July 5, 2022 • 27 mins
In this episode Commander Bob introduces his audience to Cold War technology that is still in use today. While this technology is simple it is unbreakable if implemented properly. This information is not meant to be exact or academic it is a collection of knowledge that Global Bob has acquired from various news outlets and online research.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:26):
Right. All right, it's that time of the week. It's time
for the global Bob Show. TheGlobalbob show, we are the
crossroads of technology andpolitics. As we teased out last
week, got a real special show instore for you. Today, we're
(00:47):
gonna talk about some oldtechnology that is still
relevant. Technology I'm talkingabout is number stations. We are
broadcasting today from theRichard Cook broadcast facility,
aka my radio room, of which Ihave dedicated the name, Richard
(01:13):
Cook, which was my grandfather.
And from all accounts that Iheard, he was really the master
of this broadcasting, and hestarted his own radio station,
which we've talked about. Sotoday, we're in the Richard Cook
broadcast facility. I like tothank everybody that tunes in
each and every week, and thosethat share the podcast, you can
(01:37):
direct people to go to theglobal Bob show.com. Or they can
reach out on the Facebook pageGlobalbob show. We also have a
Twitter account at Globalbobshow. And of course, you can
email me or you can send me spammessages or questions or
(01:57):
whatever you want. Globalbobshow@gmail.com. Now before we
get too far into this, I need togive a public service
announcement. Let me tell yousomething that's really relevant
right now. Now, we just enjoyedthe Fourth of July weekend. So
us here in the states had athree day weekend, which was
(02:22):
very nice and relaxing. However,something that I have personally
experience is that smishing ison the rise smishing if you guys
remember from a couple episodesback, that is S M S phishing,
what is SMS phishing, so we'regoing to break this all the way
(02:45):
down. SMS phishing is the textmessages that you get on your
cell phone that say, your Amazonpackage is on its way, click
here, because there's been someupdated information. Or if
you're like me, you havereceived some very highly
targeted smishing, which I don'twant to give the details of,
(03:08):
because I'm not sure if maybethe person that's trying to fish
me is also a listener of theshow. But basically, I'm getting
some very targeted textmessages, that know some
information, nothing, nothingmajor, but anyways, they're
(03:28):
highly targeted, has my name init has another person's name in
it. And it says that they wouldlike to thank me for the Fourth
of July, weekend and stuff likethat. So it's a very highly
targeted. I've cooperated thiswith some other people that are
(03:51):
receiving the exact samemessage. So whoever is trying to
target us, I guess they knowexactly what they could probably
send to get us to click on. Soanyways, just know that that's
on the rise. Mine is highlytargeted, but you may get one
from Amazon, or UPS. Now thesearen't really from Amazon and
(04:12):
ups. And really the way I tellwhether it's from Amazon UPS,
FedEx or other people that sendme tracking information,
tracking updates. I look at myhistory, and I look and see
because a lot of times they comefrom the same phone number so
I'm like okay, yeah, I've beengetting this for the last year
from Amazon, FedEx ups, but justknow that you got to take due
(04:38):
care when you do get thosemessages. So that's my public
service announcement for thisweek. So as it appears that the
SMS phishing is on the rise. Allright now off to the topic,
Numbers Station. What's reallycool about number stations are
(04:59):
is that they're oldertechnology, but they're still
relevant even to today. Sobefore we dive into number of
stations and go through that,like to kind of build it up a
little bit. So as you know, I'ma ham radio operator. And that's
the ham radio operators thathave really kind of aggregated a
(05:22):
lot of information about thesenumber stations. But why do ham
radio operators listen to numberstations? Well, one, there's a
technique that ham radiooperators like to practice and
it's called de effing ordirection finding. And so these
numbers stations, they broadcaston a really regular interval.
(05:47):
And so ham radio enthusiast,they enjoy trying to figure out
where these number stations are.
Now I have to mention the numberstations are down in the H F
band or the high frequency band.
And basically, the highfrequency band is below 30
megahertz. So 30 megahertz andbelow. That's the H F band. And
(06:10):
this is the same band whereshortwave radio libs and
shortwave radio broadcasts havebeen going on for quite some
time, we have ones like theVoice of America, we have BBC
that broadcast and was shortwaveradio broadcast, they tend to
(06:30):
stay down in the lowerfrequencies because they can
have a single transmitter in onecountry and then transmit around
the world. So you'll see that inthis space, there's a lot of
religious broadcasts that go onthere, because it's basically a
real effective way to transmityour message around the world.
