[HN Gopher] A ghostly radio station that no one claims to run (2...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       A ghostly radio station that no one claims to run (2020)
        
       Author : throwup238
       Score  : 191 points
       Date   : 2024-01-24 19:15 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
        
       | Scoundreller wrote:
       | (2020)
        
       | rkagerer wrote:
       | Better take some recordings to play back in case the "Dead Hand"
       | theory is correct.
       | 
       | Could be a movie idea for a post-apocalyptic world where one
       | crazy old nerd living in a trailer has been holding off
       | annihilation and looks for someone to pass the torch to before he
       | dies (reminiscent of Deccan Ribobe in Pratchett's Moving
       | Pictures).
        
         | dtx1 wrote:
         | Interesting thought. That would be a very good Argument against
         | the dead Hand. I wonder why its not beging jammed also
        
           | aidenscott2016 wrote:
           | The buzzer and its colleagues are being actively jammed as we
           | speak
           | 
           | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z3fgJCJ_daE
        
           | fifilura wrote:
           | They are also transmitting codewords one or twice per week. A
           | trivial part of the dead hand protocol would be to verify
           | that the codewords progress according to schedule or the
           | determined order.
        
             | rkagerer wrote:
             | Yeah, akin to one-time pad encryption.
        
         | ethbr1 wrote:
         | > _one crazy old nerd living in a trailer has been holding off
         | annihilation and looks for someone to pass the torch to before
         | he dies_
         | 
         |  _LOST_?
        
           | RadiozRadioz wrote:
           | Aye, brother
        
         | jdietrich wrote:
         | The dead hand theory is almost certainly incorrect, because the
         | transmission is fairly unreliable and regularly experiences
         | technical faults or goes off the air entirely.
        
           | collegeburner wrote:
           | time delay. would have been silly to build a system that
           | triggers instantly, seeing as a geomagnetic storm or whatever
           | would initiate nuclear annihilation
        
             | liamwire wrote:
             | Sure, but how do you balance the time between that needed
             | for recovery from a Carington-level event, and leaving it
             | too long such that the adversary has taken out your silos
             | and subs?
        
               | yard2010 wrote:
               | I would speculate it's not a one part scheme. First, a
               | network of international spies would surface, then they
               | could do whatever, even use the enemy nuclear weapons
               | against them
        
               | rytis wrote:
               | > The Carrington Event was the most intense geomagnetic
               | storm in recorded history, peaking from 1 to 2 September
               | 1859 during solar cycle 10. It created strong auroral
               | displays that were reported globally and caused sparking
               | and even fires in multiple telegraph stations.
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event
        
               | pi-e-sigma wrote:
               | The whole point of having subs is that they are meant to
               | be stealthy and survive the initial strike. If you took
               | them out it's game over and the dead hand system is
               | useless.
        
               | collegeburner wrote:
               | the soviets had and the russians have survivable second-
               | strike capability
        
           | closeparen wrote:
           | You'd hope there would be multiple transmitters that have to
           | go dark (and confirmation from multiple receivers that
           | they've in fact done so).
        
         | hackernewds wrote:
         | isn't that just the plot of Pirate Radio
        
       | BobbyTables2 wrote:
       | Could this be for time synchronization?
       | 
       | Cheap alarm clocks just use the AC power as a known good
       | oscillator.
       | 
       | What if the Buzzer were simply a wireless version of this?
       | (Instead of exotic atomic clocks or OXCOs)
       | 
       | I'm not saying this is technically a really good idea, but as a
       | cheap, fairly low-tech solution -- why not ?
        
         | winrid wrote:
         | It's a neat idea but it's most likely just a marker so nobody
         | else uses the frequency.
        
         | crote wrote:
         | Russia has half a dozen WWVB-like shortwave radio time signals
         | which would be far more suitable for that purpose.
        
         | callalex wrote:
         | There are already vastly better, available worldwide time sync
         | radio signals that are fit for this purpose.
        
