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Shortwave Number Stations

Andy_X said:
A couple of the contributors mention the fact that the stations first appeared in great numbers in the very early 1970s and added that the number groups are read out in 'synthesised voices'; one chap stating quite plainly, 'it's a computerised / synthesised / whatever female voice". Now, listening to the recordings of those old stations, many no longer broadcasting, it occurs to me that they don't sound like anything of the sort. I can't claim any knowledge of the state of digital voice synthesis in the 1970s, but remember how ropey it was in the eighties and nineties. The spoken numbers sound to me like individual recordings that have been somehow sequenced in the desired order.
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This is probably neither here nor there given Ermintrude's excellent reply, but one of the eerier things (IMO) about some of those old number station voices was how natural they sounded until just toward the end of a word, when the voice would take on a slightly metallic tone. What sounded like a human voice suddenly became....not.

I saw (or heard, or read) somewhere that a former numbers station reader had been located, but she hadn't had any real idea for what purpose she'd been reading the numbers. IIRC, she didn't question it, it was just part of her job.
 
Ulalume said:
This is probably neither here nor there given Ermintrude's excellent reply, but one of the eerier things (IMO) about some of those old number station voices was how natural they sounded until just toward the end of a word, when the voice would take on a slightly metallic tone. What sounded like a human voice suddenly became....not.
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That bit is a mystery to me. Unless...it's simply down to poor recording technique? Using really old, basic equipment?
 
Could it be the readers were instructed to deliver the messages in a specific way?
 
Andy_X said:
Can you remember who she worked for?
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The British government, an office worker in some far flung outpost, I think. Unfortunately I can't remember the source. IIRC, every day at a certain time, she was given a set of numbers and told to read them into the radio microphone. It wasn't until she learned about numbers stations many years later that she realized what must have been going on.

Mytho, GNC -

The description in this video posits that the voice in certain number stations was created by this type of machine.


I don't know much about electronics, but it could explain the metallic tone. It sounds about right to me.
 
Ulalume said:
The description in this video posits that the voice in certain number stations was created by this type of machine.
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@Ulalume totally fascinating! Thank you so much for having found this 'Peter Staal' guy.

The build style and component size definitively places this amazing portable device late 70s/early 80s, and it will have had larger predecessors (back in the pre-microprocessor era....including before Zilog CPUs and 2716 EPROMs....wow). It is stunning-similar to western military devices of the same era.

People often forget that chips (by which I mean electronic logic gate integrated circuits, pre LSI) have actually existed since the 1950s...they are absolutely a product of the Cold War, and the 'space race' techno-propaganda era.

Note the efficient way in which he changes the Numbersbox spoken language, by swapping-over the modules.

But, frustratingly, this leaves open still many vital questions. We see the source of the voice, but not the reasoning behind it being used in the first place.

The transmission of encoded messages at high speeds by radio over audible data links allows large quantities of information to be sent, and, is only capable of being resolved/unpicked by another machine at the remote side. To the human ear, it is just a varying warble of complex tones (nb not as an attempt to conceal, purely as a result of the fast data throughput).

Human-speed speech is for human-heard ears, irrespective of whether it's biologically or electronically generated: assuming that the content itself genuinely always does have a meaning. Because sometimes I think numbers stations are like bird-song, territorial intonations that declare presence, ownership and intent, much-more than constantly providing tactical direction.

EDIT- this is a rather-good synopsis of many of the classic sounds heard on the radio by people who, like me, were already on the net, for decades, before the advent of the world-wide wired web 'consumer' internet

 
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Interesting! Looks like an early digital recorder/sampler, which can record short sequences of sound.
They may have used it because they wanted the words spoken at regular intervals, with the same timing applied to all words. Probably to make it easier to understand, even when received on a poor signal.
I think it's a Morse-to-speech generator or something like that.

Edit: Oh, it is a Morse-to-speech generator - just seen the video.
 
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Mythopoeika said:
I think it's a Morse-to-speech generator or something like that.
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Nearly....it appears to be a text-to-morse generator, in the same way that it looks to be a multi-lingual ASCII-text-to-speech box. I'd say the morse was way up around 30wpm

Automatically-generated morse sending (or even faster formats such as Murray code) has been a practical communications option for many decades before the Cold War, via the use of perforated tapes or wire magnetic recorders. Automated *reception* of morse was always more of a challenge, and still can be, in an analogue radio domain (hence at one time the reliance upon recordings being taken at the remote reception site that were subsequently slowed-down for either human or machine-based transcription).

Something that many latter-day 'discoverers' of the Numbers Station phenomenon appear frequently unaware of is that over the whole half-century of the Cold War, western miltary and diplomatic radio transmissions took place of relatively-mundane soft-coded messages in the form of five-letter groups sent by morse.

Let me emphasise that. Unspoken, sent as morse, and almost always as letters, not as numbers. And generally, not on continuous transmission, but just on an as-required basis.

It's always puzzled me that there are relatively-few cited examples of 'Letters Stations' (excepting of course the significant scary broadcasts from USAF strategic bombers).

