Impressively thorough article in "U.S. News and World Report" this week about the status of the Al Qaeda hunt. We're making good progress on arrests and breaking up the infrastructure, though sometimes the techniques being used are questionable (such as CIA operatives hacking into foreign bank account records to follow the money).

] U.S. News has retraced the war on terror, starting in the very
] first weeks after 9/11, to examine in detail how Washington and
] its allies launched an unprecedented drive, led by the Central
] Intelligence Agency, to disrupt and destroy bin Laden's
] operation. Interviews were conducted with over three dozen past
] and current counterterrorism officials in a half-dozen countries;
] the magazine also reviewed thousands of pages of court records
] and analytical reports.

In terms of crypto, the article's researchers agree with my own conclusions:

] . . . al Qaeda operatives are not the high-tech
] terrorists some imagine. Their computer files are rarely
] encrypted, and when they are, U.S. officials have broken
] the codes easily. Nor have they used encrypted
] telephones. Al Qaeda's "codes" consist of simple word
] substitutes or use of flowery Arabic phrases.

For anyone following the Al Qaeda Hunt, this article is interesting reading.

"After 9/11, the gloves come off."