[identity profile] badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] talkpolitics


Creepy, isn't it?

I must have spent close to three hours last night diving into the rabbit hole that are number stations. Why? You can thank a recent episode of Fringe for it, although why the station on Lost didn't get me thinking about it first I have no idea.

Anyway - number stations. For those who have never heard about these, they're shortwave broadcasts that come from often-unknown transmitters that are just what you hear above - typically some sort of identifying sound, tone, or song, followed by a series of numbers. To add to the creep factor, sometimes the numbers are read off by a man, or a robotic voice, or, such as in the video I linked above, the voice of a small child. They're most likely used by spies and government intelligence bureaus (if convictions of spies who had the key is any indication) to transmit messages using one-use codes of some sort, and the genius of it is in the simplicity of it - these broadcasts can be heard by anyone, written down and preserved by anyone, but only the person or people who are supposed to understand the message can because of how they work. It's utterly fascinating.

I gotta say, too - I spent hours reading and listening, and felt like I was doing something wrong. It was really kind of creepy and crazy, and still is. I went to bed last night and dreamed that I was busting a Russian spy ring. Most exciting dream EVER.

So yeah, I'm pretty much obsessed at this point. I found that Archive.org has the entirety of a bunch of recordings, named The Conet Project, which are a blast to listen to (the guy who, er, curated it is profiled here). The liner notes for it are beautiful, too - equal parts informative and conspiracy-nutty. Really great.

So what's the deal here? The best parts are how, for example, the numbers stations amp up during a major crises such as the 1993 USSR coup attempt or when Israel gets into some trouble, or how the Cold War-era stations are still going, or how the Russian stations abruptly switched when the spy ring was busted this past summer.

I honestly don't know if there's a real discussion topic here, to be honest. I thought this was a really interesting piece of history to share, and part of it is still crazy to me.

(no subject)

Date: 30/11/10 23:45 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] soliloquy76.livejournal.com
Holy shit, they're real?

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 00:00 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] soliloquy76.livejournal.com
I saw that same episode a week or two ago. I thought it was just another crazy X-Files thing. Screwed up, indeed.

(no subject)

Date: 30/11/10 23:49 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] a-new-machine.livejournal.com
Gotta say, I agree with the creepy/awesome thing. I've always enjoyed things like this - things that hint at greater goings-on in the everyday. Perhaps it's that great impulse described in Hitchhiker's Guide - the presumption that the universe is out to get you. But I enjoy things like this, as they add a bit of the unrealistic/supernatural to mundane life.

(no subject)

Date: 30/11/10 23:53 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] spaz-own-joo.livejournal.com
I was reading about them myself the day before UVB-76 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76) went down. It was sort of spooky to see the news story the following day.

(no subject)

Date: 30/11/10 23:56 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] meus-ovatio.livejournal.com
I've yet to receive my go-codes.

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 00:02 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] green-man-2010.livejournal.com
The woods are lovely, dark and deep... :)

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 00:02 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] green-man-2010.livejournal.com
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
but I have promises to keep ... :)

Thanks for this, Jeff. You were not the last to know - I heard about this from you. One of the nice things i like about being on the internet.

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 00:14 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/
Oh man, this is awesome. Thanks for posting this.

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 00:23 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] torpidai.livejournal.com
someone pass me the tinfoil, time for a new hat I think :S

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 00:52 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dv8nation.livejournal.com
First I've ever heard of this but I don't find it creepy. Spies do weird stuff as part of their jobs. No shock there.

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 02:42 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] telemann.livejournal.com
Yeah, it's totally creepy for a variety of reasons.

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 05:22 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dv8nation.livejournal.com
It's weird. Not creepy. "Ghost Adventures" creeps me out more than this.

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 17:08 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jerseycajun.livejournal.com
I think it's the crackle and pops and slight distortions in the recording that give it that gritty quality, like it was one of those 'ghost voices' people say they've recorded on poor quality recording devices.

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 01:11 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] telemann.livejournal.com
Extremely cool post. And yeah, very creepy! May I have your permission and repost this verbatim on my journal?
Edited Date: 1/12/10 01:17 (UTC)

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 02:03 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] telemann.livejournal.com
Done. Thanks.

I'm guessing that the transmitters being used are akin to the ones that used to be in college dorms for "illegal" radio stations. I had a friend at Cornell that talked about a friend who ran one, and it was a constant challenge to hide it from the FCC, who apparently had gizmos that could track it down.

