Code wars: Steganography,signals intelligence,and terrorism

This paper discusses the process of secret communication known as steganography. The argument advanced here is that terrorists are unlikely to be employing digital steganography to facilitate secret intra-group communication as has been claimed. This is because terrorist use of digital steganography is both technically and operationally implausible. The position adopted in this paper is that terrorists are likely to employ low-tech steganography such as semagrams and null ciphers instead. Her research interests are in the area of terrorism and the Internet. She has published in Current History, the Journal of Information Warfare, and elsewhere. Her research has been facilitated by a grant from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences.