luke

At the present time it's purely a question of computational power. The cops can set a whole farm of computers working on cracking an encryption key, but even if they get lucky and find it, they won't have "solved" any real problem - they'd have to start right back at square 1 following the exact same algorithms to crack another key. Hypothetically speaking, if the cops were to crack the key in the case of this article they would have to handle the situation very gingerly, as I'm sure the public would expect them to be able to crack the keys of every defiant criminal from then on. I've not done my homework on the subject but apparently quantum computing may bring encryption-cracking into the realm of feasibility, the implications of which I can only imagine (HTTPS anyone? )

"Police say they are still trying to crack the password." ..Of course they have to say that, but seriously - with realistic estimates of how much police resources would be allocated to cracking a 50 character passphrase, does the kid have much to worry about?