Number stations why

This is a sample of a broadcast known as The Swedish Rhapsody which popped up every day except Fridays. One of the more famous Numbers Stations was known as the Lincolnshire Poacher, a powerful broadcast that seemed to originate from Cyprus between the mids and The best guess amateur radio sleuths could come up with was that it was an operation by the British Secret Service actual James Bond stuff! A similar station run by MI6 came out of Australia and was known as Cherry Ripe for its use of an English folksong by the same name.

It was on the air until December Russian stations have their own allure. During an attempted coup, a signal emanating from Moscow did nothing but broadcast the number five for hours.

No one knows. During Russian daylight hours, the buzzes are followed by a series of fuzzy tones at a rate of between 21 and 34 per minute. Occasionally, Morse code can be heard. The station has a worldwide fanbase that speculates on what its purpose might be.

This continued for years until June , when it suddenly stopped for one day. There was another interruption that August before going a little haywire with a series of unfamiliar sounds and what appeared to be a little Swan Lake from Tchaikovsky. Should Russia ever be wiped out in a nuclear attack, the drone will stop and a retaliation strike will begin.

Something called The Conet Project sprang up to record these broadcasts that are now stored in a fascinating archive. I got so deep into this rathole that I bought a very expensive five-CD collection featuring this material. There are many more online resources, of course. If you want to dive into this mystery, start with the Numbers Stations Reseach and Information Centre. Alan Cross is a broadcaster with World Canada Local. They often transmit strings of numbers or numbers intoned by a computerized-sounding voice.

Others send broadcasts via Morse code or they just emit various types of noise. Some stations have been airing their signals for decades, and hit their peaks during the Cold War. Many have gone quiet since the Berlin Wall fell. Untold others continue filling the airwaves -- yet for what purpose, few know. And those that do know? They aren't talking. You could try backtracking through a paper trail to see who operates numbers stations.

But unlike most transmitters, they aren't licensed to broadcast, so you won't find any record of them in government documents. They are essentially pirate stations meaning they operate unlicensed and illegally but no government agency shuts them down.

That's because the government most likely operates them. Of course, no organization or government officially accepts responsibility for numbers stations. They are strictly off the record. A lot of journalists have tried to untangle the mystery of numbers stations.

They've found enough information that we can safely guess the purpose of these transmitters: espionage. Keep reading and you'll see why old-school numbers stations might be the greatest spy tool ever, even in the age of the Internet and satellite phones. Shortwave radio is old technology.

In the late s it became a popular way to communicate over long distances, thanks in large part due to its propagation traits. Shortwave radio energy is determined by the power of the transmitter. The bigger and more powerful the transmitter, the farther the signals travel. The physics of shortwave energy help, too, because it bounces off of the Earth's ionosphere. The ionosphere is a region of space about 50 to miles 80 to kilometers above the Earth's surface.

It's an area of the upper atmosphere or thermosphere in which solar ionization takes place, causing an electrical charge. This charge reflects shortwave radio signals and bounces them back down to the terra firma, and in doing so, greatly increases the distance that the signal travels.

This is called skip , or more fancily, skywave. With a quality handheld radio, a person can tune into a strong shortwave signal from the other side of the planet. That's a useful characteristic for all sorts of communications purposes, and as it turns out, it's also great for spying.

If you're the head of an intelligence agency in the United States and you need to send a secret message all the way to an embedded spy in an area of conflict like Iraq, shortwave messages might be the best method. Power up an extra-powerful transmitter, broadcast your coded message at a predetermined time and frequency, and your agent abroad will immediately know whether to keep pretending to be a businessman or to assassinate a political foe.

And because shortwave radios are so common, the technology doesn't draw suspicion. An agent who is apprehended with a radio has plausible deniability on his side, whereas carrying specialized computer equipment and cryptography software is a red flag that could result in imprisonment Shortwave is also immune to oppression. In times of strife, authorities can literally switch off a country's Internet access or kill the power to communications satellite.

They can't stop every shortwave transmission. What's more, computerized messages, even those created with supposedly crack-proof encryption, can eventually be traced and broken. In stark contrast, no one can trace who is receiving shortwave radio messages. Often, it's hard work even finding the powerful transmitters. Because shortwave broadcasts are so easy to tune into, anyone with a cheap radio can eavesdrop by finding the right frequencies. That includes you. Many frequencies are listed at various web sites like SpyNumbers.

What you'll hear varies by station. Some stations broadcast continually. Others spring to life at scheduled times. Most keep strict schedules so that agents know when to tune in to the right frequency. On the next page you'll see more about what, exactly, numbers stations are sending through the airwaves. The broadcasts you'll hear on numbers stations vary.

They generally begin with an alert signal of sorts at the top or bottom of the hour. This alert may be a simple tone, or it can be fragments of song, such as with the famous Lincolnshire Poacher station, which begins broadcasts by playing several bars from the well-known tune of the same name.

This indicates to listeners that a message is about to begin and also helps the user tune his or her radio for the best reception. What follows the opening refrain is usually a set of spoken numbers or letters, often four or five at a time, which are repeated again and again, before moving on to a new set. Depending on the station's origin, the code may be spoken in English, Korean, Czech, Spanish or other languages.

There are a lot of variations on the same structure. Many stations have received colorful nicknames that reflect some defining characteristic of the station. For example, one is called Swedish Rhapsody because it begins with a fragment of that song.

Sometimes broadcasts come in loud and clear. Sometimes atmospheric conditions degrade the signals. Number stations are shortwave transmissions from foreign intelligence agencies to spies in the field of foreign countries. They carry encrypted messages in form of groups of numbers or letters, using either automated voice, Morse code, or a digital mode. While the encryption methods used by most number stations are unknown, some have used and others are widely believed to use one-time pad: mathematical addition of a set of random numbers the key to the cleartext, which can be used only once, and must be destroyed after usage.

As number stations are part of classified intelligence operations, very few government organizations have released information about them; those that have include the Polish Institute of National Remembrance , the Swedish Security Service , and the National Archives of Latvia.