*Facepalm*

I know what you mean
<snip>
(Just sayin')

I just wanted to illustrate the stupid timescales I was talking about, and using scientific notation doesn't really cut it. The decimal point is of course important if you're wanting to do anything with the numbers, but I was effectively using them as a bar graph rather than trying to do any actual maths with them..

I still don't get it. How old is the universe?

Slightly older than Adrian Mole.

That was a genuine question as I don't understand the way you use a decimal point.

Doesn't really matter. A typical 256bit AES key requires 2^256 comparison operations to decrypt by brute force. That is ... 1.15792089e+77, according to a quick google. If you're on a typical desktop PC, say 1.6GHz and it takes four cycles to do a compare (meaning you can do 400 million comparisons a second), that means it will take you (1.15792089 × 10^77)/(4*10^8*60*60*24) or 3.35e+63 days, or 9.18e+60 years. That is

9,180,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.

Say you have the equivalent of 10 million desktop PCs at your disposal. That means it will only take you

918,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.

The Universe is roughly

13,750,000,000 years (13.75 Billion years)

old, according to the best science we currently have. Modern encryption mechanisms, even those available as freeware on the internet, are to all intents and purposes uncrackable by brute force, regardless of how much computing power you throw at them. If you have what they call a 'sidepath' where you can attack an inherent weakness in the algorithm you can reduce that significantly. But even with a good sidepath, using all the computing power available in the UK (i.e 100% of every single PC), you're not going to decrypt a truecrypt disk inside the lifespan of any of the people involved in the case. The only way to get at anything hidden using modern encryption techniques is to find out the password. The police know it and the bad guys know it too.

Jon

*facepalm*
You're advocating a sort of virtual militia then, made up of 'us' and not 'them'?

I see no reason why, in a hypothetical situation where it were possible to brute force an AES key, a court order to decrypt some data should not be carried out by whatever means were best suited to the task. The militia reference leaves me confused, are you suggesting that aiding the police in a criminal investigation is somehow inherently wrong?

Perhaps the term militia was incorrect, but then so was your assumption that anyone with encrypted data on their computer, or indeed Catholic, is a 'paedo'.

Oh get over yourself, do I have to stick those idiotic /sarcasm tags into posts to highlight something that is so clearly not intended as fact?

So I can dismiss all your posts as being 'clearly not intended as fact' when discussing news items?
Ace.

I use encryption but purely because I value my privacy. No child porn near any of my computers. Businesses use encryption all the time. So are all businesses paedo's as well? There are many valid reasons for encryption.

but if you have nothing to be worried about then you shouldnt use encryption and if you do then obviously you are doing something that the authorities should be interested in!!