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 01:16 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ninboydean.livejournal.com
I'd spent some time reading about this some while ago, but I didn't know that they were linked to the recent Russian spy ring fiasco. Thanks for sharing!

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 01:22 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com
Is it wierd that I still find military ATC chatter soothing?

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 02:04 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] prader.livejournal.com
No.

I used to listen to radio static to get to sleep until I got an actual 'white noise' generator.

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 02:10 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] telemann.livejournal.com
When TV stations actually used to sign off, I did the same thing with the test pattern thingey-gizmo.

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 02:11 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] light-over-me.livejournal.com
I must get myself a shortwave radio for Christmas. =D

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 02:13 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] telemann.livejournal.com
I got to see what they cost ;)

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 02:18 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] telemann.livejournal.com
Why wouldn't these folks (the coded messenger and the intended recipient) be using the Internet though? Wouldn't it be a lot easier on a technical level to send coded messages that way? That's the part I can't fathom.

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 02:25 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] telemann.livejournal.com
That's very logical, and makes complete sense. Thanks ;)

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 02:44 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] prader.livejournal.com
They also still use colored chalk marks on walls and other (very public) places.

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 09:39 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] torpidai.livejournal.com
It's 2010, and I can put a magical phone that gets the internet onto a pad and it magically charges the battery

lol, the tech for that is nothing new either ;)

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 02:17 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] underlankers.livejournal.com
One slight dating nitpick-the USSR coup attempt was August 1991. This is very cool. My bar for paranoia fuel is rather higher (literally, as in satellites sophisticated enough to count cars in mall parking lots and Google Earth).

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 02:27 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] underlankers.livejournal.com
Nah, the thing that makes me nervous about those satellites is that if they're monitoring everything that exactly it would seem that we're all under continual surveillance we might not detect. Given some of my family has run afoul of Dah Govahment by virtue of being on the No Fly List it makes me wonder what exactly the government might be using some of the fancier shit to monitor.

On the other hand if they see the likes of me as a threat they're wasting time, money, and effort.

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 02:31 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] prader.livejournal.com
Hmmmm...

Suspect Zero - Project Icarus Film Footage (http://www.spike.com/video/suspect-zero-project/2646430) | Movies & TV (http://www.spike.com/channel/movies) | SPIKE.com (http://www.spike.com/)


Remote viewers use seemingly random sequences of numbers for target locations.

Just sayin...

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 04:15 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com
No satellite technology, digital, anything. Just good old-fashioned radio signals. Some - or a lot of them - are probably gibberish; selective broadcasts with meaning (for the sender and receiver only) on constantly changing frequencies.

Might be a 'back-up system' in the event of everything else failing. Cool.

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 04:42 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dierdrae.livejournal.com
SO AWESOME.

It warranted capslock.

I never heard of this before, and this is so awesome. Thank you for sharing. Now I'm gonna go spend three hours on it myself..

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 08:14 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] htpcl.livejournal.com
Wow, you mean such things are still happening? Gets me back to my childhood years when my grandpa used to listen to Radio Deutsche Welle and the Voice of America (Soroooooos!). Secretly, under the bed sheets. Many people did. By the way at that time every household was required to have a radio in their kitchen which was specifically tuned to the local government radio station, and they occasionally brought announcements there. But that "tradition" faded toward the last years of communism. Just some curious retrospect.

Post is recommended, btw.
(deleted comment)

(no subject)

Date: 2/12/10 17:29 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] htpcl.livejournal.com
But I'm sure they announce only democratic things there.

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 12:28 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] udoswald.livejournal.com
It reminds me also of an episode of the series Jericho, about a post-nuclear America where factions had taken over parts of the US, where the character of Robert Hawkins saw a coded message that had been sent over fax machines which would appear to anyone else to be just a random assortment of letters/numbers.

It doesn't really freak me out at all. I guess I'm jaded enough to realize that all kinds of crazy spy stuff goes on around us all the time.

(no subject)

Date: 1/12/10 14:09 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sorvino23.livejournal.com
This is one of the most interesting things I have ever seen! You are a super cool individual for pointing this out!

I am so going to read up on this.

(no subject)

Date: 2/12/10 13:14 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lordtwinkie.livejournal.com
i downloaded a ton of them from the Conet Project a few years ago and played them during a halloween party, it was kinda creepy.

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