I need to do some more thinking about this....
 
It is fascinating, the sheer diversity of techniques and styles that have been employed for this obscure purpose.
In that video, one that I found pointless was the workshop sounds. What was that all about? Psychological warfare?
 
Allegedly 1175MHz is where it's at for 21st Century number station shenanigans.

 
Mythopoeika said:
In that video, one that I found pointless was the workshop sounds. What was that all about?
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I used to hear some very strange things on shortwave, but that's one I missed. One possible angle may be a 'microdot' hypothesis...the actual content of value is hidden amongst and between the evident, only to be extracted afterwords. An anamorphic audiogram.....maybe?

EDIT thanks @Andy_X I shall watch that once I come back into the tent
 
I'd also read that some messages via radio were disguised as static. The agent would record the static and slow it down, at which point the message would become evident. This had the benefit of being meaningless to anyone who just happened upon the transmission.

IIRC, this info came from a book called Big Secrets by William Poundstone (which was thrilling stuff to my teenage self, you can imagine. :)) I haven't heard much about it otherwise, so don't know if this was a common practice among spies.
 
Andy_X said:
Allegedly 1175MHz is where it's at for 21st Century number station shenanigans.
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Almost. You mean 11.175MHz in the HF shortwave, rather than 1175MHz in the low microwave/half-WiFi (2400MHz) spectrum. The confusion arises, because he's saying "eleven-one-seventy-five", which if he were a true professional communicator (rather than a broadcaster) would be spoken as "figures- wun- wun- day-cee-mal wun--seven fife megahertz"

....what's been recorded there is a US Air Force HF broadcast of a SKYKING style strategic nuclear forces OTC message, from/to something like an E3 Sentry aircraft. It might mean all is peace and going well, it might mean all is in pieces send them to hell.

Here is a link to the Reddit source, which tallies with my interpretation.

https://m.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/3oswdt/unusual_happenings_with_inactive_radio_stations/

I also concur that if this is genuinely happening just now, there is either: a big exercise on, or; a show of strength to potential adversories, or; WW3 is commencing shortly
 
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Ermintrude said:
I also concur that if this is genuinely happening just now, there is either: a big exercise on, or; a show of strength to potential adversories, or; WW3 is commencing shortly
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The biggest target around here (as in WWII) would be Falmouth docks. But there are several hills between my flat and the docks, and even if some blast did reach this far, I'm on the 'sheltered' side of this building. Would probably still be rather unpleasant. At least there are some local shops I could loot for provisions, for a while...
 
Ulalume said:
I'd also read that some messages via radio were disguised as static. The agent would record the static and slow it down, at which point the message would become evident. This had the benefit of being meaningless to anyone who just happened upon the transmission.

IIRC, this info came from a book called Big Secrets by William Poundstone (which was thrilling stuff to my teenage self, you can imagine. :)) I haven't heard much about it otherwise, so don't know if this was a common practice among spies.
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I read those Poundstone books too. I still have his second one.
 
Ermintrude said:
Almost. You mean 11.175MHz in the HF shortwave, rather than 1175MHz in the low microwave/half-WiFi (2400MHz) spectrum. The confusion arises, because he's saying "eleven-one-seventy-five", which if he were a true professional communicator (rather than a broadcaster) would be spoken as "figures- wun- wun- day-cee-mal wun--seven fife megahertz"

....what's been recorded there is a US Air Force HF broadcast of a SKYKING style strategic nuclear forces OTC message, from/to something like an E3 Sentry aircraft. It might mean all is peace and going well, it might mean all is in pieces send them to hell.

Here is a link to the Reddit source, which tallies with my interpretation.

https://m.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/3oswdt/unusual_happenings_with_inactive_radio_stations/

I also concur that if this is genuinely happening just now, there is either: a big exercise on, or; a show of strength to potential adversories, or; WW3 is commencing shortly
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Ah! Good point: ...1175MHz would be microwave territory....I'm familiar with R/T phraseology but can't blame the YT videographer! But anyway, why would such strategically important voice communications not be encrypted? There are military systems where voice traffic can be encoded in short bursts to be unpacked by the appropriate hard/software. The originators of the messages must be very confident of their cyphers.

WWIII here we come - except it probably isn't...just more of the same global peacekeeping.
 
Andy_X said:
ABut anyway, why would such strategically important voice communications not be encrypted?
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I can think of a few possible reasons not to encrypt transmissions, though who but the parties involved really know if they are accurate or not.

1) You want to make as sure as possible the message is received.
If the message is "don't fire the missiles", and the recipient's decoding machine is not working, the message is not received and the missiles get fired. Human readable message reduces error as it eliminates the possibility of the message not reaching the recipient due to a problem with decryption equipment. It may be less likely that all possible human receivers died than the decryption equipment equipment fails, which seems like a possibility on something like a nuclear sub where there are a probably a number of people capable of receiving the signal.