         | eimrine wrote:
         | The frequency is similar to those which are typically being
         | used for that kind of task (Germany has shut down one of the
         | biggest time sync radio station recently).
         | 
         | For me it seems like a test for a wave pass, I mean if you want
         | to send a message to some submarine via radio wave but have
         | some hesitation whether the message reach the receiver, no
         | callbacks are allowed for obvious reasons.
        
       | kazinator wrote:
       | > _It is thought to be the headquarters of a radio station,
       | "MDZhB", that no-one has ever claimed to run. Twenty-four hours a
       | day, seven days a week, for the last three-and-a-half decades,
       | it's been broadcasting a dull, monotonous tone._
       | 
       | That takes wattage. Someone pays the electricity bill. Follow the
       | money and you have the operator.
        
         | mattlondon wrote:
         | Follow the money in Russia? Good luck with that - it is
         | notoriously corrupt.
        
         | ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
         | This is the military. There is no bill.
        
           | kvakvs wrote:
           | There is a bill, it is paid, too. Russians leave a LOT of
           | papertrail on all their operations, including military and
           | secret service, you just can't always see (aren't allowed to
           | see) the papers.
        
           | kazinator wrote:
           | So you've solved it.
        
       | winrid wrote:
       | I love the comment on the video pointing out that the sound
       | started as a beep and has gotten drawn out over the years.
       | 
       | Some old machinery in a closet somewhere slowly failing. Wonder
       | if it's some worn out capacitors in the noise generator or an old
       | tape reel (latter doesn't seem reliable enough IMO).
        
       | JohnMakin wrote:
       | I must cry foul on the "dead man switch" theory (dead hand). I
       | think maybe in 2020 pre-ukraine war it would have been plausible
       | to imagine the russian military could maintain such an elaborate
       | system out of the ashes of a crumbling soviet era, but it seems
       | like their nuclear infra is likely crumbling if their main
       | military force in ukraine is any indication.
       | 
       | Given the fact as well this signal routinely goes offline, seems
       | very debunkable.
        
       | ndiddy wrote:
       | The article is being a bit overly mysterious. The radio station
       | exists as part of a Russian military communication network.
       | Here's a website that documents the communication format and logs
       | messages: https://priyom.org/military-stations/russia
        
         | mdhb wrote:
         | They aren't in anyway exclusively Russian for the record but
         | the Russians might be one of the last to still be using them in
         | practice though.
         | 
         | Not because it doesn't work but because it requires the end
         | user to have access to specialist equipment which is quite
         | unusual and hard to explain away and there are other ways to do
         | the same thing that don't have the same limitations.
         | 
         | But just to be clear for anyone not familiar with this, what
         | you're hearing is the a message that was encoded using a one
         | time pad and the reason it's delivered in this quirky format is
         | that it has certain properties that are ideal for clandestine
         | work in dangerous areas where you need to pass a message over
         | an open channel but you need to make sure that if anyone
         | intercepts the message there is no information in there that
         | will give any clues to the contents of the message or the
         | intended recipient (I.e this second property is why encrypted
         | email for example isn't a suitable replacement).
         | 
         | Beyond that there isn't really anything that special about it.
         | They are the two properties it provides and that's the message
         | it's delivering.
         | 
         | By way of a final example another famous one might be taking an
         | ad in the classifieds section of a newspaper back in the day.
         | 
         | The end user knows where to look and what message they are
         | looking for but nobody beyond the sender and the recipient know
         | that the ad is even a message with another meaning to begin
         | with, unlike the numbers station example however, that wouldn't
         | be appropriate for sending key material or an OTP encoded
         | message (it needs to be random data) or anything beyond a very
         | simple and low bandwidth message (I.e the operation is ready to
         | start).
        
           | metaxy2 wrote:
           | It really highlights the amazing security level of one time
           | pads, that they can be comfortably doing secret announcements
           | on a public radio channel with provably perfect security.
           | (Assuming an adequate PRNG--for such small messages they
           | could easily be using a hardware PRNG; I wonder.) Only issue
           | is that you have to have all of your recipients keep track
           | (and not leak) a pad that is at least as long as the data you
           | intend to send.
        
