Boondoggle. A solution in search of a problem:
Monyk believes there will be a global market of several million users once
a workable solution has been developed. A political decision will have to
be taken as to who those users will be in order to prevent terrorists and
criminals from taking advantage of the completely secure communication
network, he said.
Silliness itself, at this point. Practical quantum cryptography at this
point is limited to transmission. The moment it goes O/E, it's as vulnerable
as any other data. And terrorists aren't going to bother splicing fiber.
Of course, primitive quantum storage (with error correcting codes!) is
possible and done in laboratories, but we're talking tens of bits here.
It'll be a decade before quantum storage is practical, and that's only IF
someone can find a convincing reason to start developing it.
-TD
From: R. A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: EU seeks quantum cryptography response to Echelon
Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 14:32:34 -0400
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0517euseeks.html
Network World Fusion
EU seeks quantum cryptography response to Echelon
By Philip Willan
IDG News Service, 05/17/04
The European Union is to invest ยค11 million ($13 million) over the next
four years to develop a secure communication system based on quantum
cryptography, using physical laws governing the universe on the smallest
scale to create and distribute unbreakable encryption keys, project
coordinators said Monday.
If successful, the project would produce the cryptographer's holy grail
--
absolutely unbreakable code -- and thwart the eavesdropping efforts of
espionage systems such as Echelon, which intercepts electronic messages on
behalf of the intelligence services of the U.S., the U.K., Canada, New
Zealand and Australia.
The aim is to produce a communication system that cannot be intercepted
by anyone, and that includes Echelon, said Sergio Cova, a professor from
the electronics department of Milan Polytechnic and one of the project's
coordinators. We are talking about a system that requires significant
technological innovations. We have to prove that it is workable, which is
not the case at the moment. Major improvements in geographic range and
speed of data transmission will be required before the system becomes a
commercial reality, Cova said.
The report of the European Parliament on Echelon recommends using
quantum
cryptography as a solution to electronic eavesdropping. This is an effort
to cope with Echelon, said Christian Monyk, the director of quantum
technologies at the Austrian company ARC Seibersdorf Research and overall
coordinator of the project. Economic espionage has caused serious harm to
European companies in the past, Monyk said. With this project we will be
making an essential contribution to the economic independence of Europe.
Quantum cryptography takes advantage of the physical properties of light
particles, known as photons, to create and transmit binary messages. The
angle of vibration of a photon as it travels through space -- its
polarization -- can be used to represent a zero or a one under a system
first devised by scientists Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard in 1984. It
has the advantage that any attempt to intercept the photons is liable to
interfere with their polarization and can therefore be detected by those
operating the system, the project coordinators said. An intercepted key
would therefore be discarded and a new one created for use in its place.
The new system, known as SECOQC (Secure Communication based on Quantum
Cryptography), is intended for use by the secure generation and exchange of
encryption keys, rather than for the actual exchange of data, Monyk said.
The encrypted data would then be transmitted by normal methods, he
said.
Messages encrypted using quantum mechanics can currently be transmitted
over optical fibers for tens of kilometers. The European project intends to
extend that range by combining quantum physics with other technologies,
Monyk said. The important thing about this project is that it is not based
solely on quantum cryptography but on a combination with all the other
components that are necessary to achieve an economic application, he said.
We are taking a really broad approach to quantum cryptography, which other
countries haven't done.
Experts in quantum physics, cryptography, software and network
development
from universities, research institutes and private companies in Austria,
Belgium, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany,
Italy, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland will be contributing to the project,
Monyk said.
In 18 months project participants will assess progress on a number of
alternative solutions and decide which technologies are the most promising
and merit further development, project coordinators said. SECOQC aims to
have a workable technology ready in four years, but will probably require
three to four
