Are there any stations still broadcasting?
Pretty sure there are. The amateur radio and SDR communities tend to be into them, IIRC.
Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
51–60 of 67 posts
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#52Are there any stations still broadcasting?
Some are. Perhaps the most famous is UVB-76[0]
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#53Recordings of dozens of numbers stations: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Conet_Project
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
this went on "realists study re-assembling a Kalashnikov". There was lots of English, obviously, but also a lot of adaptation and modifications. Almost nothing (in wide use) was copied identically so I don't think this is a 'simple explanation' why this machine is the way it is. If I were to guess - this is a fairly late, specialized, small-run device made by a DDR space research institution. Maybe they were more gea…
So far @textfiles has traced that quote back to '65, give him another hour or so and I fully expect him to come up with a fragment from the dead sea scrolls or some fragment in Linear-A hewn into a rock.
Damn if that means Linear-A will finally be deciphered, I'm going to sit here hitting F5 all night long.
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#55Interesting! I wonder what these were actually used for. Word on the street was communication with spies using a one-time-pad or something. I'm sure it was important or they wouldn't have built all this stuff for it. It wouldn't have been for the "what are those soviets up to now???" effect :D And the more esoteric explanations like triggering preprogrammed behaviour (like the plot of Black Ops I refers to) are clear…
I guess you could use that device to report telemetry from say an automated weather station. Spoken words can be probably propagated better over a noisy channel. Task an intern to listen to this every day & compile a report with the weather data inside and bam, daily weather report from an automated station. :)
This is also how ATIS works - these are condition reports for airports that are broadcast on a loop. They tell pilots the active runway (if a small airport), surface weather, etc and any special information.
They're often fully synthesised, but might also have some manual recordings at the end.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_terminal_informati...
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
So far @textfiles has traced that quote back to '65, give him another hour or so and I fully expect him to come up with a fragment from the dead sea scrolls or some fragment in Linear-A hewn into a rock.
Damn if that means Linear-A will finally be deciphered, I'm going to sit here hitting F5 all night long.
Optimists learn egyptian. Pessimists learn assyrian. Realists learn horsemanship.
(TIL AK-47s are simpler than our assault rifles. Decent times: разборка, 8s, сборка, 15s, both, 30s)
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#57I seem to remember seeing something of this sort of thing on Usenet in one of the alt groups maybe 25 years ago. Just blocks of numbers if I'm remembering correctly. I suppose that was less likely to be a government and more likely to be college kids playing at spies but who knows.
There was a group called "alt.anonymous.messages". E.g.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt.anonymous.messag...
It was mainly meant to be integrated with anonymous remailers as a way of avoiding traffic analysis.
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the 80s, if you had a lot of money, you could import an actual PC. Or so I was told. There apparently also were ZX Spectrum clones that no one could afford. Also the Agat computer, a slightly incompatible Apple II clone that used a real imported 6502 because USSR wasn't able to produce its own one.
I wandered around the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow a couple of decades ago, thinking, at so many of the technology exhibits, "that looks reeeeeeaaally familiar".
-As did I, chuckling at the 'built with foreign documentation' label affixed to many of the exhibits, in particular in the consumer electronics exhibition.
Chuckle turned to laugh when I looked at the replica H-bomb in the lobby before leaving - first, a label stating 'Replica. Does not contain explosives.'
Beneath this label? Another, stating 'built with foreign documentation.'
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#59Interesting! I wonder what these were actually used for. Word on the street was communication with spies using a one-time-pad or something. I'm sure it was important or they wouldn't have built all this stuff for it. It wouldn't have been for the "what are those soviets up to now???" effect :D And the more esoteric explanations like triggering preprogrammed behaviour (like the plot of Black Ops I refers to) are clear…
There was a woman in East Berlin, who needed rescue. I can't remember if she worked with western intelligence, or if her husband did, but at any rate, she was in trouble. West Germany (or the Americans) decided to help her escape. At one point, she was given a pad. Told to turn her radio to a certain channel at a certain time of day. Write the numbers down and decode them with the pad. Long story short, she and her s…
It was probably Helga Michnowski and her son Michael, later known as Ursula and Thomas Wagner: https://web.archive.org/web/20060213155527/http://www.myspys...
If you can read German, Werner Stiller, the Stasi agent who was involved in this story, wrote a detailed account in the following book: "Der Agent: Mein Leben in drei Geheimdiensten".
Also in German: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vVYu2HaX10
An account in English from Werner Stiller's son: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y30yDu7_JBU
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#60I seem to remember seeing something of this sort of thing on Usenet in one of the alt groups maybe 25 years ago. Just blocks of numbers if I'm remembering correctly. I suppose that was less likely to be a government and more likely to be college kids playing at spies but who knows.
There was/is also a subreddit with a similar premise.