[Cryptography] Quantum crypto in the popular media

[Jerry Leichter]

On Jul 23, 2014, at 12:05 AM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:

> Unlike most such articles, this one, published in the Australian 
> popular science magazine "Cosmos" (cosmosmagazine.com) is brief but quite 
> readable.  Showing a sense of humour, the researchers named a pair of 
> electrons Alice and Bob, both trapped inside a crystal at opposite ends of 
> the lab, and sent a message encrypted with Alice's private key (using her 
> "spin") towards Bob.
> 
> Unfortunately no URL was given.
I believe you meant this one:  http://cosmosmagazine.com/features/quantum-key-unbreakable-cryptography/

It's a cute article, but I see nothing really new here.  (What's new in the underlying work is the ability to use entangled electrons rather than photons, which is nice engineering with possible practical applications but hardly new physics or cryptography.)

And like too many articles of this ilk, it misunderstands - or at least fails to explain - just how complex the whole business is.  (For example, Einstein's complaint about "spooky action at a distance" hasn't so much been "put to bed" as moved aside, since what you really get is action without information transfer.  And the article as written implies that quantum teleportation is "at at least 10,000 times faster than the speed of light" - except that it isn't; you need a classical speed-of-light bound initial transfer first.)

But, hey, it *is* cool stuff.
                                                        -- Jerry