As reported by The Guardian, and further discussed on The Register, the NSA has many methods for reading encrypted communications. The most interesting and concerning part about this story is how much they rely on backdoors in hardware. This means that you can't rely on the existing, public internet to manage your security. So, when you see that little 'https' up in your browsers, you only protected from the most casual would be hackers. The NSA was the power to read those transactions, not because the are super good at math, but because the game is loaded. They simply check on the hardware responsible for that encrypted and can see right through it.