Barak Jolish argues that it is impossible for the U.S. to stop terrorists from using advanced encryption technologies and attempting to do so would sap U.S. economic strength.
Relatively weak encryption appears to have been used to protect files recovered from two computers believed to have belonged to al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan.
Andy Carvin of the Benton Foundation reviews the practice and history of steganography, the science of hiding secret messages in publicly accessible material. He argues that there is insufficient proof that terrorists are using steganography to communicate to justify legislation restricting its use.
The investigation of the terrorist attacks on the United States is drawing new attention to a stealthy method of sending messages through the Internet. The method, called steganography, can hide messages in digital photographs or in music files but leave no outward trace that the files were altered.
FBI officials have stated that the agency has as yet found no evidence that the hijackers who attacked America used electronic encryption methods to communicate on the internet. But this has not prevented politicians and journalists repeating lurid rumours that the coded orders for the attack were secretly hidden inside pornographic web images, or from making claiming that the hijacks could have been prevented if only western governments had been given the power to prevent internet users from using secret codes.
The terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks may have communicated over the Internet using a computer version of invisible ink that allows secret messages to be concealed in image and music files. Western intelligence officials say they have learned that instructors at Osama bin Laden's camps in remote Afghanistan train his followers in the high-tech secret-messaging technique.
Leading cryptographers and others whose work spawned the commercialization of high-level cryptography are wondering if they did the right thing. They are haunted by the idea that law enforcement agencies may have figured out what the terrorists were planning, if only powerful encryption techniques had been kept secret.
New research indicates that terrorists are not using advanced computer tools to hide messages in innocuous-looking web images.
Three in four Americans favour tough anti-encryption laws, in the wake of last week's terrorist atrocities, a survey finds. Seventy-two per cent believe anti-encryption laws will be "somewhat" or "very" helpful in combating terrorism, according to the survey, conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates.
John Horvath argues against calls to search the internet for terrorist use of steganography because by invoking the evils of terrorism, the government is able to justify "the loss of privacy and a state of surveillance [society] would otherwise not accept."