(06:54):
Well, in the case of numberstations, what they tried to do
these number stations are oneway voice channels. And it is
speculated that they're used tocommunicate with spies and to
give direction to them. Andwe're going to hear about a
couple of cases where numberstations came into play. But
(07:16):
down in that HF band, where itcan skip so the radiofrequency
skips, and from there, itbounces off the ionosphere, it
comes down to the earth, it goesup to the ionosphere and it
makes a skip around the world.
(07:36):
Now skip is a lot easier. Andthe lower bands, the higher
bands tend to be frequencybands, and the signal kind of
follows the contour of theearth. Those are called Ground
waves. And with HF not only doyou have ground waves, but you
also have sky waves. And reallyall frequencies have sky waves
(07:59):
and ground waves, they're justmore apparent in the lower
frequencies. Now before wecontinue on explaining number
stations and all about them,let's take a listen to a number
station. This is one of the mostfamous number stations.
(08:23):
97975375977Now that number station you just
(08:48):
heard was called link charpoacher. And there's a bunch of
different names for numberstations because no spy agency
or government has really evertaken claim to run in these
number stations. And so hobbyistand enthusiast they give them
names like that one wasLancashire poacher, which was an
English of folk song. Nowthere's other ones on there that
(09:13):
are called the Mad violinist andYosemite Sam. So a lot of times
the way they get their name isfrom the preamble because number
stations all contain thispreamble. And from there, though
it's kind of like I feel likeit's telling everybody okay, get
your pieces of paper ready andpencils and Decoder Rings.
(09:35):
Because what's coming next is astring of numbers or words. Now,
the string of number and wordsor words. That's called a one
time pad. Now one time pad isold technology, but it's very
secure and it uses randomnumbers or one words. And when
(09:59):
they generate the numbers andwords, then there's also a key.
And when they put this alltogether, someone can broadcast
this message out in the open,and then the spy or whomever
listens to this. And then fromthere, they can open up their
(10:20):
one time pad book and see whatthe instructions are. Now,
there's a lot of ways that theydo this. So when the spy goes
into the foreign country, heknows that he needs to listen in
on this particular radiofrequency at this particular
time, and then listening for thepreamble. And then they can
(10:42):
start writing down the string ofwords. But the pad or the book
needs to be secure, because ifsomeone was to have that book,
then they could listen in on theradio, and then see what the
instruction is. So these bookshave been written on various
(11:04):
things that could either beconcealed or destroyed. One such
book was written on rice paper,and so when the spy would go to
that page and decode, then theycan eat the spy paper, the rice
paper, I mean, I guess it is spypaper, because it's meant to be
(11:24):
eaten. But what was funny was isthat I was reading an article or
book or somewhere years ago, andthey said that they actually had
a problem with the ink while therice paper was able to be
digested so they you know, sensewas destroyed the ink was given
some of the people upsetstomach. So I thought that that
was kind of interesting. Now,not all of its written down on
(11:48):
rice, paper and gum, but somehave been used with microdot
technology. Now, microdottechnology is pretty neat. And
it's a way to shrink the lettersand numbers and words and books
down into something very, verysmall. So if you all remember,
(12:08):
probably in the 70s 80s, maybethe mid 90s, they had
microfiche, which you could godown to the clerk of court and
you want to look up some publicrecords, they would hand you a
piece of micro fish, and youwould put it on the machine and
slide it around. Andessentially, it was a light that
shined through the film, and itwould blow it up to like the
(12:32):
size of paper, a lot of oldnewspapers use micro fish, think
of micro fish, but on steroids,meaning super, super, super
tiny, small. That is whatmicrodot technology is now they
had to figure out how the spycould keep this book on them and
how they could very easily getrid of it if say they were to
(12:53):
get caught. Now, the other thingthat makes number stations very,
very effective is that itdoesn't require advanced
technology to listen to anddecode. Let's say we were to go
to a foreign country. And we'regoing to come in with our laptop
computers and all this fancyelectronic equipment that may
(13:17):
raise somebody's eyebrows likeHey, who's this person bringing
in, you know, laptops and maybesome kind of encryption
technology? Well, with thenumber station, you can just
tune it in on a shortwave radio.
