How the Colombian army sent a hidden message to hostages using a pop song

It's a great feel-good story, but the whole thing is just intelligence theater, à la Bruce Schneier's security theater.

That is, the coded message serves no intelligence or military objective. It sounds to me like the government concocted this idea because they felt they should be doing something, anything, no matter how useless( * ).

What's a hostage supposed to conclude from hearing, "19 people rescued. You’re next. Don’t lose hope". Should I run? Run now? Hide in the jungle? Run when the rescue starts? Stay put? Fight during the rescue? Don't fight? If you asked 10 different people what specific action you're supposed to take based on this message, you'd get 10 different answers.

If this message had any tangible effect, why aren't there any first hand accounts from the hostages explaining what they did differently as a result of hearing the message?

So 3 million people heard this song, yet the only ones who understood it were some of the hostages? Not one of the several thousand militants and no one in the public decoded it? This just proves the point that it's un-actionable. Case (1): Lots of people got it besides the hostages, but there's nothing to blow the whistle on. It's not as if the message says, "Raid at dawn". Case (2): Nobody got it, which also implies that the message had no effect.

( * )If the government claimed that the message was simply a way to make the hostages keep up hope, then OK (though it still seems like a lot of expense for little gain). But they're trying to make it sound like a big intelligence or military coup, which it is not.

The morse is subtle but if you listen closely you can hear it. Set the Soundcloud player to 1:25 or so and you'll hear singing as they finish up the chorus. As the chorus completes at about 1:31 the singing stops and instruments play. Listen closely, and try to remember what morse sounds like in the movies. It's there in the background, and once you hear it it's obvious. Don't listen to the drums or tambourine, it's not there in the beat. It's "behind" the beat as if a background instrument was playing.

(edit: it also kicks in again around 2:30 and 3:30. So the start times are at approximately 1:30, 2:30, and 3:30.)

Outstanding.

Though I don't know morse code (beyond S-O-S), I know of morse code and roughly what it ought to sound like. I really wish the article had started out with the SoundCloud player, saying "Listen to this first... notice anything peculiar about the song?" since because I knew it contains morse code, I instantly recognized it in the chorus. I wonder if I would have been as oblivious to its inclusion as the FARC members had I not been made aware beforehand.

It reminds me of Evanescence's "My Immortal" song where people have speculated there's a hidden message in it. Take a listen and see if you can hear it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5anLPw0Efmo

Clever! It reminds me of another story of broadcasting information such that only interested parties will receive it.

In 1997, during an auction of wireless spectrum by the FCC, some of the participants colluded by stealthily signaling the geographic region of the licenses they most valued. They made the last few digits of their bids (in dollars), which were visible to all, the area codes of those regions.

This is a fantastic example of steganography in action, in a context other than hiding info in low-order bits of images.

I think I hear an additional bit of trickery that the article didn't mention: the morse signal keeps oscillating between the left and right stereo channels, which on headphones or a nice speaker system make it sound more like artsy synth and less like a coded message.

If the illustration in the article is accurate, the hostages are probably listening on a monophonic radio or one with limited stereo separation, which would make the code easier to pick out and understand.

This is a pretty great story. I was in Bogotá in July of 2008 just after Ingrid Betancourt and several other hostages were rescued. In the face of such jubilation of their rescue, there was a small demonstration in Plaza de Bolívar to remind everyone that there were still people who needed help. https://www.dropbox.com/sc/93d9g1ycgxamg3o/AAD4g5xPPyT3R-AWJ...

It is inspiring seeing the steps that the government took, the planning, the rescue, and the demonstration of genuine care for all involved.

It's very important to keep prisoners' morale high, so this initiative is very commendable.

But this isn't a new idea, there are a lot of pop songs with embedded morse code messages, for example, this Slipknots' song:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_I_Forget_%28song%29

A tutorial:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dmitrismirnov/MorseMusic.html

Anyway, there are more creative methods to insert coded messages in radio shows, for example, some years ago, the italian police confiscated a commercial radio in Naple. That radio was controlled by a mafia family and used to send message to the inmates of Poggioreale prison. They used fake "inscription" related to the songs transmitted:

http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Cronache/2007/06_Giugno/1...

I wonder if anyone would've picked it up? You would have to listen to the song over and over. Then figure out morse code and what letter each signal represented.