>"Well, we are told authoritatively by people in Downing Street, in the Home Office, in the intelligence services that the Russians and the Chinese have all this information and as a result of that our spies are having to pull people out of the field because their lives are in danger."<p>"Authoritatively".<p>How can we tell if this is true or just a PR stunt? I'm naturally suspicious of anything the security services say, but can see that this could have a germ of truth.<p>I have no idea how Snowden encrypted the files, nor do I know if any people are singled out in them. Does anyone know any better?
On the chance that this is true (I have no reason to trust the British government on any surveillance topic), that would mean one of three things:
1. Snowden messed up and chose a bad encryption scheme/key.
2. Russia and China have the ability to break secure encryption schemes.
3. One of the journalists entrusted with the documents messed up with the handling of the keys.<p>Only number 3 seems a little bit possible, and even then I'm skeptical...
Greenwald has a good critique of the claims here:<p><a href="https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/14/sunday-times-report-snowden-files-journalism-worst-also-filled-falsehoods/" rel="nofollow">https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/14/sunday-times-r...</a>