Deleted comment

Hi all. Please don't believe this story. Why? Because you don't "crack" the sort of encryption Snowden uses. That would be world shattering news and the entire IT world would be upside down. You either obtain the password somehow (which isn't "cracking the encryption") or you bruteforce the password until you've guessed it (which would take longer than the remaining lifespan of the universe) or you achieve an amazing mathematical breakthrough against the cryptographic algorithm used, such as e.g. AES-256 (no way this happened, it would be earth shattering news and render broken most of our digital infrastructure, i.e. the security of many critical government and corporate IT systems), which is a likely choice for Snowden to have used.

Also keep in mind that Snowden taught Chinese cybercounterintelligence at the CIA (Source: Greenwald / No Place To Hide).

Unless this story is technically inaccurate or full of mistakes, it is a total fabrication and a pretty nasty British government propaganda assault against its voters.

Meanwhile the U.S. cannot protect their own critical personnel systems.

Pre-emptive edit: Yes, a quantum computer could brute-force the password. However, not even the NSA has a quantum computer, and neither do the E.U. (who are on par or better than the NSA at this). Quantum computers, despite some marketing babble here and there, do not exist yet.

Edit 2: Twitter roundup:

    Stuart Millar ‏@stuartmillar159 4h4 hours ago

    They could at least get their anonymous briefing straight

https://twitter.com/stuartmillar159/status/609863004696498176

    If you're someone who believes anonymously voiced self-serving govt claims, you're dumb. If you're a journalist who prints it, you're worse

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/609912148022702082

    That Sun Times article is filled with so many factual errors- demonstrable ones- along w/the worst journalism. Will be fun writing about it.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/609912455419011072

    S K ‏@nolesfan2011 31m31 minutes ago

    @ggreenwald unsourced, unverifiable nonsense smears by a group that knows it's losing, the spying fascists

https://twitter.com/nolesfan2011/status/609912741508325377

    Idiot journalists repeated this constantly, too, because anon govt daddies said it (http://t.co/VTypI1wiOp) - then: http://t.co/1x2pQxiqzx

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/609915583392555009

    We will comply, because we're here to serve #Journalism

    Glenn Greenwald added,

    Jonathan King @MrJonathanKing

    @stuartmillar159 @ggreenwald"There's no evidence anyone's been harmed but we'd like the phrase 'blood on his hands' somewhere in the piece."

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/609916293098139648

    Amazing PR push here by UK intelligence services claiming China+Russia have 1 million #Snowden docs http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/article1568673.ece

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/609872963865833472

    Here is the full text of the Sunday Times launching the UK's PR assult on the #Snowden files https://archive.is/BkuMM

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/609881767722418176

    We predict that the Sunday times will have to admit that "cracked" and possession is speculation. No quote actually says that. (1/2)

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/609882163282980864

    (2/2) and that the UK moved its interception agents, if at all, in response to the already known publications.

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/609882449540087808

    It is worth noting that the Sunday Times article has trivially provable major errors. For example, David Miranda was in Berlin, not Moscow.

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/609882938809802752