Quantum Crytography to be used for Swiss elections

Leichter, Jerry leichter_jerrold at emc.com
Fri Oct 12 11:04:15 EDT 2007


No comment from me on the appropriateness.  From Computerworld.

 							-- Jerry


Quantum cryptography to secure ballots in Swiss election

Ellen Messmer

October 11, 2007 (Network World) Swiss officials are using quantum
cryptography technology to protect voting ballots cast in the Geneva
region of Switzerland during parliamentary elections to be held Oct. 21,
marking the first time this type of advanced encryption will be used for
election protection purposes.

Still considered an area of advanced research, quantum cryptography uses
photons to carry encryption keys to secure communications over
fiber-optic lines and can automatically detect if anyone is trying to
eavesdrop on a communications stream. For the Swiss ballot-collection
process, the quantum cryptography system made by id Quantique will be
used to secure the link between the central ballot-counting station in
downtown Geneva and a government data center in the suburbs.

"We would like to provide optimal security conditions for the work of
counting the ballots," said Robert Hensler, the Geneva State Chancellor,
in a statement issued today. "In this context, the value added by
quantum cryptography concerns not so much protection from outside
attempts to interfere as the ability to verify that the data have not
been corrupted in transit between entry and storage."

The use of quantum cryptography in the voting process will showcase
technology developed in Switzerland. The firm id Quantique, based in
Carouge, grew out of research done at the University of Geneva by
Professor Nicolas Gisin and his team back in the mid-1990s.

According to id Quantique's CEO Gregoire Ribordy, the firm's Cerberis
product, developed in collaboration with Australian company Senetas,
will be used for the point-to-point encryption of ballot information
sent over a telecommunications line from the central ballot-counting
station to the government data center.

Ribordy said the Swiss canton of Geneva -- there are 26 cantons
throughout all Switzerland -- has about 200,000 registered voters who
will either go to the polls on Oct. 21 and cast their vote, or vote by
mail. "The votes cast by mail are all collected in the days before the
election and all brought to the central counting station on Oct. 21,"
Ribordy said.

"Once the election is closed -- at noon on Sunday, Oct. 21 -- the sealed
ballot boxes of all the polling stations are brought to the central
counting station, where they are opened and where the votes are mixed
with the mail votes. Counting them is then manually done at the central
counting station. People counting the votes at this central station use
computers to transfer the counts to the data center of the canton of
Geneva," Ribordy explained.

He said the quantum cryptography system is ready to be put into
action. Ribordy doesn't think the high-speed link has been encrypted by
any means in the past, but he added that the IT department of the Swiss
government is not sharing a lot of information on certain details for
security reasons.

The use of quantum cryptography in the Swiss election marks the start of
the "SwissQuantum" project managed by Professor Gisin, with support from
the National Center of Competence in Quantum Photonics Research in
Switzerland.

"Protection of the federal elections is of historical importance in the
sense that, after several years of development and experimentation, this
will be the first use of the 1GHz quantum encrypter, which is
transparent for the user, and an ordinary fiber-optic line to send data
endowed with relevance and purpose," said Professor Gisin in a prepared
statement. "So this occasion marks quantum technology's real debut."

The SwissQuantum project aims to set up a pilot communications network
throughout Geneva. Supporters compare it with that of the first Internet
links in the United States in the 1970s. The Swiss are also expected to
showcase the quantum cryptography project during the ITU Telecom World
event being held in Geneva this week.

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