Quantum Snooping

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

New York Times' Markoff reports today on the latest in quantum 
computing, some of which was discussed here recently. Two
points of note:

IBM recently made a "snapshot" of the entire worldwide Web,
eight trillion bytes of data, for an experimental database for 
searching and unnamed other manipulation by its quantum 
computers. Searching the database for a word by conventional 
computers would take a month, while quantum devices could
do it in 27 minutes, a Beamer says.

NSA is funding quantum computing at Los Alamos specifically
for cryptographic investigation, "because QC could have
a profound effect on modern cryptography."

Others forms of warp speed snooping are discussed as well.

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Restricted:

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