The NSA Can Un-Encrypt (Almost) All Encrypted Info

You don't want to get on the bad side of the dream team that is the Guardian, the New York Times, and ProPublica.

The journalism triumvirate has joined forces to unleash more damning information about the National Security Agency, this time claiming that the NSA can, and does, un-encrypt almost every form of encrypted data on the Internet.

Give PayPal your credit card information? Yeah, the NSA can crack it. Your more misguided Google Searches? They're on 'em. Get an email today? Um, the NSA probably knew about it before you did.

The Guardian appears to have made good on its promise to band with the Times, after the British government demanded access to Guardian HQ's basement and apparently physically destroyed a batch of Snowden files. ProPublica jumped on the bandwagon, and Edward Snowden has already leaked enough files to the Guardian that he's probably going to be a fugitive for the rest of his life. Their combined efforts mean that we have 50,000 more documents proving, once again, that the NSA pays absolutely no heed to privacy, in the name of antiterrorism.

Though institutions like Google have said they refused to give the NSA access to their servers, documents show that the NSA went ahead and did it anyway — and just didn't tell Google they were working on how to break down the company's encrypted information. The agency's rules also allow it to store all of the data it monitors (so that time you stayed up half the night looking at Heidi Montag's before-and-after face is on record forever. Not that we've ever done that).

Their efforts to break down encrypted data of pretty much any variety appears to have begun in the advent of the Internet — that's to say, in the early 2000s.