And you don't even have to carrythe shortwave radio with you.
(13:37):
You can buy shortwave radiosprobably in most countries, and
no one would think any of itbecause it's just a radio and
especially in some of thedeveloping countries, third
world countries, they still useshortwave radio a lot. So let's
listen to the link sharp poacherone more time.
(14:07):
77171715So the links are poacher, like
I've mentioned before, is one ofthe most famous number stations.
(14:29):
Now it started operating out ofthe 60s. And when it first came
on the air no one knew where itwas from other than they would
tune in to this radio station orvarious radio stations and they
would hear this, this crazything these tune and then with
the string of information afterit, but it was later found that
(14:52):
it was operated out of thecountry of Cyprus. Cyprus is a
small island nation. And itspreamble, as we mentioned before
is the English folk song calledthe link Shire poacher, amateur
radio operators were able todirection find this and got in
(15:12):
pretty close and from what theyfigured out that it was actually
being operated from the RoyalAir Force Base in Cyprus. So as
I mentioned before, Intelagencies and governments have
never openly really admittedthat they have number of
stations. And it's only beenspeculation of what they've been
(15:33):
used for. But however, if youhave something cryptic like
this, that's being broadcastfrom a government facility,
namely an Air Force Station,then chances are probably it's
related to the government. Nowlinks are poacher, whenever it
started transmitting ittransmitted for a long, long
(15:54):
time. It's last transmission wasactually in 2008. So you can see
that this was started probablyduring the Cold War, and maybe
to communicate with spies. Andthen after 2008, it just boof
went offline.
Now the US and Britishintelligence, they've been long
(16:19):
speculated through a numberstations. However, there are
plenty of number stations thatare being broadcasted every day.
And one in particular, that'skind of close to my home, is
Cuban number stations. So notjust Americans and British and
(16:39):
American allies. But there'snumber stations that are thought
to be Latino of nature, Korean,Chinese, Japanese, almost every
Romania, so almost every countryseems to have had their hand and
number stations at some point intime. But the Cuban number
stations or the voice de lachica and a teach shown was two
(17:05):
different number stations. Andwe know that a 10 shown was used
to transmit coded messages toCuban spies inside the United
States. And for us here inFlorida, we always keep our ear
tuned to our neighbors to thesouth. They're only about 90
miles off the coast of Florida.
And so anything having to dowith Cuba usually makes local
(17:30):
news. And this actually madenational news. And there was
evidence in the case againstfive Cuban spies that was
presented that shows that theywere receiving instructions via
the number station. Now how dowe know this? Well, the Cuban
intelligence agency, they kindof made a mistake. Remember how
(17:55):
I talked about how important itis to keep this pad secure and
this book secure? Well, theydidn't write their pad on a
stick of gum, or rice paper, oreven a micro DOD, they actually
had a computer program that thespies would run, and they would
(18:16):
type the message into thecomputer program. And it would
use that to decrypt theinformation. And in the case of
spy craft, that is a big no, no.
Usually, the more high tech yougo, the better chance of your
(18:37):
communications method beingintercepted and broken. And I
don't want to go into all ofcoding theory and cryptography.
But the main reason why is isthat it's very hard for
computers to generate thingsthat are truly random. And
moreover, just like withpictures that are posted online,
(19:01):
even there could be hundreds ofcopies. And no one knows whether
there's one copy or 100 copies.
And so really, when you'redealing with things that are
this sensitive, you need to makesure that you keep it old school
and have exactly the amount ofcopies that are required for the
communication. So Cubanintelligence you made a mistake
(19:24):
on this one. And what happened?
Well, the FBI had these Cubansin their crosshairs. And they
were able to break into anapartment of one of the Cubans,
and they were able to copy thecodebook and pad off. And they
(19:46):
did this in 1995. And then in1998 is when all of this broke.
So for three years, the FBIcould just tune into the same
frequency and they could tolisten in on the coded message,
they would type it into thestolen computer files that they
(20:08):
got, and boom, it would decryptit. Now, that's the Cubans,
we've talked about sendingnumbers into the US. And we've
talked about the British fromCyprus, send in numbers around
the world, but give it up toyour good old amateur radio
operators here. And they'vetraced number stations right
(20:31):
here in the US. And of course,the FCC, Federal Communications
Commission and the FBI and CIA,NSA, no one's gonna admit to who
runs these these number stationsor even what they're used for.
