A press conference was organised this morning on behalf of Mr Santa Claus. At the conference, a spokes–elf confirmed that there had been repeated attempts to hack the “naughty or nice (NON)” database. The NON-database was thought to be used by Mr Claus to keep records of young inhabitants of planet earth, in order to set gift-giving priorities on 6, 24 and 25 December each year.

Mr Claus’ spokes-elf stressed that the security of the database was not compromised in any way. He also confirmed that the IP addresses associated with the attack were traced to the US National Security Agency (NSA). In response, a spokesperson for the NSA said that he could neither confirm nor deny that the attack took place. He also refused to confirm the rumour that the attack took place in order to check whether or not the boys and girls working at the NSA were on the naughty list.

The NSA further pointed out that Mr Claus set up the database without any authorisation and, crucially, chose to avoid providing either encryption keys or an encryption backdoor to the United States or any of its five-eyes allies. “What is the point,” asked the spokesperson, “of having five eyes, if we’re not allowed to see everything?”

In a written statement, the NSA argued that they had a strong legitimate interest in gaining access to the database.

Firstly, it is very suspicious that Mr Claus chooses to live at the North Pole outside any national jurisdiction. Secondly, if he is not involved in criminal activity, why does Mr Claus use unbreakable encryption? Thirdly, we have strong grounds for believing that Mr Edward Snowden was on the “nice” list last year and that he received cool floofy slippers as a result. It is as if Mr Claus does not even care that it was really, really cold in Fort Meade last Christmas and our tootsies were freezing.

After the press conference at the North Pole*, a post on Santa’s blog said that his NON-database is, actually, a non-database – a decoy, in other words. Security is best served by using distributed structures, so the records are stored

— in the consciences of each little Edward Snowden and each little Jimmy Clapper – consciences that are either white as the driven Snowden or….clapped out.

*It is well known that Santa lives in Korvatunturi, Finland. We used artistic licence for comedy effect in this article.