             | mdhb wrote:
             | Some other properties one time pads that might be less well
             | known but are obvious when you think about them in the
             | context of their use case.
             | 
             | They are very cumbersome to use in real life, encrypting
             | and decrypting is done by hand, it's error prone as a
             | result and very slow. Nobody likes using them at all.
             | 
             | The part you mentioned about the keeping track of and not
             | leaking it also isn't really an issue so much in reality.
             | 
             | What you hear on the radio isn't actually that sensitive on
             | its own hence why it's happily sent in the clear without
             | the key material to decipher it.
             | 
             | The pads themselves are however highly guarded secrets,
             | usually passed along via a dead drop, only ever exposed to
             | the minimum of people and designed to be very easy to
             | destroy quickly and are a bit flimsy as a result.
             | 
             | But destroying the pad is a part of the whole "how to
             | receive a message securely" process that they go through so
             | it never exists to be used as evidence beyond the time that
             | it's actually useful.
             | 
             | Also the people handling them are highly trained and
             | trusted individuals who are extremely motivated to be very
             | sensible while working with them as the entire reason you
             | would use a method like this in particular is usually
             | because you will be tortured and shot if discovered.
             | 
             | This is ironically also why it doesn't make sense usually
             | for that person to have access to and know how to use a
             | shortwave radio. If you get caught with that equipment your
             | fate might be the same either way.
             | 
             | Some fun trivia: the British as far back as the 50s I
             | believe did have some success where they had developed a
             | system that allowed them to essentially use direction
             | finding techniques but for radios that were tuned to a
             | specific frequency even if they weren't transmitting. It
             | was known as Operation Rafter and is on Wikipedia.
             | 
             | One more example I'll throw out there if you want to read a
             | cool story is an account of how the ANC (the political
             | group associated with Nelson Mandela) developed their own
             | covert communications system with a lot of similar
             | properties when they were trying to overthrow the apartheid
             | government in South Africa during the 80s and 90s.
             | 
             | It's a great read https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.p
             | hp/site/q/03lv03445...
        
               | ezconnect wrote:
               | I think the British also invented a way to discover non
               | paying public TV broadcast receiver driving around in van
               | with the equipment.
        
               | actionfromafar wrote:
               | Maybe THAT is the reason why there is so much hush-hush
               | about the detector vans?!
               | 
               | If they used a technique which essentially was considered
               | military secret not too long ago. (Compared to the time
               | when the vans started to appear.)
        
               | mike_hearn wrote:
               | Supposedly the detector vans were a myth. A few appear to
               | have been built, but they were essentially useless after
               | 1950 as the interference from car ignitions started to
               | become more of an issue. But the public didn't know that
               | and the idea of it worked wonders for compliance. The BBC
               | ran campaigns that implied huge fleets of them, but maybe
               | there were only a few in reality.
               | 
               | At some point the BBC were forced under FOIA to admit
               | they'd never prosecuted anyone using evidence from
               | detector vans.
        
               | MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
               | > The pads themselves are however highly guarded secrets,
               | usually passed along via a dead drop, only ever exposed
               | to the minimum of people and designed to be very easy to
               | destroy quickly and are a bit flimsy as a result.
               | 
               | One other note here is that OTPs don't have to be
               | distributed in this manner. An OTP can use something
               | already distributed and readily available to end users,
               | such as a Gideon Bible or something (making sure to get
               | the right edition, printing, etc) that everyone in a
               | hotel room has access to. The key is having access to
               | something, making sure it's long enough for the series of
               | messages to be encoded/decoded, and that no one else
               | knows what it is.
        
               | mdhb wrote:
               | I'm not actually a crypto guy and I know of stories where
               | people have done this in serious environments (check the
               | link I posted above for an example) but my understanding
               | is that non random letter distributions like you will
               | find in a book for example will potentially change the
               | level of security you can expect from a OTP substantially
               | against a sophisticated enemy and as a result the
               | randomness is actually very important regardless of key
               | length.
               | 
               | I might be wrong, it's not my area of expertise.
        
               | MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
               | Oh yes, very true. An OTP must have particular properties
               | that words in a book don't have to be provably secure.
               | However, common materials that the communicators have
               | access to without specific distribution can be useful for
               | OTPs in their own way (though not provably secure).
               | 
               | Good clarification.
        
