Home 13. Hiding in Porn Sites
Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

13. Hiding in Porn Sites

View more publications by Yale University Press
To Publisher Page
Prisoners, Lovers, and Spies
This chapter is in the book Prisoners, Lovers, and Spies
28413Hiding in Porn SitesUSA Today startled the world in February 2001 when Jack Kelley reported that terrorists might be hiding blueprints to attack the United States of America in X-rated pictures on pornographic websites. The very thought was enough to galva-nize federal law enforcement officials into action. But unlike e-mails and phone calls, tracking messages in digital photographs posed a special challenge, because both the message and the very act of communication are hidden. Investigators never did find those nefarious messages in X-rated pictures, at least not in 2001. For the next ten years they searched and searched, to no avail. Niels Provos and Peter Honeyman, leading informa-tion security specialists at the University of Michigan, reported that they “analyzed two million images” from the eBay auction website but did not “find a single hidden message.”1 There was nothing there, or so they thought.Ten years later, computer forensics experts from the German Federal Criminal Police (BKA) hit pay dirt. In May 2011, Maq-sood Lodin, an Austrian national on a watch list, was detained, questioned, and searched by Berlin police because he had just returned from Pakistan and was suspected of having attached himself to militant Jihadists on the Pakistan-Afghanistan bor-der. In the course of the search, police were surprised to find
© Yale University Press, New Haven

28413Hiding in Porn SitesUSA Today startled the world in February 2001 when Jack Kelley reported that terrorists might be hiding blueprints to attack the United States of America in X-rated pictures on pornographic websites. The very thought was enough to galva-nize federal law enforcement officials into action. But unlike e-mails and phone calls, tracking messages in digital photographs posed a special challenge, because both the message and the very act of communication are hidden. Investigators never did find those nefarious messages in X-rated pictures, at least not in 2001. For the next ten years they searched and searched, to no avail. Niels Provos and Peter Honeyman, leading informa-tion security specialists at the University of Michigan, reported that they “analyzed two million images” from the eBay auction website but did not “find a single hidden message.”1 There was nothing there, or so they thought.Ten years later, computer forensics experts from the German Federal Criminal Police (BKA) hit pay dirt. In May 2011, Maq-sood Lodin, an Austrian national on a watch list, was detained, questioned, and searched by Berlin police because he had just returned from Pakistan and was suspected of having attached himself to militant Jihadists on the Pakistan-Afghanistan bor-der. In the course of the search, police were surprised to find
© Yale University Press, New Haven

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. Preface ix
  4. 1. The Art of Love and War 1
  5. 2. Intrigue and Inquisition 19
  6. 3. Confessing Secrets 46
  7. 4. Invisible Landscapes 69
  8. 5. Revolutionary Ink 84
  9. 6. Magic 104
  10. 7. The Secret-Ink War 125
  11. 8. The United States Enters the Secret-Ink War 153
  12. 9. Visible Nazis 174
  13. 10. The Mystery of the Microdot 198
  14. 11. Invisible Spy Catchers 222
  15. 12. Out in the Cold 251
  16. 13. Hiding in Porn Sites 284
  17. Epilogue 296
  18. Appendix: Fun Kitchen Chemistry Experiments (with Jason Lye) 303
  19. Notes 315
  20. Primary Sources 351
  21. Credits 353
  22. Acknowledgments 355
  23. Index 359
Readers are also interested in:
https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300188257-014

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. Preface ix
  4. 1. The Art of Love and War 1
  5. 2. Intrigue and Inquisition 19
  6. 3. Confessing Secrets 46
  7. 4. Invisible Landscapes 69
  8. 5. Revolutionary Ink 84
  9. 6. Magic 104
  10. 7. The Secret-Ink War 125
  11. 8. The United States Enters the Secret-Ink War 153
  12. 9. Visible Nazis 174
  13. 10. The Mystery of the Microdot 198
  14. 11. Invisible Spy Catchers 222
  15. 12. Out in the Cold 251
  16. 13. Hiding in Porn Sites 284
  17. Epilogue 296
  18. Appendix: Fun Kitchen Chemistry Experiments (with Jason Lye) 303
  19. Notes 315
  20. Primary Sources 351
  21. Credits 353
  22. Acknowledgments 355
  23. Index 359
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2025 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 10.10.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.12987/9780300188257-014/html?srsltid=AfmBOoog4ZwPKefPHeHoUersgbth1qj1SZXpH_fAQr85jRkV1ZIRvmmo
Scroll to top button