I groaned at the claim that there's a theoretical limit to how fast NP-complete problems can be solved; no such (non-trivial) limit is known, but most computer scientists at least suspect that NP != P.
I laughed at the claim that using NP-complete problems is 'called "public key cryptography"'; in fact, none of the commonly-used public-key cryptosystems are based on NP-complete problems.
But I cried when I reached this line: "Roughly, the idea behind public key cryptography is that you have one prime; the intended recipient has the other; and the message is transmitted openly using the product of the numbers"
This is why journalists shouldn't write about cryptography.
"So, when it comes to WikiLeaks obtaining US diplomatic cables, either no one at the US state department had ever heard of cryptography, or they were too lazy to care, or –"
I think the author missed a fundamental point of encryption - if someone with access to the decryption key wants to leak the plain text, it is quite difficult to stop them.
I laughed at the claim that using NP-complete problems is 'called "public key cryptography"'; in fact, none of the commonly-used public-key cryptosystems are based on NP-complete problems.
But I cried when I reached this line: "Roughly, the idea behind public key cryptography is that you have one prime; the intended recipient has the other; and the message is transmitted openly using the product of the numbers"
This is why journalists shouldn't write about cryptography.