Xref: utzoo rec.ham-radio:8656 sci.electronics:5155 sci.crypt:1602
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!portal!atari!mn
From: mn@atari.UUCP (Mike Nowicki)
Newsgroups: rec.ham-radio,sci.electronics,sci.crypt
Subject: Re: Short Wave Numbers "Racket"
Message-ID: <1349@atari.UUCP>
Date: 13 Feb 89 17:27:24 GMT
References: <439@brambo.UUCP>
Reply-To: mn@atari.UUCP (Mike Nowicki)
Organization: Atari Corp., Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 33


   These 'numbers' stations, mostly in Spanish are rumored to be signals sent
to spies in foreign countries. Some of their signals have been traced to the
east coast of N. America and some to Cuba or thereabouts. General opinion is
that they are CIA or NSA operated but no one who really knows is talking!
  Others like the N. Korean on 8.030 Mgz or the Russian numbers station on
7.422 are also believed to be operated by some government for communications
with operatives or to make the target country think they are!

  Anyone with a broad band ham tranceiver could modify it and send out
similar transmissions. The FCC knows about these spy stations and if you call
to complain about them stepping on your QSO in the ham bands they will come
back and tell you it was an international SW broadcaster tuning up or some
sort of bullshit.

  These stations have been operating for many years, some of them hourly for
over 5 years. I did a computer analysis of 3 of these types of stations and
found that strings of 3 or 4 letter or number pop up quite often and might
signify use of a lookup pad code where for example, "1AC" can be looked up
in your handy dandy copy of Popular Spy Code monthly, and find out it means
"get photo of". These codes are impossible to decode because of the one to
one relationship of strings to phrases.

  Pop Communiations has articles on these number stations almost monthly.

                    73!

                 Michael Nowicki
                 Atari Corp.



Views are my own, who cares anyway?