Web of Terror

Osama Bin Laden uses the internet to communicate to his followers and to issue orders.  They use encryption when planning terrorist attacks on the internet.  U.S. officials and militant Muslim groups say terrorists began using encryption — which scrambles data and then hides the data in existing images — about five years ago.

But the groups recently increased its use after U.S. law enforcement authorities revealed they were tapping bin Laden's satellite telephone calls from his base in Afghanistan and tracking his activities.

"It's brilliant," they say. "Now it's possible to send a verse from the Koran, an appeal for charity and even a call for jihad and know it will not be seen by anyone hostile to our faith, like the Americans."

Extremist groups are not only using encryption to disguise their e-mails but their voices, too.  Encryption programs also can scramble telephone conversations when the phones are plugged into a computer.

In the future, we may tap a conversation in which the terrorist discusses the location of a bomb soon to go off, but we will be unable to prevent the terrorist act when we cannot understand the conversation.

Here's how it works: 

Each image, whether a picture or a map, is created by a series of dots. Inside the dots are a string of letters and numbers that computers read to create the image. A coded message or another image can be hidden in those letters and numbers.

They're hidden using free encryption Internet programs set up by privacy advocacy groups. The programs scramble the messages or pictures into existing images. The images can only be unlocked using a "private key," or code, selected by the recipient, experts add. Otherwise, they're impossible to see or read.

"You very well could have a photograph and image with the time and information of an attack sitting on your computer, and you would never know it," experts say. "It will look no different than a photograph exchanged between two friends or family members."

U.S. officials concede it's difficult to intercept, let alone find, encrypted messages and images on the Internet's estimated 28 billion images and 2 billion Web sites.

Even if they find it, the encrypted message or image is impossible to read without cracking the encryption's code. Cracking a code often requires lots of time and the use of a government supercomputer.

It's no wonder the FBI wants all encryption programs to file what amounts to a "master key" with a federal authority that would allow them, with a judge's permission, to decrypt a code in a case of national security.  Civil liberties groups, which offer encryption programs on the Web to further privacy, have vowed to fight it and don't seem to mind the consequences.

Who ever thought that sending encrypted streams of data across the Internet could produce a map on the other end saying "this is where your target is" or "here's how to kill them"?  The Internet has proven to be a boon for terrorists.

Next>>>

Breaking News