In my opinion, the government knew that stopping Miranda was wrong and they knew it would cause a bit of a protest, but they also knew that the vast majority of

In my opinion, the government knew that stopping Miranda was wrong and they knew it would cause a bit of a protest, but they also knew that the vast majority of that protest would come from the liberal left, which in the UK is a small and relatively obscure part of society. They did this because they really wanted to know what documents Snowden has in his possession. They made an educated guess that Miranda might well have the entire Snowden archive in his person. Up until now the US/UK have been embarrassed several times by denying something, and then Greenwald releases something that proves otherwise. People in major positions, including the President of the United States have been made to look stupid. Therefore, the risk of obtaining what is in the archives was worth a "small amount" of abuse of the terrorism act. Now they have the possibility of cracking that encrypted archive and finding out what is in there. They can then prepare to dilute each leak as it comes out. I'm surprised that Greenwald / Guardian allowed this to happen. He should have known better. Miranda should have disposed of anything in his possession that had already been delivered. He should never have transited the UK. He should have had a burner laptop, and not one that left forensic residue. Anyway, the damage is now potentially done. Even if encrypted, the NSA quite possibly has the resources to crack that archive. We'll see come the next few releases. If the US is embarassed again then they haven't cracked it. If they come out quickly with smart rebuttals, they've cracked it. Greenwald should come out and state how the data was encrypted. At least then we will know which encryption is / isn't safe once the computing power of thr NSA is thrown at it.