From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Tue Jun 24 2003 - 00:13:53 MDT
Christian Weisgerber writes:
> Brett Paatsch <paatschb@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>
> > I'm no encryption expert but since reading Simon Singh's
> > The Code Book back in 1999 I've had the impression that
> > there is a race on between the developers of quantum
> > computers that could crack existing codes and the
>> development
> > of quantum encryption which could produce uncrackable
> > codes even given quantum computers. I'm not sure what
>> the state of the art is - the following article seems to gives
> > some hints.
>
> As Eugen Leitl likes to quip, it's math versus physics and he prefers
> to trust the math.
>
> Nowadays, transmissions are routinely secured by encryption which
> is mathematical. To send a message, you send a bunch of data. It
> can pass through many different networks, over different media,
> etc. As long as the data eventually arrives, encryption is applicable.
>
> It's quite possible that practical quantum computers (which we don't
> have and won't have in the immediate future) might greatly reduce
> the effort required to break current encryption schemes.
Ah but his is where I wonder if we can be so sure.
In Simon Singh's book he makes the point (I think) that govt boffins
get access to all the commercially published stuff and can springboard
of that. Some of the advances in cryptography and in computing
hardware were actually further ahead than was genuinely known.
Now I'm no big enthusiast for conspiracy theories but I have been
doing some casual recsearch (not much yet) into the nefarious
area of "Secret Patents". The whole idea of a patent, is that its
supposed to represent a good public policy tradeoff whereby the
inventor gets a timelimited monopoly to exploit his inventions and
in exchange he/she is supposed to provide a detailed description
of the best use of the innovation for publioc perusal.
But with this Secret Patent idea, based on a convo I had with a
patent office guy in Australia, the would be patenter subs their
application and if anything weaponish grabs the attention of the
examiner, the examiner is obliged to shoot it off to the the defence
department for the once over.
It occurs to me, please bear in mind I have only started looking
into this, that almost all the technologies transhumanist types
are likely to have an interest in could be seen as having some
sort of military application. Nano, AI, cryto, aspects of biotech.
It would be kinda nice to know that IP is not being stockpiled
for someone else with more martial inclinations.
But how can we know. Now I reckon that it would be pretty
hard to develop certain types of technology without some sort
of hints being given off that curious bods of the type that frequnet
lists like this would entirely overlook. For instance I seriously
doubt the three letter agencies have teleportation devices. But
I would not be quite so sure, lacking the physics myself, to
dismiss quantum computing. I'd have to do quite a bit of
reading to guess at where they could be at.
I do know that a friend of a friend (the best sources) who
was/is working with quantum computing in Canberra has had
the NSA wander around the facility asking questions.
> Which
> doesn't necessarily mean that it will be trivial or even practical.
> Anyway, people don't worry much about this, because it stands to
> reason that by the time practical quantum computers are available,
> there will also be new encryption schemes that take advantage of
> the properties of quantum computing and will be just as unbreakable
> with quantum computers as current schemes are with current hardware.
Maybe not. Depends who develops quantum computers first.
When they cracked the enigma code quite a bit of trouble was taken
not to give up the intel that they had cracked it.
<snipped remainder>
Thanks for the heads up.
Brett Paatsch
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Jun 24 2003 - 00:23:23 MDT