[LonePalm]

I did not see anywhere in the article that NSA had even been asked to decrypt the contents of the hard disk, much less the fact that they couldn't.

I don't think this says anything one way or the other about NSA's abilities in this arena.

Personally, I wouldn't bet against NSA.

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

[ctdonath2]

NSA wouldn’t decrypt something for such purposes. Doing so could reveal their real capability (a la “oh crap! NSA _can_ break a 1024-bit key! better switch to bigger keys after all...”).

And I’m sure they _can_ crack pretty much anything. Acres of supercomputers and encryption technology 5-15 years ahead of anything public.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Personally, I wouldn't bet against NSA.

Nor would I. If they were tasked with decryption of this woman's hard drive I'm betting the NSA has systems that could, by brute force alone, easily break through whatever 128 bit encryption she used.

[atomic_dog]

They can probably decrypt that drive in a mater of minutes. This is not about accessing the information on that drive but rather setting precedent such that they can force people to decrypt on demand. They probably went defendant shopping to find a despicable corrupt mortgage broker to help it go their way.

For stuff I really do not want seen by anyone, such as which guns are stored where, I use a IronKey USB drive. First, as long as it is not found plugged into a machine of mine there is deniability that it belongs to me. If it's not mine how could I know the passphrase? Second, they do not have the technology (yet) to break it and if they try it erases everything. I'm actually kind of surprised they continue to allow them to be sold to the public.