Do you think the feds can break GOOD encryption?

I was watching a story on American Greed where the feds were tracking a credit card fraud ring. They essentially seized the leader (Iceman)‘s computer and decrypted it. He was charged and convicted.

They never went into detail about how securely implemented the encryption (weak algorithms DES possibly, well known passphrases, etc.). I do understand that encryption can be defeated by poor implementations of the algorithms, but I don’t see how if it is proper.

Do you feel the feds can break PROPERLY IMPLEMENTED AES encryption? The key space on that sucker is 2^256 or ~1.1579 X 10^77 different keys. Even at a billion keys per second it would take ~1.15 X 10^68 seconds or 3.65X10^60 YEARS!! Thats YEARS! I don’t care how much computing power you throw at that thing…

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