For the past half-century, computer processing power has doubled roughly every 24 months. As transistors — the basic elements of digital computers — become smaller, they also become faster, more efficient, and more resilient. Engineers are now at the point where they cannot make transistors any smaller without fundamentally changing the way they physically operate. As a result, the major players in digital computing are now looking toward the next big innovation that may fuel yet another new era of exponential growth in technological capabilities and opportunities: quantum computing.
In this report, the authors investigate the future impacts of quantum computing on the civil justice system. The U.S. justice system has struggled to adapt to the existing reality of the digital computer age. Both national and international cyber laws are still evolving as they try to catch up with emerging cybersecurity threats while data privacy laws are continuously lagging behind big data analytics and artificial intelligence technologies.
The authors conducted a comprehensive review of relevant legal and regulatory frameworks that will be affected by quantum computing, and interviewed stakeholders in the justice system, including lawyers, judges, and court technology experts. Their findings are intended to help those in the civil justice system think proactively about the potential legal, policy, and regulatory implications of quantum computing in the context of the U.S. civil justice system, specifically for cryptography, liability and insurance, and privacy.
Key Findings
- Increased digitization of information and court proceedings means that law firms, courts, and insurers will have to interface with, process, analyze, and use increasing amounts of data while keeping those data safe. Therefore, they will need to achieve a potentially higher level of sophistication on cyber threats and digital security than they may currently have.
- Quantum computers are incredibly prone to errors and are difficult, if not impossible, to observe. Furthermore, it is difficult to understand how they arrive at their final computations. These unique characteristics will challenge the traditional legal framework and require the creation of new legal doctrines or the adaptation of existing statutes to ensure that the tort liability system continues to function as it should.
- Big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning have changed how people think about data privacy and the protection of sensitive data. The advent of quantum computing will continue to accelerate this change.
- The development of quantum computers has become a three-way race between the European Union, China, and the United States. The fact that this has become an issue of national pride highlights the pressure and the resources that national governments are investing in making quantum computing a reality.
Recommendations
- Civil justice system stakeholders should follow the development of quantum-secure encryption solutions and be ready to adopt them into their information technology infrastructure as soon as adoption is practicable.
- Civil justice agencies and institutions should modify existing privacy statutes to reflect the future impacts of quantum computing, such as breaking existing encryption and de-anonymizing data.
- Civil insurance companies should work with technical experts to quantify the risks associated with the advent of quantum computing and take advantage of the capabilities offered by quantum computing to price risk more efficiently.
- Civil justice system stakeholders should track regulatory developments related to quantum computing in the European Union and China and consider whether the United States might follow.