Like I said, there's tons ofspeculation around this. And one
of the ones is this YosemiteSam, he, you know, he starts off
(20:55):
with his preamble and the voiceof Yosemite Sam, and that is,
you know, an Americancowboy type for my overseas
listeners, you know, so it'skind of, you know, they
speculate that it's the USgovernment running this
Yosemite, Sam, but it could befalse operations as well, you
know, I mean, if you want todisguise who's running
(21:17):
something, then maybe put it ina language that is native to
that country. So anyways,Yosemite Sam, and with his
preamble, it is kind of funny,you can go out on YouTube and
just type in number station,Yosemite, Sam, and you can hear
what he talks about. But back tothe D F and or direction
(21:38):
finding, they've actually foundwhere there's a station, here in
Florida, that was down at WestPalm Beach airport. Now, what's
interesting about that is thatWest Palm Beach airport, is a
public airport. But it's not aNaval Station, or it's not a
military installation. And soamateur radio operators have
(22:00):
tracked a number station thatthey believe was that the West
Palm Beach airport. Now, they'vealso tracked down number
stations in the past that werebroadcasting out of homestead
Air Force Base. So these arejust a few examples of these
number stations. Like I said, noone has ever come forward and
said that this is what they'reused for. But we do have the
(22:24):
evidence from the Cuban fivethat were prosecuted of which we
listened in on Cuban numberstations and decrypted them
because of the stolen pad thatthey got. So we know what's
being used for spies. But otherspeculation is is that these are
used for military command andcontrol these frequencies. And
(22:47):
that maybe in an apocalypticevent, that they could use these
radio frequencies to communicatewith key staff. And so these
number stations are justtransmitting gibberish, just to
keep that frequency occupied, sonobody else will use it. So
that's one theory. There'sanother number station. And I
(23:11):
guess it still is a numberstation, kind of, but it's
called the buzzer. And thebuzzard is just what it sounds
like. Just like its nickname.
Its preamble is a buzzing set.
Now that's been traced toMoscow. And it's speculation
that maybe the buzzer is somesort of deadman switch that
(23:33):
would launch nucular attack inthe event that there is a
nuclear exchange and the commandand control of Russia is wiped
out. But like I said, we don'tknow. However, what we do know
is that these HF bands are veryefficient at transmitting both
(23:53):
voice and digital communicationsaround the world. And this is no
more evident than with the wargoing on between Russia and the
Ukraine. And you can go out toYouTube and various other sites
and type in Russian h fcommunication. And you can hear
(24:15):
him on there using HF radio tocall in airstrikes. You can hear
them arguing on HF radio, andyou can tell that they're not or
they don't seem to beprofessional radio operators
because you'll hear him cussingin Russian now I'm don't know
(24:36):
Russian, but the way I knowtheir customer in Russian and
what they're saying in Russianis because it's being translated
inside the videos and so that'show I know that they're not
professional because everybodyknows you don't cuss on radio
and usually on radio speciallywith military and we see this a
(24:57):
lot of times with the spaceshuttle whenever it when go up,
and also to the SpaceX, that onthe radio people are very crisp,
they, you know, they have thatradio talk. It's very
militaristic. And in thesevideos where the Russians are
using the HF bands, you can hearhim cussin, and then hollering
(25:18):
and screaming, just, it's justnot professional at all. Well,
we're coming up on the bottom ofthe half hour. And I would like
to thank everybody that hasstayed tuned in to the show
here. And this has been reallyneat to talk about number
stations, and even more to, youknow, do a little research here
(25:40):
before the show. And it's kindof cool that something that's
this old is still unbreakabletechnology. Now my new the book
would have to be stolen. But youknow, there's tons of stuff that
we see in the news all the timewhere this encryption was
broken, and that encryption wasbroken. But on these one time
pads, because there's only onekey that unlocks it, that this
(26:04):
just the most perfect encryptionand it requires nothing
electronic, or anything. So,this has been your field
commander Bob, and I've enjoyedtaking you across the highways
and byways of this podcast as itrelates to technology and
government. And we just reallylike to thank everybody who
(26:27):
tuned in. Also, please send yourcomments, questions concerns, to
Globalbob show@gmail.com. Or youcan reach me out on Twitter or
the Globalbob show Facebookpage. And until then, I hope
everybody gets out there DecoderRings and listens in on
(26:48):
shortwave radio and find somenumber stations. Until next
time,
Right. All right, it's that time of the week. It's time
for the global Bob Show. TheGlobalbob show, we are the
crossroads of technology andpolitics. As we teased out last
week, got a real special show instore for you. Today, we're
(00:47):
gonna talk about some oldtechnology that is still
relevant. Technology I'm talkingabout is number stations. We are
broadcasting today from theRichard Cook broadcast facility,
aka my radio room, of which Ihave dedicated the name, Richard
(01:13):
Cook, which was my grandfather.
