msobkow's Journal: Thoughts on the entangled-quantum future

In the future, and a not too distant future at that, we will have quantum-entangled computers that work alongside or as add-ons to our existing computers.

Entangled quantum processors are good at the very class of computing problem that traditional CPUs suck at. And the reverse is also true, so we won't all be switching to quantum computers, we'll be merging the two technologies into a single box capable of tackling both classes of computing problem efficiently.

The issue to society is that current encryption technologies rely on the difficulty of calculations of precisely the type that quantum computers are good for. In the quantum era, it will be effectively impossible to encrypt data in a secure fashion. If you vary your keys fast enough, you might be able to maintain some semblance of security for a specific communications link to another node on the internet, but that would be about it.

That means that all the information on all the centralized data servers running behind every major business or website on the internet is readable.

I realized this years ago. It's one of the reasons I post publicly -- because I know the futility of trying to conceal or limit the access to what I post on the internet.

And it will happen in my lifetime, of that I have no doubt.

I contend that the only way to secure personal data in that future is to have personal servers located at your own home, with maintenance scripted so thoroughly that all the user has to do is pop in a backup cartridge each evening to receive the daily incrementals and weekly full backups of their life.

Instead of you entering in your information to a shared server somewhere, you would grant that shared server's processing systems read-only access to the relevant parts of your information, identified by some sort of unique id code/string (maybe even just a UUID) and the specific IPv6 address of the single host that is being granted that read permission.

Just for safety's sake, every time the application server read your personal information, an access entry would be logged.

It would be forbidden for any application server to retain the data. The sole source of your personal information would be your home node itself.

Sure, some might choose to contract the hosting of that node out to something akin to an ISP or a Google or a MicroSoft, or even an IBM node in a data center/cluster some where, but the key point is that the IPv6 address of each and every individuals information be assigned to one particular node.

I can not imagine any other way of protecting your personal data in the quantum future.

And that's the future I'm building towards.

Your node would assign each application server a corresponding signature, the UUID. The unique id number generator. Basic, simple, effective, and in production for a long time. But hardly anything akin to a password.

Maybe you'd want to look into how the data center at the host is physically architected to protect the token.

Just remember that with the quantum capabilities, passwords will be easily cracked and stolen by anyone with access to a backbone link that can have a good old fashioned network sniffer attached. You're rely relying on the request coming from that particular IPv6 address with the assigned UUID as the unique signature of the authorized request.

Implementing such a system means implementing common data structure standards across all platforms and all systems in due time. You'd choose your hardware/node provider based on your faith in the quality of the system they deliver as a whole.

So you could buy an IBM stack, an Oracle stack, a MicroSoft Windows stack, an Apple stack, or any one of the many Linux and BSD stacks.

Or even smartphone and tablet OS stacks.

Similarly, you'd choose your database service provider from the supported RDBMS vendors, your file system, and so on. Some stack vendors don't let you choose some options, but that's part of what you get when you buy into their stack.