               | less_less wrote:
               | > An OTP must have particular properties that words in a
               | book don't have to be provably secure. However, common
               | materials that the communicators have access to without
               | specific distribution can be useful for OTPs in their own
               | way (though not provably secure).
               | 
               | Using a passage from a book directly as an OTP is not
               | secure at all. It's similar to the result of reusing an
               | OTP: it gives an attacker two messages in (e.g.) English
               | whose sum (using a book as an OTP) or difference (reused
               | OTP) is known. Since the entropy of English is around a
               | bit per character (more or less), and the deltas reveal
               | almost lg(26) ~ 4.7 bits per character, knowing the sum
               | or difference can determine most of the contents of the
               | message in either case.
               | 
               | Reading every n'th letter in the book is probably
               | marginally harder to break, but I still wouldn't rely on
               | it for anything serious.
        
               | uclibc wrote:
               | Instead of using every n'th letter, how about using a
               | pseudo random number sequence generated by a simple math
               | equation, like the one posted here a few days ago[1], and
               | add that to every letter. With that the data should be
               | shuffled basically beyond recognition though the effort
               | needed to decode has increased even more.
               | 
               | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39091867
        
               | Izkata wrote:
               | The way I've seen it used in TV shows, there'd be a
               | number somewhere (embedded, or day of month the message
               | was sent, etc) that indicates what page of the book to
               | use.
        
               | rtkwe wrote:
               | What you're describing is a book cypher and is a separate
               | thing from an One Time Pad. They can be fairly secure but
               | they're not inherently as secure as one time pads.
        
               | rawling wrote:
               | > They are very cumbersome to use in real life,
               | encrypting and decrypting is done by hand, it's error
               | prone as a result and very slow. Nobody likes using them
               | at all.
               | 
               | There's no need for that to be true.
        
               | mdhb wrote:
               | Don't worry, it largely hasn't been for a very long time.
        
           | zeristor wrote:
           | I guess posting a specific message on Twitter does similar to
           | a classified ad.
        
             | marginalia_nu wrote:
             | Twitter has the undesirable property that it's possible to
             | find who is looking at a particular tweet (or user), unlike
             | broadcast mediums such as radio or magazine classifieds,
             | which present a much larger haystack.
        
             | mdhb wrote:
             | A lot of botnets work this way where they will use
             | something like Twitter or Reddit as a command and control
             | channel but not a thing you would want to rely on if being
             | identified might mean your life.
        
               | dabber wrote:
               | > A lot of botnets work this way where they will use
               | something like Twitter or Reddit as a command and control
               | channel but not a thing you would want to rely on if
               | being identified might mean your life.
               | 
               | For example, comments on Britney Spears' Instagram page:
               | https://arstechnica.com/information-
               | technology/2017/06/russi...
        
           | saati wrote:
           | A shortwave radio or an sdr dongle isn't that unusual to
           | have.
        
             | mdhb wrote:
             | It absolutely is if it doesn't fit with the rest of your
             | pattern of life.
             | 
             | I think you need to understand the context here. This isn't
             | a scenario where a friend casually asks you what's with the
             | radio.
             | 
             | This is where you are most likely going to have to have
             | have a damn compelling reason why you have this while
             | taking a beating from a team of very motivated counter
             | intelligence professionals and your story needs to stand up
             | to a huge amount of very detailed scrutiny under some
             | pretty shitty circumstances.
             | 
             | Usually by the time they know you have the radio depending
             | on where you are you probably aren't going home at that
             | point.
             | 
             | There's a famous case of this called the TRIGON case when
             | the US were doing this in the Cold War to communicate with
             | a guy in the Soviet ministry of foreign affairs. There was
             | no talking your way out of it once they knew the radio
             | existed.
             | 
             | There's some interesting interviews with the CIA officers
             | who were running him in Moscow at the time where they go
             | into a lot of the details. Marti Peterson is the name of
             | the person you should go looking for if you want to know
             | more.
        
           | ughitsaaron wrote:
           | Is this also the function of numbers stations?
           | 
           | - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station
        
             | mdhb wrote:
             | I think we are talking about the same thing here.
        
