Geekness

[varjohaltia]

I was catching up on my erstwhile career and ran across the first bona-fide, working quantum cryptography network. Apparently a bunch more companies are on the verge of commercializing the technology.

Comments

[varjohaltia.livejournal.com]

Goodness. Well, first of, the network is actually operating, as opposed to the blurb which said that it would be, soon.
First of, with the current knowledge of the laws of physics, it's impossible to tap into this network without being detected. It's by far the most secure way to transmit information that has been conceived, yet. Essentially it's used to securely distribute encryption keys, which has been the essential problem of any cryptographic system devised. The quantum scheme itself doesn't encrypt the information; you can tap into it and read it. But it is impossible to read it without the receiver knowing that someone tampered with it, which kind of is the whole point of secrecy.
It is also a commercial, large scale (as in distance) example of technology using single photons and their quantum states, which may be very interesting when applied to the various "teleportation" experiments. Beyond that, just as technology, it's pretty darn advanced. It also gives a lot more justification to other quantum (entanglement) ideas, as being something that can in fact be viably built with today's technology as a product that can be commercialized.