The US National Security Agency (NSA) is funding the development of a new quantum computer, which would allow cracking the majority of encryption programmes used today virtually, according to a new report.
Based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the latest report comes in the midst of persisting debate over the spy agency’s snooping programme targeted at gathering the phone records as well as Internet communications of private people.
Being built as part of a $79.7m research programme titled ‘Penetrating Hard Targets’, the new computer, which would take several years to develop, would be capable of carrying out several calculations at once rather than in a single stream.
The report from the Washington Post revealed that in addition to being capable of cracking all the cloaks intended to safeguard private data, the upcoming computer would have links for such fields as medicine.
The accused Edward Snowden, currently on a temporary asylum in Russia, exposed documents collected while working for the US spying agency, and is currently charged of espionage, with more charges anticipated to follow.
However, the New York District Judge William Pauley recently ruled the NSA’s surveillance programme of the phone network as legal.
The US government is being sued by the US civil liberties groups including American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Yale University’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic over details regarding the NSA overseas snooping activities.