               | ughitsaaron wrote:
               | My bad. The description early in the linked article
               | didn't sound familiar but reading a bit further they even
               | use that term exactly.
        
           | ndiddy wrote:
           | Like I said, this communications network is for military use,
           | not clandestine use. There's no defined transmission schedule
           | and the radio signals aren't transmitted at a high enough
           | power for good signal strength outside Russia.
        
           | michaelcampbell wrote:
           | This stuff fascinates me for some reason. I remember in high
           | school a story I read about a telegraph operator that sent a
           | message to someone from a local (who, according to the story
           | was believed to be a spy) during WWII; something along the
           | lines "FATHER IS DEAD." Later that day a reply came back, "IS
           | FATHER DEAD OR DECEASED."
           | 
           | That really amped up the fascination gene in me =D
        
         | teknopaul wrote:
         | Another way to describe this is "lame click bait journalism" by
         | a once great (if biased) news outlet.
         | 
         | Crying shame that post-truth is the norm for major news
         | outlets. UK is becoming the US.
        
           | Xiol32 wrote:
           | Which way is it biased?
        
             | dabber wrote:
             | It depends who you ask: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criti
             | cism_of_the_BBC#Allegatio...
        
             | someotherperson wrote:
             | During the early stages of the Syrian civil war, when there
             | was significant pressure being put on the Western world to
             | directly intervene with boots on the ground, the BBC
             | fabricated a documentary about a napalm attack on a school.
             | This documentary was called "Saving Syria's Children."
             | 
             | This featured doctors (and medical staff) being directly
             | linked to Syrian opposition groups[1] (with their voices
             | being dubbed[2], originals still on BBC), actors
             | unintentionally exposing themselves[3], Syrian opposition
             | fighters claiming the attack never took place[4] and when
             | all of this was reported to the BBC they decided to simply
             | memory hole the event and take down the documentary from
             | YouTube, as well as some effort in taking down YouTube
             | videos uploaded by others that feature some of the content.
             | 
             | It's worth comparing the footage from the documentary to a
             | historical napalm victim footage[5] from Egypt which shows
             | the severity of napalm attacks in comparison to what we see
             | in the documentary.
             | 
             | I'm not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch of the
             | imagination, and I'm far from being supportive of the
             | Syrian government or unaware of their shocking actions
             | during the conflict, but this entire production was a
             | theatrical construction by the BBC.
             | 
             | [0] https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/
             | 
             | [1]
             | https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/#Rola
             | 
             | [2] https://youtu.be/puaOvmiyunM?t=39
             | 
             | [3] https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/#
             | Dutch
             | 
             | [4] https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/#
             | comma...
             | 
             | [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS4srZ_iWzM
        
           | elzbardico wrote:
           | What did you expect from an article series named "lockdown
           | longreads"?
        
         | joshspankit wrote:
         | I kind of figured when I read the title. Triangulating a radio
         | source works well and is very easy to do. The story of any
         | "mystery" really needs to be built up.
        
       | pram wrote:
       | This isn't a great article. The Russian military unambiguously
       | operates this, and there are pictures of the instructions on what
       | frequency to use to listen to messages on it:
       | 
       | https://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-O5t8V39LpJRaSz5h-gt5rZA-t500x...
        
       | kvakvs wrote:
       | The Russian wikipedia article sheds a lot light on why this
       | exists. With it operated and maintained by the army, and the
       | majority of messages transmitted in the working hours, this is to
       | verify through the logs of receiving radio operators, that the
       | random message been correctly heard, received and logged. Which
       | means the operator was ready at any given time and fully
       | awake/operational, to hear other real important transmissions.
        
       | pkphilip wrote:
       | Could it be hiding data in the noise?
        
         | rightbyte wrote:
         | That is not falsifiable unless you got the key, right?
        
       | happosai wrote:
       | This is busywork. Countries that value efficiency shut down
       | similar operations decades ago. Oil rich country pouring money to
       | military doesn't ask "is this still useful", and the people
       | working on it have no motivation explain their superiors that
       | their own job is useless. Either you end up without job or you
       | are reassigned to attack some village in Ukraine...
        