And from all accounts that Iheard, he was really the master
of this broadcasting, and hestarted his own radio station,
which we've talked about. Sotoday, we're in the Richard Cook
broadcast facility. I like tothank everybody that tunes in
each and every week, and thosethat share the podcast, you can
(01:37):
direct people to go to theglobal Bob show.com. Or they can
reach out on the Facebook pageGlobalbob show. We also have a
Twitter account at Globalbobshow. And of course, you can
email me or you can send me spammessages or questions or
(01:57):
whatever you want. Globalbobshow@gmail.com. Now before we
get too far into this, I need togive a public service
announcement. Let me tell yousomething that's really relevant
right now. Now, we just enjoyedthe Fourth of July weekend. So
us here in the states had athree day weekend, which was
(02:22):
very nice and relaxing. However,something that I have personally
experience is that smishing ison the rise smishing if you guys
remember from a couple episodesback, that is S M S phishing,
what is SMS phishing, so we'regoing to break this all the way
(02:45):
down. SMS phishing is the textmessages that you get on your
cell phone that say, your Amazonpackage is on its way, click
here, because there's been someupdated information. Or if
you're like me, you havereceived some very highly
targeted smishing, which I don'twant to give the details of,
(03:08):
because I'm not sure if maybethe person that's trying to fish
me is also a listener of theshow. But basically, I'm getting
some very targeted textmessages, that know some
information, nothing, nothingmajor, but anyways, they're
(03:28):
highly targeted, has my name init has another person's name in
it. And it says that they wouldlike to thank me for the Fourth
of July, weekend and stuff likethat. So it's a very highly
targeted. I've cooperated thiswith some other people that are
(03:51):
receiving the exact samemessage. So whoever is trying to
target us, I guess they knowexactly what they could probably
send to get us to click on. Soanyways, just know that that's
on the rise. Mine is highlytargeted, but you may get one
from Amazon, or UPS. Now thesearen't really from Amazon and
(04:12):
ups. And really the way I tellwhether it's from Amazon UPS,
FedEx or other people that sendme tracking information,
tracking updates. I look at myhistory, and I look and see
because a lot of times they comefrom the same phone number so
I'm like okay, yeah, I've beengetting this for the last year
from Amazon, FedEx ups, but justknow that you got to take due
(04:38):
care when you do get thosemessages. So that's my public
service announcement for thisweek. So as it appears that the
SMS phishing is on the rise. Allright now off to the topic,
Numbers Station. What's reallycool about number stations are
(04:59):
is that they're oldertechnology, but they're still
relevant even to today. Sobefore we dive into number of
stations and go through that,like to kind of build it up a
little bit. So as you know, I'ma ham radio operator. And that's
the ham radio operators thathave really kind of aggregated a
(05:22):
lot of information about thesenumber stations. But why do ham
radio operators listen to numberstations? Well, one, there's a
technique that ham radiooperators like to practice and
it's called de effing ordirection finding. And so these
numbers stations, they broadcaston a really regular interval.
(05:47):
And so ham radio enthusiast,they enjoy trying to figure out
where these number stations are.
Now I have to mention the numberstations are down in the H F
band or the high frequency band.
And basically, the highfrequency band is below 30
megahertz. So 30 megahertz andbelow. That's the H F band. And
(06:10):
this is the same band whereshortwave radio libs and
shortwave radio broadcasts havebeen going on for quite some
time, we have ones like theVoice of America, we have BBC
that broadcast and was shortwaveradio broadcast, they tend to
(06:30):
stay down in the lowerfrequencies because they can
have a single transmitter in onecountry and then transmit around
the world. So you'll see that inthis space, there's a lot of
religious broadcasts that go onthere, because it's basically a
real effective way to transmityour message around the world.
