to-end email encryption a vital Thunderbird priority?

In its attempt to destroy information, GCHQ may not have realized it was creating other important information: exactly what it was doing and why.

For nearly 250 years, this book concealed the arcane rituals of an ancient order. But cracking the code only deepened the mystery. By Noah Schachtman.

Founder of Kryptnostic, Matthew Tamayo-Rios. He claims to have created the first practical application for fully homomorphic encryption, a “holy grail” for securing data.

While the increasing regularity of both computing and security breaches makes Clapper’s concerns very real, the approach the intelligence agencies want to take is sorely inadequate. While they spent a long time discussing deterrence and surveillance, Clapper et al. practically ignored the most crucial and central aspect of fighting cyberattacks: security.

The US government whistleblower Edward Snowden believes encryption might make it difficult or even impossible to distinguish signals from alien species from cosmic background radiation. On Friday night, Snowden appeared from Moscow on the astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk podcast, via a robot video link called a “beam remote presence system”.