         | bratwurst3000 wrote:
         | I have many Russian friends and they told me similar things.
         | This seems to be a good explanation.
        
         | tivert wrote:
         | > This is busywork. Countries that value efficiency shut down
         | similar operations decades ago.
         | 
         | IMHO, those countries are stupid. IIRC, the CIA "valued
         | efficiency" and switched to internet based communications,
         | which are so easy to monitor that most of their agents in China
         | and Iran got killed/captured.
         | 
         | Radio has the unique benefit that it's pretty much impossible
         | to monitor reception.
        
           | mdhb wrote:
           | I'd love to one day read the full story on how that one went
           | so sideways.
           | 
           | There's an outline of it here worth checking out
           | https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia-
           | communicati...
           | 
           | As best as I can tell they had people designing their
           | tradecraft who really did not properly understand how the
           | internet works not because they are incompetent but because
           | the agency mentality is so heavily focused on
           | compartmentalisation (which is ironic because a lack of
           | compartmentalisation across systems is what ultimately
           | screwed them here) that it was considered to be good enough
           | by people who weren't in a position to make that call and
           | bringing in further experts to validate it violated the "need
           | to know" aspect.
           | 
           | I think that was a huge wake up call for those folks, when
           | things go that badly they will end up rebuilding a lot of the
           | people process and technology from the ground up.
           | 
           | But for what it's worth some of the websites in question are
           | still available on archive.org if I recall correctly.
           | 
           | But I don't agree with the conclusion that the answer is use
           | radio instead. I think a lot of things have changed in that
           | world in the past 10-20 years and lots of things that were
           | previously considered "best practice" suddenly became
           | unambiguous signals that you were up to something that
           | warrants a closer look.
           | 
           | For example: biometrics mostly killed the idea of operating
           | undercover means traveling on a passport issued in a fake
           | name. There's a LOT of these changes but that's an easy one
           | that everyone intuitively understands.
        
         | bell-cot wrote:
         | > This is busywork.
         | 
         | No, this is national-security-grade redundancy. Via a system
         | which has extremely few ways to fail, and those are all well-
         | understood.
         | 
         | Countries that value efficiency probably migrated their
         | operations to Office 365... _OOPS!_
        
       | jraph wrote:
       | It's about "the Buzzer".
       | 
       | I remember being a bit fascinated by this when I first heard of
       | it a few years ago.
        
       | emayljames wrote:
       | I wonder if 2 way satellite comms is just as effective as this
       | old technique. The satellite sends mircowaves over a large area
       | so isn't giving a location away. Tracking would be extremely
       | hard.
        
         | Scoundreller wrote:
         | Difficult to transport, high power usage and requires a
         | specific view of the sky. SW radios can be acquired easily most
         | anywhere. It's just your vintage set that's usually tuned to
         | the local music station.
        
           | op00to wrote:
           | The reason satellites aren't used is their location is known,
           | and because of this they are easily jammed or listened to.
           | I'm not sure that the reasons you gave are really valid,
           | especially for reception.
           | 
           | > Difficult to transport
           | 
           | I transmit to low earth satellites each weekend using a hand
           | held radio that fits in a jeans pocket.
           | 
           | > high power usage
           | 
           | I use about 5w.
           | 
           | > radios can be acquired easily most anywhere
           | 
           | You can easily buy a radio that can do this for $20 on
           | Amazon.
           | 
           | I don't need a specific view of the sky on passes where the
           | satellite is high enough in the sky, which happens one or two
           | times a day.
        
         | jdietrich wrote:
         | Satphones are illegal or heavily restricted in a lot of the
         | places where spies might want to operate.
         | 
         | https://www.outfittersatellite.com/Countries-with-Satellite-...
        
       | yakshaving_jgt wrote:
       | > "There's absolutely no information in the signal," says David
       | Stupples, an expert in signals intelligence from City University,
       | London.
       | 
       | There are occasional voice messages on this frequency, _e.g._ ,
       | 
       | https://soundcloud.com/danix111/uvb-76-2010-11-11-14-00-utc
       | 
       | If you're interested in The Buzzer, it's probably best just to
       | read the Wikipedia article.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76
        
       | cranberryturkey wrote:
       | i remember hearing about these on some pbs documentary, they were
       | popular in the 80s during the cold war. I forgot what they were
       | called.
        
