The Rarest And Strangest Secret Government Numbers Stations
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ธ.ค. 2022
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There’s a recording of the “Noisy workshop” jamming E10 on the Conet Project, loud hammering etc. The most effective jamming I’ve heard consisted of different male and female voices multitracked to create what sounded like hundreds of people all talking at the same time. It’s impossible to discern one voice reading numbers or letters out from all the rest. Very clever, and way more effective than howls, beeps and buzzing.
Thanks! I’ve got the CD’s I’ll take a listen!
Finally someone who figured it out! The best way to confuse is by sending nonsense that sounds like the target transmission.
U got a loicence for that info m8?
2 hypothesis on the "telephone voice" 1) they lost contact with an agent and it was to bring them in. Or a code was cracked and it was a signal to jump to the next series. The latter seems more plausible to me than a lost agent. Once all agents checked in on the new cypher, the broadcast terminated.
Sounds like the voice of Jane Barbe (pronounced Barbie) who recorded most of the AT&T / Bell Labs voice messages and can still be heard on WWVH
Or the radio system was set to dial out to a phone number at certain time to receive the actual messages to be broadcast and the number was changed without updating the system. Or the person reprogramming the system forgot to add on the long distance carrier code.
I'm sorry that young shortwave listeners (if there are any) don't have the listening opportunities that my generation did during the hottest part of the Cold War. Soviet sphere propaganda and spy number transmissions were a constant source of listening enjoyment. Practically any radio would do, too. I used a tube driven Zenith Transoceanic. It was great!
There are still active frequencies and got my kids into playing with the dial on my inexpensive sw radio whilst we are in the garage - they love to hear the noise and different languages as well as varied music. While the content may have changed a lot- there remains a world of stuff to catch. And yes, the occasional numbers station
True! You are part of that lucky generation
I got into shortwave radio listening when I was 14. I’m 22 now and yes, even back when I was 14 there was a lot of good head scratching stuff that would pop up compared to today.
I came in far too late but have always wished they just hosted some cryptic puzzle stations
I just ordered a tecsun pl330 to listen around the bands
Honestly a brilliant idea to disguise a One Time Pad cypher by pretending to be a robotic voice response to a dead phone number. To the casual observer it wouldn't sound like a Numbers Station but instead a "whoopsie" that got broadcast over the air somehow, you'd only realize something was up after hearing multiple times.
Fuck me that's brilliant - I originally interpreted the vid as the phoney phone message being a quirky jamming attempt but wow on what you've said. It makes more and more sense the more you think about it
On the topic of experimental digital modes, I once saw (made by a civilian) a method of encoding text using the drops in dubstep. Not strictly related to radio, but I thought it was mildly interesting.
time to take a WebSDR to a fatboyslim concert :D
I've really enjoyed the numbers stations videos, the mystery of them combined with the consistency just makes them so addictive. They feel controversial and dangerous and the fact you could just listen in to these spooky transitions, a calm and bored female voice speaking these numbers that could have tremendous meaning or nothing at all.
Pirate Radio, Number Stations and other HF oddities, aswell as the occasional radio company story... You're really a Jack of all trades when it comes to the hobby^^
The telephone numbers station gives me goosebumps! Radio obviously uses the ether, but phone phreaking used the copper networks, it's a bit like exploring underground rather than outer space and there's something fantastic about the thought of a globe covered in millions of cables with points you can access and hear their distant sounds. I spent many a dark night on a closed train station payfone with a tone dialler and wires hanging out exploring this world!! Brilliant stuff M8❤️👍😎
Wait wait that was something you could do? I wanna know more about what you heard.
@@RogueError617 Are you 12?
Yes, you could. It's different now, but give it a shot, I hear prison is lots of fun.
@@UncleButterworththat was kinda mean, dude wants to know more. You shouldn’t shame him for that. Fuck im 22 and i’ve JUST learned about this shit THIS MORNING
I watched one of these 'ghostexploration' vids. This one showed a man in Eastern Europe in a supposed haunted house that looked abandoned with the electricity disconnected. Among other things the rotary dial phones worked. Big deal. POTS is still around in diverse places. That house could have been shot up and that phone could still work as long as the phone and comms cable were undamaged. This is why POTS is still around. All you have to do is tap into the low voltage comms cable and you are in business.
@@UncleButterworth yeah agreed, you are an unnecessarily douchy spud! Chill a bit ay psycho.
About once a year for fun I'd look into number stations to see if there was/is anything new, and usually its a rehashed top ten list in a different order. This year, I didn't even have to look, and better yet, you keep putting out more and more, so thankful. And I have even learned some stuff I most like wouldn't have normally gone out of my way to look up. Always great content, and I'm 14 seconds in.
Nick, brother, you and me both, and i always end up watching The Modern Rouge's video on the subject matter, which is 6 years old.
