SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - Cool: Numbers Stations

Really cool and spooky...never knew about these. I mean I knew intel agencies used radios to communicate with operatives but it never occurred to me anyone with a shortwave receiver could listen in.
What am I babbling about?

Here is the wiki article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station

Quote:

Numbers stations are shortwave radio stations of uncertain origin. They generally broadcast voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters (sometimes using a radio alphabet), tunes or morse code.

The voices that can be heard on these stations are often mechanically generated. They are in a wide variety of languages, and the voices are usually women's, though sometimes men's or children's voices are used.

Evidence supports popular assumptions that the broadcasts are channels of communication used to send messages to spies. This has not been publicly acknowledged by any government that may operate a numbers station, but in one case, Cuban numbers station espionage has been publicly prosecuted in a United States federal court.[1]

Good article for a wiki one with some links to sound files of these stations...which do exist still.

Some more links...

http://www.freewebs.com/meterbands/numberstations.html

http://www.spynumbers.com/

http://www.irdial.com/conet.htm

Really cool but am wondering if they really are useful today. It seems all the big guys, US, Russia, UK and China still have em, as well as Cuba and other smaller countries.

Here you can listen in ....

http://irdial.hyperreal.org/the%20co...ject/disc%201/

http://irdial.hyperreal.org/the%20co...ject/disc%202/

http://irdial.hyperreal.org/the%20co...ject/disc%203/

http://irdial.hyperreal.org/the%20co...ject/disc%204/

Really cool.