(06:54):
Well, in the case of numberstations, what they tried to do
these number stations are oneway voice channels. And it is
speculated that they're used tocommunicate with spies and to
give direction to them. Andwe're going to hear about a
couple of cases where numberstations came into play. But
(07:16):
down in that HF band, where itcan skip so the radiofrequency
skips, and from there, itbounces off the ionosphere, it
comes down to the earth, it goesup to the ionosphere and it
makes a skip around the world.
(07:36):
Now skip is a lot easier. Andthe lower bands, the higher
bands tend to be frequencybands, and the signal kind of
follows the contour of theearth. Those are called Ground
waves. And with HF not only doyou have ground waves, but you
also have sky waves. And reallyall frequencies have sky waves
(07:59):
and ground waves, they're justmore apparent in the lower
frequencies. Now before wecontinue on explaining number
stations and all about them,let's take a listen to a number
station. This is one of the mostfamous number stations.
(08:23):
97975375977Now that number station you just
(08:48):
heard was called link charpoacher. And there's a bunch of
different names for numberstations because no spy agency
or government has really evertaken claim to run in these
number stations. And so hobbyistand enthusiast they give them
names like that one wasLancashire poacher, which was an
English of folk song. Nowthere's other ones on there that
(09:13):
are called the Mad violinist andYosemite Sam. So a lot of times
the way they get their name isfrom the preamble because number
stations all contain thispreamble. And from there, though
it's kind of like I feel likeit's telling everybody okay, get
your pieces of paper ready andpencils and Decoder Rings.
(09:35):
Because what's coming next is astring of numbers or words. Now,
the string of number and wordsor words. That's called a one
time pad. Now one time pad isold technology, but it's very
secure and it uses randomnumbers or one words. And when
(09:59):
they generate the numbers andwords, then there's also a key.
And when they put this alltogether, someone can broadcast
this message out in the open,and then the spy or whomever
listens to this. And then fromthere, they can open up their
(10:20):
one time pad book and see whatthe instructions are. Now,
there's a lot of ways that theydo this. So when the spy goes
into the foreign country, heknows that he needs to listen in
on this particular radiofrequency at this particular
time, and then listening for thepreamble. And then they can
(10:42):
start writing down the string ofwords. But the pad or the book
needs to be secure, because ifsomeone was to have that book,
then they could listen in on theradio, and then see what the
instruction is. So these bookshave been written on various
(11:04):
things that could either beconcealed or destroyed. One such
book was written on rice paper,and so when the spy would go to
that page and decode, then theycan eat the spy paper, the rice
paper, I mean, I guess it is spypaper, because it's meant to be
(11:24):
eaten. But what was funny was isthat I was reading an article or
book or somewhere years ago, andthey said that they actually had
a problem with the ink while therice paper was able to be
digested so they you know, sensewas destroyed the ink was given
some of the people upsetstomach. So I thought that that
was kind of interesting. Now,not all of its written down on
(11:48):
rice, paper and gum, but somehave been used with microdot
technology. Now, microdottechnology is pretty neat. And
it's a way to shrink the lettersand numbers and words and books
down into something very, verysmall. So if you all remember,
(12:08):
probably in the 70s 80s, maybethe mid 90s, they had
microfiche, which you could godown to the clerk of court and
you want to look up some publicrecords, they would hand you a
piece of micro fish, and youwould put it on the machine and
slide it around. Andessentially, it was a light that
shined through the film, and itwould blow it up to like the
(12:32):
size of paper, a lot of oldnewspapers use micro fish, think
of micro fish, but on steroids,meaning super, super, super
tiny, small. That is whatmicrodot technology is now they
had to figure out how the spycould keep this book on them and
how they could very easily getrid of it if say they were to
(12:53):
get caught. Now, the other thingthat makes number stations very,
very effective is that itdoesn't require advanced
technology to listen to anddecode. Let's say we were to go
to a foreign country. And we'regoing to come in with our laptop
computers and all this fancyelectronic equipment that may
(13:17):
raise somebody's eyebrows likeHey, who's this person bringing
in, you know, laptops and maybesome kind of encryption
technology? Well, with thenumber station, you can just
tune it in on a shortwave radio.
And you don't even have to carrythe shortwave radio with you.
