The report stated that during swoops and searches in England, Italy and Spain, the Yard found coded messages from terror groups hidden in child pornographic images. In one case, the number of such images was a little more than ten. In another, there were as many as 40,000. These numbers could be somewhat of an exaggeration aimed at heightening the impact of the discovery. Whatever be the case, the fact has been established that terrorists were not averse to using all possible means, including pornography, for communicating with others in their group or outside.

It was further discovered that paedophile Web sites were being regularly used to transmit secret messages between cells. This Times scoop was religiously carried by a number of newspapers in the days that followed. As a result, the discovery of a terrorist-pornography nexus has assumed a measure of credibility. Whether this is deserved or not can emerge only from a dissection of all facts available with the police. For the present, it is reasonable to assume that such a link does exist and that the relationship needs to be continually monitored. Some painstaking research also seems warranted.

The impression that the Times report may give a lay person is that this is a new revelation. The fact is, however, that in the days immediately following 9/11 in 2001, the Hamburg Police in Germany stumbled on a mind-boggling volume of pornography that had been lifted from the Internet and had been stored in the hard disk of Mohammed Motassadeq, who was believed to be part of the Hamburg terror cell headed by Mohammed Atta. (It may be recalled that Atta was the mastermind for the 9/11 plot.) Motassadeq has since been convicted for 15 years in prison for being an accomplice to the attack on the Twin Towers. It is not known whether Motassadeq was questioned on the pornographic material in his possession.

Similarly, there is information that in 2001 the Italian Police detected pornography in computers found in the Via Quaranta mosque in Milan. This mosque was being run by Ed Sayed, an al Qaeda recruiter. The images seized during the raid explicitly depicted children being sexually abused. These images also carried some coded messages. Ed Sayed was later convicted in absentia for eight years in connection with terrorism-related offences. Interestingly, the Magistrate concerned went on record to say that pornography was just a vehicle or medium to transmit messages rather than an obsession with terrorists having a paedophile tendency. How he arrived at this conclusion is a matter of conjecture.

There are two other instances of a terrorist nexus with pornography. In 2006, Scotland Yard was investigating Abdul Makim Khalisadar, 26-year-old preacher from East London for his links to a jihadist gunrunner. The investigation led to the fact that he was systematically downloading child pornography. More shocking was that his DNA examination established he was the much-wanted ‘White chapel Rapist’ the police were looking for, for quite some time. Although accused of possession of child pornography, Khalisadar was convicted for ten years only for rape.

The point to ponder is whether in all these cases pornography was incidental and was a mere vehicle to facilitating safe communication, or whether the terrorists involved had a penchant for the lurid material that the Internet carries in such abundance. According to a 2005 report, some terrorists had been seen at strip clubs, something that was unusual and abnormal for those who had joined the movement only out of a strong religious motivation. No firm conclusions may be arrived at, unless interrogation of suspects is carried out with clinical thoroughness.

Also, there has always been the surmise that new recruits to terrorism were being enlisted through chat rooms. If this is true, it further strengthens the assessment that the modern terrorist is not only comfortable in cyber space but actually uses it to facilitate his operations. The frequency of such use, however, is a matter of mere guesswork.

Interestingly, a few researchers and scholars are now seriously trying to establish similarities in the personalities of a paedophile and a terrorist. According to them, both categories were obsessive about their interests. Just as the former would like to visit a cyber café as often as possible, the latter would prefer to be seen in a place of worship. Control and domination were two principal characteristics that marked them out from others. These theories are apparently generalisations that may not stand scrutiny always. Nevertheless they provide a few guidelines for research on a subject that is bound to grow in importance as days pass by.

Having dealt with something serious in this column, I would like to end on a slightly lighter note. This is the case of a 15-year-old high school student in New York State who has been charged with computer trespass, unlawful possession of personal ID information and identity theft.

What did the hapless student do? After gaining unauthorised and illegal access to his school’s IT system, he discovered it was defective and easily vulnerable. Having found a hole, he could well have remained quiet and discreet. Instead, he sent an anonymous mail to his Head Master pointing out how porous the school system was. This naturally incensed the authorities. With the help of the district’s IT department, the school was able to identify the student, and subsequently hand him over to the authorities. The sincere but overzealous boy now stands trial in a Family Court.

A number of individuals and organisations have risen in his support. They feel that the administration has been unimaginative and taken an extremely harsh step. One view here is that instead of initiating criminal action, the authorities should actually have thanked the boy for unearthing defects in the school’s computer system. After all, he had no ulterior motive, and he was just an ethical hacker with a desire to improve his school’s IT system.

The moral of the story: Bureaucracies are always blind. So, never try to improve public systems however bad they may be, but allow them to drift! Can there be anything more negative and disastrous? It reminds me of how, in the late 1980s, I was pulled up by Government when I committed the folly of telling them that I had been awarded a Ph.D for research in the area of police management. Instead of congratulating me on the distinction conferred on me, government (read, a Clerk in the Central Secretariat) asked me whether I had taken permission to register for Ph.D studies. The hint was that, if I hadn’t, I could be charge-sheeted! Fortunately, the cautious civil servant I always was, I had, in fact, got the required permission!

The writer is a former CBI Director who is currently Adviser (Security) to TCS Ltd.

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