This gets trotted out a lot, but encryption is only as secure as the protection of the passphrase. Being realistic, any country Snowden visits has tremendous leverage on him because of how easy it would be to simply arrest him and hand him over to the US.
Not to go down the wrong rabbithole--the article should be in the Fanciful Speculation section of the paper, not the News section--but handing over a passphrase would mean the the Russian authorities' statement that they "are not working with" Snowden would not be semantically correct.
Not that I believe the Russians wouldn't lie, but the internal logic of the article does rest on the assertion that they are technically telling the truth while leaving themselves a loophole. Since it is safe to assume that Snowden did strong-encrypt the docs on his laptops, this internal logic falls apart.
(As a sidenote, I don't think I've heard the phrase "semantically (in)correct" as much in my life as in the past month. Someone should write a browser extension that automatically replaces it with the phrase "weasel words".)
I believe it's "working with" in the same sense that I "work with" PL/SQL. You get the data you need, but it certainly isn't an amicable relationship. :)
That. And, furthermore, he is most likely not carrying his data with him, but has encrypted it and uploaded it somewhere, likely several places, just keeping the keys with him, also encrypted themselves.
To add to that: it's probably just a passphrase, so getting it from him would require torture.
Even then, if that horrible scenario results, if he's smart, has a mechanism for plausible deniability, so he can give a key that decrypts to false information. [1]
The assumption of this article is bogus.
[1] You create a hidden true crypt volume and you put that inside another volume, do this for as many layers as you wish.
That assumes he accesses the files at the airport or from devices that are known to be his. Lucky for him the future is somewhat non-deterministic. Also, he could have all of the files segmented and say the passphrase in a conference call over the phone, immediately making a single specific document available to a few dozen journalists, assuming he has already distributed the encrypted container around.
FSB, er KGB Jr quite able to add dozens of cameras in any room he may stay, or maybe they can tell by the sound the keys he presses, analyze the light the monitor releases or who the hell knows.
Of course they may briefly arrest him to check his status, and Igor on the other room is cloning his hard drives. Last resort they may blackmail him, go to hell /a USA prison or tell us the password.
