On Wednesday, November 13, 2002, at 12:46 PM, Tyler Durden wrote:
Oh yeah, another thing I wanted to ask about, before I forget."Numbers stations" are not of much interest for our concerns, for the same reason we are not a cryptanalysis/hobby cipher group. There are many Web resources on numbers stations, and probaby stuff in "Codebreakers." Also, Bamford.
It's somewhat well-known that throughout the South pacific, there are "radio stations" that do nothing but broadcast the real-time reading of number sequences, but no one seems to know just why. And these number sequences do not seem to be recordings...every station has a different voice, and the number sequences never repeat. So it would seem that they are being read in real time by natives employed at various islands.
Anyone know what the heck those things are? There's actually a 3-CD collection available of the number broadcasts.
And the South Pacific is not even where these numbers stations are usually associated with. There's a large transmitter near Warrenton, VA (coincidentally near the CIA's Farm, not too far from the Weather Mountain installation, and of course part of the original Army Security Agency).
(I'm not trying to discourage interest or discussion, just noting that "crypto" in general has a huge lore, many books...and most of them have nothing to do with the "postmodern" stuff of primary interest to us.)
--Tim May