         | SomeoneFromCA wrote:
         | number stations
        
           | cranberryturkey wrote:
           | that's right!
        
       | amatecha wrote:
       | Reminds me of US's "HFGCS"[0] which also sends [apparently]
       | OTP's, though from many stations (and on multiple frequencies)
       | simultaneously.
       | 
       | I imagine the continuous "buzzer" sound from the Russian station
       | acts as both a way to keep the frequency in use, but also so that
       | listening stations can determine if they are able to receive the
       | Buzzer station properly. Easier to tune in if you have a constant
       | carrier (or whatever) to look for.
       | 
       | [0] https://priyom.org/military-stations/united-states/hfgcs
        
         | op00to wrote:
         | HFGCS is far more "interesting" to listen to than numbers
         | stations because there's actual traffic. It's also transmitted
         | from multiple locations, so it's much more likely you'll be
         | able to get a signal. Google a WebSDR and get to listening!
        
           | amatecha wrote:
           | oh yeah, I've heard a couple HFGCS transmissions w/my Yaesu
           | FT-857D[0]! It's especially ominous-souding when the sound
           | "echoes" because you're picking up more than one station
           | simultaneously, each at a substantially different distance!
           | 
           | [0] https://matecha.net/posts/yaesu-ft857d-off-grid-portable-
           | kit...
        
       | andyjohnson0 wrote:
       | Check-out The Conet Project [1] for recordings of "numbers
       | stations" made in the 90s. The 4 CD set used to be freely
       | downloadable, but this doesn't seem to be the case anymore -
       | although a quick search indicates that there are full and partial
       | copies available from various sources.
       | 
       | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conet_Project
        
         | XzetaU8 wrote:
         | 5 CD set, the 5th disc was included in the 2013 reissue.
         | 
         | 1-4 CD Set: https://archive.org/details/ird059
         | 
         | 5th CD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S5Xbb9_kVA
        
         | tivert wrote:
         | I thought it would be neat to have a physical copy, but holy
         | crap: they're selling the second-to-last copy the have on hand
         | for $5,000: https://irdial.com/conet.htm.
         | 
         | They should really just reissue the thing, that's ridiculous.
        
       | TacticalCoder wrote:
       | A bit different but not totally unrelated: for _years_ there 's
       | been one in Belgium/Brussels which would play 24/7... Three
       | songs. One of them was Hotel California by The Eagles, another
       | one was a Michael Jackson song and the third one I forgot. They'd
       | loop, all day long, all week long, all year long: three songs and
       | that's it.
       | 
       | I never looked into it but it was weird.
       | 
       | Wife and I both are our cars with one the channel set to that
       | frequency and we'd sometimes listen to that station.
        
         | InCityDreams wrote:
         | The Eagles are a notorious bunch of copyright bastards. Let's
         | see how they deal with nation states...
        
           | Y_Y wrote:
           | It really grinds my gears when people use "nation state" to
           | mean country, but it happens so often I don't usually bother
           | to comment. Belgium is the very opposite of a nation state,
           | and anyone familiar with its history or modern politics can
           | see that.
        
       | sandworm101 wrote:
       | There are all sorts of strange stations like this. I know of one
       | that has been broadcasting "testing 1 2 3 4 5 5 4 3 2 1" for at
       | least five years, but on FM. IMHO whoever is running these is
       | simply dominating a frequency to keep others off, holding the
       | channel for some future or possibly forgotten use.
       | 
       | Recorded here:
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/britishcolumbia/comments/113civn/st...
        
       | Y_Y wrote:
       | I run that radio station.
        
       | more_corn wrote:
       | Why is this hard? Onetime pad encrypted communications from
       | spymasters to spys. Tune in with a radio from anywhere in the
       | world. Hear your keyword and follow the instructions you
       | memorized before leaving home. No equipment to be caught with, no
       | return communication to be intercepted.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-01-27 23:01 UTC)