(13:37):
You can buy shortwave radiosprobably in most countries, and
no one would think any of itbecause it's just a radio and
especially in some of thedeveloping countries, third
world countries, they still useshortwave radio a lot. So let's
listen to the link sharp poacherone more time.
(14:07):
77171715So the links are poacher, like
I've mentioned before, is one ofthe most famous number stations.
(14:29):
Now it started operating out ofthe 60s. And when it first came
on the air no one knew where itwas from other than they would
tune in to this radio station orvarious radio stations and they
would hear this, this crazything these tune and then with
the string of information afterit, but it was later found that
(14:52):
it was operated out of thecountry of Cyprus. Cyprus is a
small island nation. And itspreamble, as we mentioned before
is the English folk song calledthe link Shire poacher, amateur
radio operators were able todirection find this and got in
(15:12):
pretty close and from what theyfigured out that it was actually
being operated from the RoyalAir Force Base in Cyprus. So as
I mentioned before, Intelagencies and governments have
never openly really admittedthat they have number of
stations. And it's only beenspeculation of what they've been
(15:33):
used for. But however, if youhave something cryptic like
this, that's being broadcastfrom a government facility,
namely an Air Force Station,then chances are probably it's
related to the government. Nowlinks are poacher, whenever it
started transmitting ittransmitted for a long, long
(15:54):
time. It's last transmission wasactually in 2008. So you can see
that this was started probablyduring the Cold War, and maybe
to communicate with spies. Andthen after 2008, it just boof
went offline.
Now the US and Britishintelligence, they've been long
(16:19):
speculated through a numberstations. However, there are
plenty of number stations thatare being broadcasted every day.
And one in particular, that'skind of close to my home, is
Cuban number stations. So notjust Americans and British and
(16:39):
American allies. But there'snumber stations that are thought
to be Latino of nature, Korean,Chinese, Japanese, almost every
Romania, so almost every countryseems to have had their hand and
number stations at some point intime. But the Cuban number
stations or the voice de lachica and a teach shown was two
(17:05):
different number stations. Andwe know that a 10 shown was used
to transmit coded messages toCuban spies inside the United
States. And for us here inFlorida, we always keep our ear
tuned to our neighbors to thesouth. They're only about 90
miles off the coast of Florida.
And so anything having to dowith Cuba usually makes local
(17:30):
news. And this actually madenational news. And there was
evidence in the case againstfive Cuban spies that was
presented that shows that theywere receiving instructions via
the number station. Now how dowe know this? Well, the Cuban
intelligence agency, they kindof made a mistake. Remember how
(17:55):
I talked about how important itis to keep this pad secure and
this book secure? Well, theydidn't write their pad on a
stick of gum, or rice paper, oreven a micro DOD, they actually
had a computer program that thespies would run, and they would
(18:16):
type the message into thecomputer program. And it would
use that to decrypt theinformation. And in the case of
spy craft, that is a big no, no.
Usually, the more high tech yougo, the better chance of your
(18:37):
communications method beingintercepted and broken. And I
don't want to go into all ofcoding theory and cryptography.
But the main reason why is isthat it's very hard for
computers to generate thingsthat are truly random. And
moreover, just like withpictures that are posted online,
(19:01):
even there could be hundreds ofcopies. And no one knows whether
there's one copy or 100 copies.
And so really, when you'redealing with things that are
this sensitive, you need to makesure that you keep it old school
and have exactly the amount ofcopies that are required for the
communication. So Cubanintelligence you made a mistake
(19:24):
on this one. And what happened?
Well, the FBI had these Cubansin their crosshairs. And they
were able to break into anapartment of one of the Cubans,
and they were able to copy thecodebook and pad off. And they
(19:46):
did this in 1995. And then in1998 is when all of this broke.
So for three years, the FBIcould just tune into the same
frequency and they could tolisten in on the coded message,
they would type it into thestolen computer files that they
(20:08):
got, and boom, it would decryptit. Now, that's the Cubans,
we've talked about sendingnumbers into the US. And we've
talked about the British fromCyprus, send in numbers around
the world, but give it up toyour good old amateur radio
operators here. And they'vetraced number stations right
(20:31):
here in the US. And of course,the FCC, Federal Communications
Commission and the FBI and CIA,NSA, no one's gonna admit to who
runs these these number stationsor even what they're used for.
