"Especially put into the context of other types of terrorist alerts (e.g., against bridges, water supply facilities, nuclear reactors, airports, or embassies abroad), one is left wondering whether these alerts are strategically distributed according to a planned agenda, with the additional benefits of indirectly putting blame on countries or technologies that stand in the way of U.S. global political, economic, and cultural hegemony, by carefully injecting them into the text of these warnings."

This paper attempts to make a case that articles about Al'Q's use of steganography are in effect protecting the government from the possibility of political dissent even if this is unintentional.