Friday, March 11, 2005
SOME ( crypto)LOGICAL OUTCOMES FOR QUANTUM ENCRYPTION
Scientific American, recently had a fine article on the parameters of the quantum encryption field which is producing " unbreakable" codes via the principles of Quantum mechanics. For those without a SciAm subscription, who want an explanation of QE, go here.
The big picture good news is that the assurance of security for financial and informational transactions provided by QE will make the establishment and spread of " Connectivity" in the Gap relatively cheaper by leapfrogging over the problem of decayed or absent infrastructure that plagues most of these countries. "Connecting up " to Core standards for the fledgling Gap entrepreneur will eventually ( though not today) require only a laptop, a wireless connection and some software but not the building of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of old fashioned telephone systems that many corrupt and dysfunctional regimes seem incapable of providing or maintaining.
The bad news of course, is that all the wrong people will also want to use " unbreakable" encryption - transnational crime syndicates, rebel groups, narco-traffickers, rogue states and Islamist terrorists. That being the case I can only imagine that the world's premier intelligence agencies have either tried to establish covert relationships with QE companies like id Quantiqe or MagiQ or to infiltrate them outright in order to have access to the proprietary key technology ( commentary on QE is notably absent from the NSA website).
Since this technology is not " containable" the only acceptable strategy is to allow relatively cheap but not quite state of the art versions to be commercially available, thus yielding the longitudinal economic benefits but keeping the NSA type SIGINT agencies ahead of the bad guys and discouraging others from pursuing expensive R&D of QE on their own. ¶ 6:59 AM
Scientific American, recently had a fine article on the parameters of the quantum encryption field which is producing " unbreakable" codes via the principles of Quantum mechanics. For those without a SciAm subscription, who want an explanation of QE, go here.
The big picture good news is that the assurance of security for financial and informational transactions provided by QE will make the establishment and spread of " Connectivity" in the Gap relatively cheaper by leapfrogging over the problem of decayed or absent infrastructure that plagues most of these countries. "Connecting up " to Core standards for the fledgling Gap entrepreneur will eventually ( though not today) require only a laptop, a wireless connection and some software but not the building of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of old fashioned telephone systems that many corrupt and dysfunctional regimes seem incapable of providing or maintaining.
The bad news of course, is that all the wrong people will also want to use " unbreakable" encryption - transnational crime syndicates, rebel groups, narco-traffickers, rogue states and Islamist terrorists. That being the case I can only imagine that the world's premier intelligence agencies have either tried to establish covert relationships with QE companies like id Quantiqe or MagiQ or to infiltrate them outright in order to have access to the proprietary key technology ( commentary on QE is notably absent from the NSA website).
Since this technology is not " containable" the only acceptable strategy is to allow relatively cheap but not quite state of the art versions to be commercially available, thus yielding the longitudinal economic benefits but keeping the NSA type SIGINT agencies ahead of the bad guys and discouraging others from pursuing expensive R&D of QE on their own. ¶ 6:59 AM
