Carrier Pigeons Eyed As Way to Foil Hackers, Government Snoops

(CNSNews.com) Internet security breaches and government surveillance is reviving interest in the use of carrier pigeons to circumvent hackers and snoops.

There’s plenty of historical precedence for “pigeonets.” The ancient Egyptians were the first to train pigeons to relay messages as far back as 2900 B.C., and Julius Caesar used them to communicate over his far-flung empire.

Some 250,000 pigeons were employed during World War II to carry messages to and from Allied forces in Britain and the European front. In 2012, a Surrey man found the remains of one of the military pigeons in his chimney, with a red cylinder containing a coded message still attached to the bird’s skeletal leg.

An exhibition in Britain later this month will honor William of Orange, a carrier pigeon who flew 260 miles in 1944 to warn the British that their forces at the Dutch/German border were under siege. He was awarded the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military honor. 

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