I think I've mentioned before that, when it comes to the Internet, the
husband is like a little boy on summer vacation. You send him out the
door first thing in the morning and when he comes home he's filthy with
a toad hanging out of his pocket---and you really don't want to know
where his activities over the course of the day have taken him. The
husband spends a lot of time surfing the web. Mostly he does this for
work, but he does have a tendency to come across some interesting
things. Like anything, this has its ups and downs, but for the most
part the Internet is a glorious thing and if you want something
researched, he's your dude.
I have no idea what led him to this
but I have to say, it's pretty damn cool.
And, as a former shortwave radio junkie, I know what this is all about,
because I've heard a number station in the past.
If you've never listened to a shortwave radio, or even just goofed
around with one, this must be pretty confusing, so I'll try to explain.
I bought my shortwave radio for one main reason: to rid myself of
having to listen to OJOJOJ!
all the damn time. This being the time before broadband and RealOne
player, it was a great alternative to the American media. I got to
listen to the BBC World Service, Deutche Welle's English language
broadcasts, Radio Netherlands. A whole new world of media had opened up
for me, but as any shortwave listener can tell you, there are
challenges to shortwave operation. Since shortwave signals can carry
across the globe, they don't travel at the same atmospheric height as
an FM or AM band would: they travel through the ionosphere, which if
you'll remember grade school science class, is way the heck up there in
the sky. As a result, due to line of sight and all sorts of other
interesting scientific conundrums you only can listen to certain
stations at certain times of day, depending upon if there's a
transmitter in your hemisphere. (Just as an example, I used to pick the
BBC World Service up off of one of their transmitters in the
Caribbean.) You also have a problem with reception if there's a massive
wave of solar flares. This alters the chemistry of the ionosphere and
makes for listening issues, although, depending upon the severity of
the flares, it can also help with reception---you never know. In my
experience, it hurt more than it helped, but it might be different for
other people. I had no idea that when the husband gave me my radio that
I was going to have to become knowledgeable in this sort of thing, but
I did and I figured it out in my limited way and was able to listen to
the BBC World Service every day when I was cooking dinner. I loved it.
The one thing that bugged me, however, was that due to all those
atmospheric requirements, the frequencies changed often. Just as I was
used to finding the BBC at 5pm at 6200MHz, because of the seasons and
the tilt of the Earth in relation to the sun, it would switch all the
way up the dial to 15500MHz---and so on and so forth. You could rarely
find the same broadcast at the same position on the dial unless you
were a daily listener. This, of course, says nothing about the annoying
fact that the Beeb would switch transmitters at six p.m. and then you'd
have to find the rest of the broadcast on a different band. But, to a
certain extent, all of this was part of the challenge and being forced
to switch frequencies wasn't necessarily a bad thing as you might find
something new in the process. This was how I found Deutche Welle and
Radio Netherlands. Well, long story short, it was during one of these
switchoffs that I found one of these number stations. If you're
monolingual like me, the sound of English on shortwave catches you
instantly, because most shortwave stations are in Spanish, Chinese or
other languages. English makes you stop rolling the dial and forces you
to listen. I stood there and listened to an automated female voice,
which sounded like eerily like the Time and Temperature service when I
was growing up, read off a series of numbers. I didn't know what it was
for and I moved on when I realized it was of no help in fulfilling my
news jones, but it was interesting in a I wonder what that's for
sort of way.
Well, now I know. How it works is this: a spy will tune in on a certain
frequency (they're usually utility bands in between regular
bands---most shortwave users will not be able to pick these up,
although I have no idea how I found it: my radio isn't digital and by
all rights I shouldn't have been able to find it, let alone hear
it--must've been a solar flare.)and will listen for a series of
numbers. These numbers are then written down by the spy. The spy will
then use a code pad and will translate these seemingly random numbers
into a series of directives from the home office. Spies have used this
for years, and they're still using this system of communication. Why do
they do this when there's encrypted email, secure satellite phones and
more advanced technological equipment available nowadays? Well, mainly
because it's shrouded in simplicity: shortwave signals have been used
to transmit intelligence findings by spies since WWI. The habit is long
established, and unless you're a codebreaker and know a. the source of
the broadcast (it has never been fully documented as to who owns what
transmitter and who is sending the material---people have only made
educated guesses) and b. what the code source material is, you're
clueless. It's simple and cheap and still in use today. If it interests
you, poke around on this site and follow some of the links. Fascinating
stuff. Some of the links are mired in technical shortwave jargon, but
you'll get the gist of it.