In some recesses of the radio spectrum, you can listen to strange broadcasts that consist entirely of people reading numbers. For years, people have speculated about the purpose of these unlicensed, unidentified radio stations. The most obvious possibility is espionage. NPR consulted Mark Stout, a spycraft historian, on the subject:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128586766 via reddit | Photo by Flickr user maliciousmonkey used under Creative Commons license
He tells NPR's Guy Raz that the stations are unlicensed, which makes it hard to figure out where they're broadcasting from. And the mystery only deepens: No government has ever officially admitted to using numbers stations. No one's really sure when the stations began broadcasting, though they're most likely a Cold War-era invention.
And, Stout says, no matter how advanced modern computer cryptography is, good old shortwave is often the best option for getting messages to spies in the field.
"Because [a message] can be broadcast over such an enormous area, you can be transmitting to an agent who may be thousands of miles away," he says. And, he adds, computer communications almost always leave traces.
"It's really hard to erase data out of your hard drive or off a memory stick," he says. "But all you need here is a shortwave radio and pencil and paper."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128586766 via reddit | Photo by Flickr user maliciousmonkey used under Creative Commons license
Others are in Cuba and Eastern Europe.
Every now and then a mic is left on and you can hear the chit-chat in the native tongue in the background.
Done to death in Monitoring Times and Pop Communications.
I remember there was a small kerfluffle on the internet just a few months ago when UVB-76 went silent for the first time in many years because of its supposed part in a dead hand system.
The Conet Project is a compelation of quite a number of numbers station recordings. Some odd and easy listening for when you're surfing the web.
Free for listening at archive.org
http://www.archive.org/details/ird059
It's known to be a manual station (basically a microphone held up to whatever the hell makes that terrifying noise) that's constantly manned, so even though they probably have backup generators and everything, if all the operations of the station take place in one area it's possible that there was a catastrophic malfunction or a massive human error. Or maybe the people staffing it hated the sound as much as any normal person would >_>
Sort of a dupe article. I knew I had read this before.
Exactly what I was thinking, lol
Why does the post headline have "Mysterious Numerical Radio Stations"? The link properly calls them numbers stations. Would be nice if article leads weren't made up of BS. There's no logical reason for doing so.