Quantum computing appears to break the laws of physics... yeah, it's spooky

Imagine a government that can break any code

The end of VPNs

Retroactive decryption

Prepare for a world with no privacy and no secrets

(NaturalNews) The U.S. government is making steady progress on a game-changing technology that would give it the most powerful weapon ever devised in the realm of cyber warfare and information dominance. The weapon is called a "prime-factoring quantum computer," and a small-scale version of the game-changing technology has already been demonstrated by researchers at UC Santa Barbara, where qubits -- quantum bits of computational potential -- factored the number 15 into its prime factors three and five.So what, you say? Can't any fifth grader do the same thing?But hold on: Every digital encryption algorithm used today depends in the extreme mathematical difficulty of factoring (the prime numbers of) very large numbers. When you buy something on the internet, for example, your credit card number is sent to the merchant using something called "SSL encryption" which typically uses a 40-bit, 128-bit or sometimes even a 256-bit encryption algorithm. Anyone who might intercept your web form data would not be able to extract your credit card number unless theyyour encrypted data. This task requires extraordinary computing power.For example, using "military grade" 512-bit encryption means that it would take a supercomputerto decrypt your file and expose your secrets. This is why the U.S. military uses such encryption. It's virtually unbreakable given today's computers.But quantum computers have the spooky ability to process complex decryption algorithms using what some scientists believe are. You feed the quantum computer a decryption task, and it "calculates" the answer in all possible parallel universes. The correct answer then emerges inuniverse, seemingly magically.All this is very much a layman's description of the phenomenon of quantum computing, by the way. Physicists will get into far more detail about how qubits might actually work... although technically,. The key thing to understand about quantum computing is that a qubit can store its states of zero and one. A collection of eight qubits can store 256 variations or "values" simultaneously, unlike a traditional silicon "bit" which can only storeat a time.The upshot of all this, mathematically speaking, is that instead of decryption algorithms being exponentially more complex as the number of encryption digits increases, qubits allow decryption algorithms to process the problem in so-called, meaning the problem becomesto solve. (Or, technically, it doesn't become exponentially harder to solve as the number of encryption digits increases.)The upshot is that a computational problem which would have required longer than the age of the known universe can, with the help of a quantum computer, be accomplished"...We've shown that we can run a version of Peter Shor's prime factoring algorithm on a solid state quantum processor. This is really exciting and has never been done before," said Erik Lucero, lead author of a paper outlining the success of quantum computer factoring.Shor's algorithm describes an efficient mathematical approach for-- the foundation of decryption algorithms. As Wikipedia explains: ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algori... Andrew Cleland, a physics professor who also worked on the project, added, "We just need to scale up the size of this processor to something much larger." ( http://phys.org/news/2012-08-ucsb-153x5.html That "scaling up" will be difficult, but its achievement is only a matter of time. Once it is achieved, this technology will almost certainly be classified as a "matter of national security" and control of the technology will be monopolized by the U.S. government The U.S. government, which already behaves like a criminal police state entity which respects no human rights, civil rights or even the Bill of Rights ( https://www.naturalnews.com/034537_NDAA_Bill_... ), will no doubt use this technology to expand its domination both domestically and internationally. The U.S. government absolutely despises anyone who leaks its own secrets -- witness the attempted arrest and incarceration of Wikileaks' Julian Assange ( https://www.naturalnews.com/036864_Julian_Ass... ) -- but the government is deeply interested in everyone else's secrets, of course.It is already public knowledge that the U.S. government, via the NSA, is spying on everyone's email, web traffic, phone calls and search engine activity ( https://www.naturalnews.com/036689_NSA_whistl... ). But right now, people and corporations which value privacy useto send protected files to recipients. Even the common utility WinZip has an encryption component to protect files. ( http://www.winzip.com/aes_info.htm Once the U.S. government achieves its quantum computer, it will be able, reading all the secrets of those who mistakenly think their files are impenetrable. This means citizens and corporations will havein the realm of digital information.That's why quantum computing will be used asby the government itself -- a weapon that steals secrets which the government will then use to threaten or blackmail its way into positions of yet more power.That's what governments do, after all: Incessantly seek more powerAnother element no one is talking about here is the end of so-called "Virtual Private Networks" or VPNs. These are secure "tunnels" across the internet, where packets of data are passed publicly across the internet, but all such packets are encrypted. For example, I use a VPN to access the NaturalNews.com servers and control the web servers there.Many corporations use VPNs to allow their employees to "telecommute" by working from home. Even the military uses VPNs throughout its command and control infrastructure.There's nothing "private" about a Virtual Private Network if the U.S. government can decrypt your encryption key in a matter of seconds. Suddenly, what used to be a secret is now being read by intelligence operatives in Langley.Here's something else you've probably never heard about: This prime-factoring computing power can be applied retroactively to files you or your company might be sending across the internet right now.You see,in a massive storage system... and that data storage is about the take a quantum leap in capacity, if you'll excuse the pun. A massive NSA "spy hub" is currently under construction in Utah and is expected to be completed by September, 2013. As WIRED reported: ( http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_... Right now, in 2012, the government can't brute-force decrypt your files because that would take longer than the age of the known universe. But the government canuntil prime-factoring quantum computers become a reality -- something that looks to be only years away. At that point, the government can thendecrypt all the files it has been storing in its NSA data centers.In other words, all the encrypted files you're sending around right now -- thinking they're bulletproof in terms of security -- will eventually be decrypted by the U.S. government with the help of a soon-to-exist quantum computer.Right now, then, the government is capturing all email attachments and building a future "decryption queue" of files to be processed once the quantum computers are up and running. The scientists who are working on this project may think they're advancing the cause of science, but what they're actually doing is handing one of the world's most dangerous governments the "ultimate information weapon" that can -- and will -- be used to crush freedom and dissent.Imagine a world with no more secrets. That's what the U.S. government wants. And with the aid of quantum computing, that world may soon become a reality.We must all now ASSUME that whatever encrypted information or files we send across the internet today will be decrypted by the government within a few years.Please plan accordingly.