Thanks to that video, it opened up the rabbit hole of number stations for me.
P.s there's a band called We were promised jetpacks, there album "these four walls" has a song thats about a minute and few seconds long with a number station being said song. they're also a good band to listen to when skating! Or just cruising the skatepark
Edit: i was wrong on the song length its actually 2:41, the song im referencing is called "A half built house."
Sick dude. Going to remember this comment at the next session, and put em on the stereo. It'll probably go over way better than the time I put on a 90s dance song lol.
Another great numbers stations video. It reminds me of the time back in the late 90s when I had a mobile phone on the Vodafone network. On several occasions I would dial out on it and instead of a ringing tone I would hear a man saying "Welcome to the Firefox network" or "You are now connected to the Firefox network" or something like that. I would then be disconnected and have to dial again to get through to who I actually wanted. This only ever happened within the grounds of Salisbury cathedral, where I used to live. To this day I have no idea what that was.
I just looked up when Firefox (the web browser) was launched. It was in 2004, so if you were hearing that in the late 90s, that is definitely spooky and weird.
@@Bluestrike22 No, nothing to do with the browser. I think I heard it around 95 to 96. Personally, I am at a loss. If anyone would like to comment, please do. Thanks for any comments.
@@peteraaron8626Just a quick guess, As we found out in 2014, Salisbury seems to be the ‘go to’ location for the UK gov to place former Russian Defectors.
There may have been a very short distance relay, hidden within the Cathedral, that only connected via the freq Vodafone did in the 90’s that connected you to their network.
My other guess is that in order to go any further into the network, you would have had to input a code into your dial set and the corresponding ‘beep’ tone would have been heard by the other line as a form of password.
Hmm the last one reminds me of another mysterious signal that was heard only once. "Except for a single -very powerful transmission, aimed at Jupiter, the 4 million year old Black monolith has remained completely inert. Its origin and purpose, still a total mystery..."
E21 doesn't strike me as a numbers station to be honest. If it is, they've found a very clever use of otherwise benign telco automated intercept recordings. My gut feeling is it was a phreak broadcasting recordings they had made, either inadvertently or on purpose. I recognize pretty much all of those as automated intercept messages from various telephone switches from the 70s and 80s. The section from 03:38 to 03:44 is what was called RQS or "rate quote system", a system a local operator could dial into from their board to check rates (costs per minute/call) to other parts of the country, as well as any special routing instructions that may be needed--especially in the days when some inward calling was still through an operator.
Maybe surplus telecom equipment was the cheapest way to get the programmable voices.
Some of those numbers transmitters were connected to a phone line. Wherever the message was coming from, they would have to dial in to the transmitter and patch the voice message in over the phone line. Sounds like the transmitter picked up and then broadcast error messages from the phone company. Maybe a phreaker or some poor fool at the CIA that dialed it up incorrectly.
@@captainsigismund6449 Very possible, and I've seen it before. If you listen to some of the recordings by former phone phreak Evan Doorbell, he even shows an example of a Cognitronics machine much like the ones used in the old phone networks showing up on a shortwave numbers station (Early 80s pgm. 10, more specifically)
Additionally at 3:28 that sounds like an intercept heard over, I wanna say it's MCI.
@@flamingdog9207 spooky!
Governamental agencys: its illigal to listen to number stations
Every single radio listener: i am going to ignore that
Please give me a list of all of the UK number stations to which I am not allowed to listen, and I will avoid listening to them in the future!! ;-)
Won't be illegal to blast them unawares....peasants.
That's not true. All of the amateur radio gear that I own affords me the ability to monitor any transmission that isn't encrypted. There is no law against monitoring transmissions on public airwaves. It IS however against the law to use the information contained in those transmissions to aid in committing a crime.
Hiding a coded message as a telephone number is peak secret services techniques from the cold war 😂
The telephone access code recording, makes me think an agent or a random person managed to dial a handler / check-in number and didn't have the current password. It's a easy way to tell a agent listening they got it wrong with plausible deniability by just saying sorry you got the wrong number on the actual phone. Just a thought that occurred to me when I heard it. I'm sure the actual Nortel / Bell system recording was a bit different.
the E21 recording with phone numbers and stuff may be a fluke in the phone system routing the station used to connect to it's source of messages
You have made so much research and so easy for people to access and understand. Thank you as ever.
Im a UK ex pat who lives in France.
I haven’t been able to find evidence of much French radio Cold War related information.
Does anyone out there know?
Thanks.
Ian
There is a small article on the pryiom number website about French number stations
@@boilerroombob Thanks Bob, I’ll go look that up now.
