Osama bin Laden used encryption technology to thwart Nation Security Agency intelligence efforts, experts say.
There was a time when the US government's National Security Agency could eavesdrop on Osama bin Laden's every word. But the agency's surveillance all but stopped a few years ago when the terrorist leader started communicating through encrypted emails.
"The National Security Agency had intercepted and successfully listened to bin Laden for a number of years," said James Bamford, an independent security analyst and author. "They played tapes to high-ranking officials of bin Laden talking to his mother for example. But then a couple years ago they totally lost bin Laden, and one reason was he was using encryption."
Encryption is the age-old practice of coding messages. But the simple ciphers of the past have transformed into sophisticated numeric algorithms in the computer age, which makes unraveling codes a laborious, time-consuming, and sometimes impossible task.
Osama bin Laden Used Encrypted Messages