2) The recipient would be in trouble for being found with the decryption equipment.
If you are suspected of spying, the host country would probably enter your house and look around for stuff. Having some random looking electronic equipment in your house would be suspicious, especially if they started analyzing what it did. Human readable messages mean the spy does not need specialized equipment, keeping the spy safer.

3) "It's always worked". It's not broke, don't fix it.
 
Good points. Maybe the basic Number Station / one-time pad combo cannot be surpassed for security after all!
 
Haven't heard anyone talk about Number Stations for a long time......I recall when I first bumped into the phenom....it was fascinating.
Anyway for those interested you tube is full of audio recordings......
 
Lately some strange radio broadcasts have been coming from North Korea, according to the South Korean government.

Number 35 on page 459...

Number 55 on page 913...

The strange page numbers were heard over the airwaves for just a couple of minutes on June 24th and for nearly 15 minutes on July 15th. But what do they mean?

According to Associated Press, there are essentially three options. The first is that they’re what the North Korean government says they are: “review assignments in physics” or “practice assignments in mathematic lessons” for North Korean students studying out of the country.

The second option is that the North Koreans are sending coded messages to spies they have in South Korea. Typically when specific page numbers are used the spy already has a copy of the book or it’s a very common book to find, and the text is rather benign. The text then must be decoded through another manner.

The third option is that the North Koreans are engaging in a type of psychological warfare. The page numbers may not mean anything at all. But broadcasting them may be a tactic to make the South Koreans think that they’re up to something.

http://gizmodo.com/north-korea-s-broadcasting-strange-codes-on-the-radio-a-1783914805
 
Intriguing: this appears to have been part of a conventional broadcast, as opposed to being a "ute" shortwave transmission

Which puts it nearly into the genre of the "London Calling" WW2 BBC radio messages to the Maquis ...."Don has a very long beard'.

http://wwarii.com/podcast/1944-06-05 BBC European Service With Resistance Messages.mp3

An ever-dwindling number of UK readers may just personally remember the cryptic (and to me always... unrealistic) "crisis messages" sent by classic 1960s-1980s news and continuity broadcasters on Radio Four longwave (by the likes of Peter Jones, back in the 1500m/200kcs days)....at the timeslot following the shipping forecast "would Mrs Snodgrass of Pinetree Lane, Basingstoke, currently on holiday in the Lake District, please contact her son-in-law at Aberystwith General Hospital, where he is seriously ill" etc

There now.... @rynner2 and other venerables do you remember that sort of transmission, back when the world was black-and-white? Were they real, or cryptological?? Or a dolly mixture?
 
Ermintrude said:
An ever-dwindling number of UK readers may just personally remember the cryptic (and to me always... unrealistic) "crisis messages" sent by classic 1960s-1980s news and continuity broadcasters on Radio Four longwave (by the likes of Peter Jones, back in the 1500m/200kcs days)....at the timeslot following the shipping forecast "would Mrs Snodgrass of Pinetree Lane, Basingstoke, currently on holiday in the Lake District, please contact her son-in-law at Aberystwith General Hospital, where he is seriously ill" etc

There now.... @rynner2 and other venerables do you remember that sort of transmission, back when the world was black-and-white? Were they real, or cryptological?? Or a dolly mixture?
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I remember them. They did exist!

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35815747

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/entries/dfdeb58c-b9ae-3c30-8c7f-ba20bac0f75e
 
Ermintrude said:
There now.... @rynner2 and other venerables do you remember that sort of transmission, back when the world was black-and-white? Were they real, or cryptological?? Or a dolly mixture?
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Yes, I remember such messages. AFAIK they were genuine - seem to remember a few cases where follow-ups were given in more detail in the press, etc.
 
rynner2 said:
AFAIK they were genuine
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I think they probably almost all were.

Conversely, I also think that in the post-WW2 Cold War tangle of loveboat diplomacy (and post-Colonial conundrums), it might be naive / optimistic to fully-believe that they were all harmless messages, every time.
 
I'm sure there was a documentary on "crisis messages" for the public a few years ago on Radio 4, with interviews with people they had helped. Might be online somewhere?
 
GNC said:
I'm sure there was a documentary on "crisis messages" for the public a few years ago on Radio 4, with interviews with people they had helped. Might be online somewhere?
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"And Now An Urgent SOS Message" from 2012? (See my post above for links) Sadly, "This programme is not currently available on BBC iPlayer Radio".
 
Tribble said:
"And Now An Urgent SOS Message" from 2012? (See my post above for links) Sadly, "This programme is not currently available on BBC iPlayer Radio".
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That was it, thanks. Maybe 4 Extra will dig it out of the vaults sometime.
 
There is a very practical reason for the numbers method.

If the reception gets very bad and you can't make out what the sender is saying, you can switch to Morse code.

The Morse code (CW Carrier Wave) may be the oldest way of getting a message across, but it will punch through very bad radio conditions.

In an earlier life I was a radio operator in the Army.

INT21
 
Has anyone ever heard a numbers station either switch to Morse code or be broadcast in Morse code? I used to hear the latter when I was investigating the dial on my radio when I was a kid, but I've no idea if they were numbers stations.
 
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