Um, no. The NSA isn’t targeting your bank account. They’re trying to find ways to crack public-private key encryption methods, which are used in all kinds of places that need security.

Here’s why people are spouting this nonsense: the first sentence of Gellman’s article:

In room-size metal boxes, secure against electromagnetic leaks, the National Security Agency is racing to build a computer that could break nearly every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world.

Again we see a deliberately overheated hyperbolic statement that seems intended only to inflame emotions, giving people the impression the NSA is targeting all these private things, when the target is an encryption method, not your freaking bank account.

And none of this is actually happening now. Research on quantum computers is a LONG way from producing a machine that would actually be useable.

This is the kind of stupid distorted crap that’s been pissing me off about this story from the beginning. Argh. Woof.