[Cryptography] Photon beam splitters for "true" random number generation ?

[Peter Gutmann]

Richard Outerbridge <outer at interlog.com> writes:

>Once upon a time I asked the Royal Canadian Mint whether our National $1.00
>coin, the Loonie, flipped at the start of all professional CFL football games,
>was certified to be unbiased.
>
>They sniffed at me that was not one of the qualities they tested their coins
>for.
>
>U$ Mint the same, anyone?

A prestidigitator can make a coin come up any way they want (you want 100
heads in a row, you got it), so you asked the wrong question, you need to ask
whether whoever is flipping the coin is unbiased.

(Or you could take a photo of the crowd using an unbiased cellphone and run it
through SHA-2 using an unbiased software implementation and display the result
on an unbiased display.  The coin flip will be easier to get accepted though).

Peter.