Standard Operating Procedure is to say it was handed to the Metropolitan specialist computer crimes unit who cracked it. Someone turns up in court saying they

Standard Operating Procedure is to say it was handed to the Metropolitan specialist computer crimes unit who cracked it. Someone turns up in court saying they are a Met officer from the unit and they worked really really hard. It's never been a problem. Remember this was originally a terrorist case; there would have been plenty of resources made available - there always are for these. A likely scenario is it was cracked and found to be irrelevant so the option of going for a political angle for more powers was much more preferable than letting some low-level frauster know his encryption had been cracked (and hence letting lots of people know the USB encryption was worthless and risking real terrorist cases where suspects used the same approach).