NEWS: Secrets behind Al Qai'da website...
Al-Qai'da uses Web as communications network. One day last October, an intelligence-community analyst noticed something strange about a radical Islamic Web site she had been monitoring for several months. A previously open, innocuous part of the site was suddenly blocked. She checked her notes, found the old address for the link and typed it in-to find an
otherwise empty page commanding in Arabic, MISSIONARIES ATTACK! Other "hidden" pages on the site included seemingly nonsensical phrases and quotations from the Qur'an-coded instructions for Al-Qai'da operatives and their supporters. U.S. intelligence discovered Al-Qai'da uses the Web as a communications network. Analysts believe Al-Qai'da uses prearranged phrases and symbols to direct its agents. An icon of an AK-47 can appear next to a photo of Osama bin Laden facing one direction one day and facing another direction the next. Colors of icons can change as well. Messages can be hidden on pages inside sites with no links to them, or placed openly in chat rooms. The messages and patterns of symbols are given to analysts at the CIA and National Security Agency to decipher.