CIA not finding coded messages in Al-Jazeera broadcasts

[moodforaday]

Guardian ran a great article a few days ago on how CIA looked for but failed to find coded messages in Al- Jazeera TV broadcasts. Your tax money at work:

Messages of fear in hi-tech invisible ink
(snip)
But to experts, the idea al-Qaida would be passing steganographic messages through TV broadcasts is ludicrous. "When they worked out the tactics of the 9/11 perpetrators, what they did was get in a car, drive some place and meet someone and have a conversation, they didn't even get online," says Peter Honeyman, steganography expert and scientific director of the centre for information technology integration at the University of Michigan. "Why were the CIA believing that they were seeing something in al-Jazeera broadcasts? I can't fathom it."

The CIA had been using computers to look for hidden messages in the headlines that scroll along the bottom of al-Jazeera broadcasts, a feature used by most rolling news broadcasters. What the CIA was up to found its way into the intelligence community rumour mill and got back to the satellite channel.

"We were aware there were intelligence reports saying that al-Qaida or its supporters might be communicating in ways that were unconventional. There were certain whispers that perhaps they were using al-Jazeera and other organisations, something we refuted categorically," says Jihad Ballout, al-Jazeera's spokesman in Qatar. "It's funny and it's frustrating at the same time as far as al-Jazeera's concerned. We're fed up of these rumours that al-Jazeera is a conduit for communication for any group."

Confirmation that the CIA had been hunting for hidden messages in broadcasts - and had turned up some curious results - came in June when US officials talked to NBC News. During the interview, the officials told how technicians at the CIA's directorate of science and technology believed they had found numbers embedded in al-Jazeera's news strip that corresponded with a hotch-potch of targets. There were dates and flight numbers, coordinates for high-profile sites such as the White House, as well as information apparently pointing to the small town of Tappahannock, Virginia.
(snip)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1546179,00.html

Note that steganography is a real enough field of study and well-understood as a technique of hiding information. But this is a case of spooks spooking themselves out. They could have used numerology with the same result. It would be funny if it weren't real. People could be put in jail on this kind of "evidence".