Al Qaeda's 'future works' found in porn

(CNN) -- On May 16 last year, a 22-year-old Austrian named Maqsood Lodin was being questioned by police in Berlin. He had recently returned from Pakistan via Budapest, Hungary, and then traveled overland to Germany. His interrogators were surprised to find that hidden in his underpants were a digital storage device and memory cards.

Buried inside them was a pornographic video called "Kick Ass" -- and a file marked "Sexy Tanja."

Several weeks later, after laborious efforts to crack a password and software to make the file almost invisible, German investigators discovered encoded inside the actual video a treasure trove of intelligence -- more than 100 al Qaeda documents that included an inside track on some of the terror group's most audacious plots and a road map for future operations.

Documents reveal al Qaeda's plans fo.....

So Al Quaeda or whats left of them are using pornography to shuffle messages across the world. This is a interesting development, because Al Qaeda is regarded as a religious extremism movement and using pron would hurt there image in the Islamic world.

I'm surprised this wasn't a topic here on ATS I search the title and nothing recent came up.

So you all think Al Qaeda is using porn to send messages, or is this a Western world ploy to painthem in a unsavory light for Muslims?

Or maybe... just MAYBE its just porn.

Porn can be pretty bad you know?

reply to post by LDragonFire

This is a interesting development, because Al Qaeda is regarded as a religious extremism movement and using pron would hurt there image in the Islamic world.

The Middle Easy(and the East in general) have very sexually repressed societies, due to various reasons. They love their weird porn.

Going by the official story, the "Al Kayda terrorists" hijacked 4 commercial jets and flew one into the ground, two into the WTC and one into the Pentagon while the USAF, NORAD and Air Guard had a stand-down and watched, very slowly and observing-like. Then the family members of the "known terror associates" got in a plane while the rest of the world was grounded, and "flew away".

My point being, I don't think this organization needs to pass along "secret messages" hidden in internet pornography. It seems "they" are doing just fine..

War paranoia is a disease, get your immunizations today.

reply to post by LDragonFire


Al Quaeda is a CIA creation from the Afghanistan war. We know the predilections of many of government agencies - SEC, Secret Service, TSA, etc., so it kinda fits the pattern.

Should I laugh or cry?? They can't be stupid enough to believe this is legitimate intelligence?? I'll give Al Qaeda a big A+ though. They are improving by leaps and bounds. Their magazine is as high a quality in all respects as I've seen in any U.S. News Rack and USA Today was writing reports about them using Steganography several years ago.

Oh, but of course, I'm going to believe that Al Qaeda's modern, quite high tech operations just leave around the "Directory of Terror Operations - Europe / 2012" like it's a flyer on a windshield. lol.... I give AQ an A for this because it's the most clever disinfo run I've heard of since the body before Normandy. It appears by the story they're actually buying it too.

Has Western intelligence really fallen this far?? The WHOLE thing, in one place, at one time and all so conveniently decrypted. So..... Al Qaeda can't even figure out how to use the same level of security as Assange and the Wikileaks Insurance File?

Hey.... I got a bridge to sell and the map to Atlantis as a bonus....psst.. right over here.

Added: S/F...if no one else will. lol.. I think the story is laughable, but that alone makes for a whole different story, doesn't it? I wonder what this is a decoy from anyway...

i for one don't believe any of this. al qaeda and terrorism in general is manufactured or conjured out of thin air right here in the good ole US of A. i hear the FBI makes up a lot of it. why they're throwing porn into the mix is anyone's guess.

Originally posted by LDragonFire
So Al Quaeda or whats left of them are using pornography to shuffle messages across the world. This is a interesting development, because Al Qaeda is regarded as a religious extremism movement and using pron would hurt there image in the Islamic world.

It's also interesting because there were reports of porn being found on computers in Bin Laden's compound when it was raided. Frankly that just seemed out of character for him being the religious extremist that he was, and I can't imagine he would have allowed any of his close followers such liberties either. But if it was being used to embed secret messages to his cells around the world then it makes a lot more sense.

reply to post by LDragonFire


I'm not surprised that they found stuff hidden in porn, considering our recent history with the pentagon and porn and the Secret Service with prostitutes, really its wasn't such a good idea for Al Qaeda to hide anything in porn related material.

It's just like the Cold War.

Not a week passes without some outrageous or outlandish scheme or plot concocted by the Communists.

But now it's "terrorists" and every terrorist plot or group always somehow has Al Qaeda (or in the Cold War, The Kremlin) involved pulling the strings somehow.

The threat from terrorists is exaggerated to a ridiculous degree.

If it's true, they spent weeks trying to crack into this file, because it appeared to be porn. Awesome.

I don't know if I believe this, looks I'm going to have to watch lots and lots of porn and see for myself if I find some message. It’s going hard and I'm not going to like it, but I'll willing to do this just investigate for you all.

So, i guess that this will be used as an excuse to log everyones details who accesses online porn now..?

This is nothing new. They already did this by encoding their "Tomorrow is Zero Hour" message in on-line pornographic images that they posted on the day before 9/11.