Bogus CIA Analysis led to Terror Alert in Dec. 2003 (moved from ATSNN)

A CIA analysis that led to a terror alert shortly before Christmas 2003 was erroneous. CIA analysts thought they had found secret codes broadcasted within the AlJazeera program, an analysis which turned out as bogus, according to experts.



Is the CIA now engaging in bible code techniques ?

What worries me is in fact that the existence of a certain steganographic message in such cases can be mathematically proven or disproven (with certain probability), so there is basically no way of "wrongly" receiving such a message.

Was it more intelligence fixed around the policy or is the CIA the policymaker here ?

What was the now irrefutable political motivation hiding behind the bogus terror alert ?



[edit on 28-6-2005 by Moretti]

I think they looked more in the direction of broadcasting subchannels of data or video then that they were looking for codes in words said on Al-Jaz.

If you didn't know yet, television broadcasting can format their stream to incude any of the following:

Multiple video channels, they can broadcast standard tv and HDTV on seperate video channels.

Multiple audio channels, audio streams for the different spoken languages in a country AND different audio streams for Dolby Stereo, Dolby Surround and son on. The max I've ever seen used is 3 audio streams here in belgium, stereo(dutch), surround(dutch) and stereo(french). Although I have to say that surround streams are pritty rare on tv here still.

Multiple subtitle/data channels, usualy known as teletext. Subtitles that are on screen and can't be removed are transmitted as part of the video stream. But the subtitles you can enable/disable are transmitted as a teletext datapage.

Then you can also transmit analogue or digital encrypted data channels together with these streams or encrypt all of the stream, this is used by subscriber based TV channels, like Canal+ and Hallmark movie channels here in belgium.

So, there is a multitude of methods to send extra data over a TV channel, but also a multitude of things that can be mistaken as hidden data. Not to mention that theres always electronic, atmospheric and #loads of other interference on the network.

Heck, it could be the CIA picked up some teenage pirate broadcaster smack in the middle of Al-Jaz's broadcast.

Why does it have to be irrefutable evidence that it was for political motivations?.... it was the government itself who later found the apparent mistake, probably as they tried to find more messages in that manner.

Now, this poster does shows obvious bias in his/her introduction and in his/her headlines, since bogus would refer to something fraudulent done with intent and this doesn't seem to be the case. If you fix both the headline and the introduction I would vote for it.

[edit on 28-6-2005 by Muaddib]

I'm voting yes on this story...I don't find the title or introduction to bi biased whatsoever. When I see the word bogus, I think "wrong", which the intel was. No bias there from my understanding.

Actually, you are right. I didn't see that the article also calls it as bogus. So "technically" there is no bias in the introduction or the headline.