Can Kidnappers Be Traced Online?

July 15, 2004 -- The images are as upsetting as they are fleeting.

On one day, chat rooms may steer people to a Web site where they can find streaming video of a kidnap victim somewhere in the Middle East, pleading for his life while masked men spell out their demands in Arabic text.

The next time you look, you may see horrific pictures of the man's body. And the next time, nothing but "Error 404: File Not Found" — Internet shorthand that means the kidnappers have removed the evidence.

Hard to Tell Where Info Originates

Terror groups are finding the World Wide Web very useful. Since May, at least four men have been murdered in Iraq or Saudi Arabia, and word spread online. Perhaps, say engineers, terrorists have discovered how easy it is to spread their message on the Web, and then cover their tracks.

The FBI, CIA and other agencies are working the cases around the clock, so far without much success.

"Even if we could help you identify where physically the facility is that houses the information, that doesn't tell you how it got there or where it came from," said Vinton G. Cerf, a senior vice president at MCI who is often cited as one of the "fathers of the Internet."

"The path by which the information gets to the target could go through many hands," he said. "So that fact that it would up on the Net doesn't necessarily mean the person who places it there knows exactly where it came from."

Pictures on Site Provide No Clues

The case of Paul M. Johnson is an example. He was the Lockheed Martin helicopter engineer kidnapped in June in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. But pictures of him, blindfolded as he identified himself, appeared on an Internet site with an address near the Los Angeles airport. The kidnappers used the site because it provided free Web hosting, automatically, no questions asked.