We have all seen in the news lately arguments for and against encryption with governments trying to ban encryption and making it so that companies producing hardware must have a back door for a government agency to have access if it is required.
What is the state of affairs when quantum computing is further developed and refined then applied to encryption? I would assume that the costs involved in quantum computing would limit the availability to government agencies, military and commercial entities. Would quantum computing essentially make encryption laws and protection redundant?
I don't know. Depends on how powerful the supercomputers are. The major purpose of encryption today is (I think) to provide a safe connection between peers and prevent bulk mass surveillance.
Let's say there is a very powerful supercomputer that can be used to break an encryption key (something commonly used, like AES-128-CBC) in a week.
A very powerful quantum computer to replace it can maybe do the same in an hour. That is 148x improvement, however considering there are a few billions of people on the Internet, it still means that the entity in ownership will have to decide which communication gets decrypted.