First quantum crypto bank transfer

Florian Weimer fw at deneb.enyo.de
Mon Aug 23 05:02:34 EDT 2004


* Bill Stewart:

> I agree that it doesn't look useful, but "lawful intercept" is harder,
> if you're defining that as "undetected eavesdropping with
> possible cooperation of the telco in the middle",
> because quantum crypto needs end-to-end fiber so there's
> nothing the telco can help with except installing dark fiber,
> and the quantum crypto lets you detect eavesdroppers.

But this doesn't scale.  You'd need dark fiber to all communication
partners.  So if quantum key distribution was mandated for
applications involving more than just a handful communication
partners, you'd need relays (or rather unlikely advances in optical
circuit switching).

By the way, the complete bashing of the recent QKD experiment is
probably not totally deserved.  Apparently, the experimenters used a
QKD variant that relies on quantum teleportation of photons.  This QKD
variant is currently *not* available commercially, and the experiment
itself could well be an important refinement of Zeilinger's earlier
work in this area.

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