Like I said, there's tons ofspeculation around this. And one
of the ones is this YosemiteSam, he, you know, he starts off
(20:55):
with his preamble and the voiceof Yosemite Sam, and that is,
you know, an Americancowboy type for my overseas
listeners, you know, so it'skind of, you know, they
speculate that it's the USgovernment running this
Yosemite, Sam, but it could befalse operations as well, you
know, I mean, if you want todisguise who's running
(21:17):
something, then maybe put it ina language that is native to
that country. So anyways,Yosemite Sam, and with his
preamble, it is kind of funny,you can go out on YouTube and
just type in number station,Yosemite, Sam, and you can hear
what he talks about. But back tothe D F and or direction
(21:38):
finding, they've actually foundwhere there's a station, here in
Florida, that was down at WestPalm Beach airport. Now, what's
interesting about that is thatWest Palm Beach airport, is a
public airport. But it's not aNaval Station, or it's not a
military installation. And soamateur radio operators have
(22:00):
tracked a number station thatthey believe was that the West
Palm Beach airport. Now, they'vealso tracked down number
stations in the past that werebroadcasting out of homestead
Air Force Base. So these arejust a few examples of these
number stations. Like I said, noone has ever come forward and
said that this is what they'reused for. But we do have the
(22:24):
evidence from the Cuban fivethat were prosecuted of which we
listened in on Cuban numberstations and decrypted them
because of the stolen pad thatthey got. So we know what's
being used for spies. But otherspeculation is is that these are
used for military command andcontrol these frequencies. And
(22:47):
that maybe in an apocalypticevent, that they could use these
radio frequencies to communicatewith key staff. And so these
number stations are justtransmitting gibberish, just to
keep that frequency occupied, sonobody else will use it. So
that's one theory. There'sanother number station. And I
(23:11):
guess it still is a numberstation, kind of, but it's
called the buzzer. And thebuzzard is just what it sounds
like. Just like its nickname.
Its preamble is a buzzing set.
Now that's been traced toMoscow. And it's speculation
that maybe the buzzer is somesort of deadman switch that
(23:33):
would launch nucular attack inthe event that there is a
nuclear exchange and the commandand control of Russia is wiped
out. But like I said, we don'tknow. However, what we do know
is that these HF bands are veryefficient at transmitting both
(23:53):
voice and digital communicationsaround the world. And this is no
more evident than with the wargoing on between Russia and the
Ukraine. And you can go out toYouTube and various other sites
and type in Russian h fcommunication. And you can hear
(24:15):
him on there using HF radio tocall in airstrikes. You can hear
them arguing on HF radio, andyou can tell that they're not or
they don't seem to beprofessional radio operators
because you'll hear him cussingin Russian now I'm don't know
(24:36):
Russian, but the way I knowtheir customer in Russian and
what they're saying in Russianis because it's being translated
inside the videos and so that'show I know that they're not
professional because everybodyknows you don't cuss on radio
and usually on radio speciallywith military and we see this a
(24:57):
lot of times with the spaceshuttle whenever it when go up,
and also to the SpaceX, that onthe radio people are very crisp,
they, you know, they have thatradio talk. It's very
militaristic. And in thesevideos where the Russians are
using the HF bands, you can hearhim cussin, and then hollering
(25:18):
and screaming, just, it's justnot professional at all. Well,
we're coming up on the bottom ofthe half hour. And I would like
to thank everybody that hasstayed tuned in to the show
here. And this has been reallyneat to talk about number
stations, and even more to, youknow, do a little research here
(25:40):
before the show. And it's kindof cool that something that's
this old is still unbreakabletechnology. Now my new the book
would have to be stolen. But youknow, there's tons of stuff that
we see in the news all the timewhere this encryption was
broken, and that encryption wasbroken. But on these one time
pads, because there's only onekey that unlocks it, that this
(26:04):
just the most perfect encryptionand it requires nothing
electronic, or anything. So,this has been your field
commander Bob, and I've enjoyedtaking you across the highways
and byways of this podcast as itrelates to technology and
government. And we just reallylike to thank everybody who
(26:27):
tuned in. Also, please send yourcomments, questions concerns, to
Globalbob show@gmail.com. Or youcan reach me out on Twitter or
the Globalbob show Facebookpage. And until then, I hope
everybody gets out there DecoderRings and listens in on
(26:48):
shortwave radio and find somenumber stations. Until next
time,
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