Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/06/bin-ladens-porn-stash-subjec.html
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If only the US government had powerful cryptanalysis to decrypt any hidden messages. Something like a “national security agency” of sorts, whose very job was to figure out things like this. Ah, well, too bad we’ll never know.
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<sob>
It still breaks me a little bit to be standing in the checkout line and see “National Geographic: Top 10 Jesuses in the Bible!” or whatever the fuck.
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If only Bin Laden still had a pulse so he could be asked about stuff like this.
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It’s obviously tricky to prove that there’s definitely no steganography at play, especially without access to the files, but I’d be…surprised…if someone who distrusts encryption could manage a steganographic implementation that would survive scrutiny by actually competent people; especially if it needed to be of actual use (if it’s just a one time pad but with more porn it would be entirely feasible; but would then leave you with the fun of distributing a lot of keying material through some other secure channel that you could have just distributed the message with, if you have such a channel), potentially shared across recipients, etc.
It seems especially peculiar given that, for a family-values type terrorist organization, porn would be approximately the least convenient hiding place. If you need a reasonably large file or set of files in which to hide your actual message, do you pick the one that would arouse the suspicion of most of the people you would trust to carry it, and prove a serious embarrassment to the person intended to receive it if discovered, or do you pick literally anything else? Why bother with the risk of having to explain to some pious lackey that your smut is actually a clever ploy to seek the CIA out of your stuff when BBC nature documentaries or something are equally viable for keeping the CIA out of your stuff and don’t leave you open to charges of hypocrisy?
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This was the comment I came for. As it were. Thank you.
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Like… why does anyone GIVE A SHIT.
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I assume Bn Laden didn’t produce the porn himself, so there should be original pictures somewhere on the net. You just need to compare the files to see if there has been any alterations.
Using porn does have the advantage that if NSA picks up the message they might be too busy giggling to themselves about hypocritical terrorists secretly watching porn to bother analyzing it for hidden contents. Not sure it would work, but I can imagine someone would think it was a clever idea.
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“…purely prurient purposes?”
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
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If there was porn on Bin Laden’s machines, and given that the security services have leaked the fact it was there, then the existence of that leak tells associates of Bin Laden roughly what has been accessed, and compromised.
I suppose anything particularly notable (and seemingly irrelevant) would have done the trick.
edit: thinking about it some more, the porn could be used to protect content, among religious extremists. Say you go looking for a file and you come across stuff you aren’t supposed to look at. You stop looking because your actions are no longer deniable.
“You were in there? What were you really looking for?” and so on.
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Um, were those secret messages encoded in DNA?
ewww 
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What? You find a double helix disgusti… Ohhhhhhhhhh!
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Rule 38 of the Internet (also known as Occam’s Razor) states that rule 37 is never used to convey coded messages.
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Great. Now some fucker can make a Playlist on Pornhub.
*sigh
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“biology trumps ideology.”
Something about that phrase jars. Maybe it’s the punctuation.
Biology: Trump’s ideology.
Yep - thought so. It works in other contexts too. (Specifically, in this case, that of the racist shitgibbon in the White House many of whose policies seem to rest on skin colour.)
Never say punctuation is pointless! 
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I came here, too. Everyone is leaving happy, I hope?
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This is some Qanon Wayfair level of grasping for a reason. Do the CNN folks have any evidence whatsoever that the porn was used to hide secret messages, or did they reach this conclusion through reasoning alone?
Sheesh.
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Finally, some hard hitting journalism that will penetrate the lies and make the truth come to light.
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This! Given that all hyper-religious and hyper-ideological organizations turn out to be full of hypocritical shit (the rate on this approaches 100%) it seems infinitely more likely that he just had a lot of porn. And so what- we all have at least some around for adult special time.
Encoding secret messages on it? What a pointlessly stupid and difficult way to do that, compared to every other form of cryptographic communication. Go home, CNN- you’re drunk.
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