Ian
I'm waiting to come across a recording of this 'wall of sound' thing I used to hear on shortwave in the 70s; I used to think of it kind of like an electronic orchestra. While the pitch didn't vary, it was made up of numerous simultaneous bits, kind of like an harsh electronic brown noise. It was all over shortwave back then.
One that always interested me is the Exotic Cipher from the Conet Project. Very organic sounding tones, almost like a Banded Waveguide or other physical modeling based synth was generating the signal.
I can't believe the old U.S. operator voice is involved in this, I always wondered whose voice it was, she sounds like a nice lady. I miss some of ways the Bell system worked too.
I don't know anything about radio stations besides the local FM I tune to but those videos are interesting to watch
Thanks Lewis , another very interesting video. Keep up the great work.
You solved a mystery for me here because I've been trying to find the name of that Verdi piece for years!
Keep the interesting content coming m8! I'd love to see some more on satcoms.
Thanks Lewis, you keep hitting the nail on the head.
As a kid I found the number stations really creepy.
Really loving this channel !
Quality series Lewis on the number stations thank you.
Very interesting! The Workshop number station actually has a good recording that, although I've only heard it in one video titled “Shortwave radio oddity roundup”.
Great stuff. And I love looking at ANY antenna installations. I was thinking you could do a series on current installations but you might get shot or through in in jail. thanks 73 Leo
Winter Hill! Great pics. Can see it fro here 🤣
very interesting as ever - thanks for these great videos!
just stumbled upon your channel I am very impressed by your content look forward to more
"the workshop" sounds like a bi-polar analog-carrying-digital transmission like on old computer cassettes but the + and - are separate data streams. I presume a standard signal decay ratio based on returning to neutral is used to keep any additive expression from drawing out of amplitude range.
In the US I hear the Radio Havana all the time, but one time I picked up a weak station using nothing but letters as it's code in groups of 5 or 6. I haven't heard it since.
I heard a lot of numbers stations back in the early 1980s. E21 sounds familiar and that would have been the time of most of my listening.
Please keep these awesome videos coming.
That wrong number one is really odd. I wonder what happened?
Yeah number stations. Lewis I enjoy all of your content. Keep it up
"A very rare catch indeed" is the English accent 4 figure e5/e21 variant so states enigma magazine from 1995...it was last heard in march of that year calling 250 with 102 figure group.......how we miss that English rose x
The Usaf base in Barford St John Oxfordshire was a transmission site linked to Cynthia in the 70s and 80s and the monster signal added wait for that location as probable
One thing you should look into the buildings more. As some towers that are civilian have bunkers as well .
The portion of the 'telephone announcement' section... Could an American listener shed any further light on this? It would seem like the initial system is dialing in and we are hearing the call being routed through various networks (with distinctive sounding automated messages, Bell? AT&T?) on the internal trunking lines of what we assume is America. I suppose you could then get a sense of where the call was geographically intended for or who was handling it for the user. As someone with only an SDR and a broken 'Realistic 20-9506 "Pro-26"' scanner I got when I was a teenager from Tandy I really like your videos thanks for taking the time to put them together!
As an American, my first thought is that the 'telephone announcement' itself was a cover for the numbers transmission by being disguised as a wrong dial. The 'old' and 'new' numbers were seven digits and so had no area code to let us know where the call circuit would be.
My second thought is that if it were a legitimate announcement, it might be coming from some internal system which handles messages using those routing codes.
Another possibility is that whoever generated the recordings had a real Bell System switching computer set up in a "sandbox" environment, in which they had full administrative control and could make it "say" whatever they wanted, within the limits of its capabilities. That would have required a pretty well-funded operation--those machines were _not_ cheap--but technologically speaking, it would've been the easiest, least risky way of doing it. The actual voice sounds very authentic to me.
The algorythm is in favour of you at the moment. I enjoy every video. Ride the wave and keep on!
3:37 I didn’t realize we were crossing into Evan Doorbell territory here.
Great work.
Thanks Lewis
2:57, seems like a brilliantly simple way to amend a previous, possibly erroneous number issued, seems like something fairly innocuous to an unwary listener, but perfectly sensible to the intended recipients.
I have a thought: Maybe if you have an image of the waterfall you could initial show it when introducing a station. (Obviously only when the station still exist or there is an image in the public domain). This would less confuse the viewer.
4:43 Sounds like the Red Birb "wuewuewue" jammer to me...
The telephone error one is weird; I think most Americans have heard that voice before, but that's not exactly what "she" says. And there's something about the verbal lean forward in "You. Have. Dialed. An. Unauthorized. Location." That's chilling.
Thanks for these interesting videos! Very much appreciated!
Another story for your files: When the GDR collapsed in 1989 the number stations operated by the Ministry for State Security (aka "Stasi") also silenced. The last transmission of one of these stations were the (obviously completely drunk) operators singing the German children's song "Alle meine Entchen" as a choir. It is supposed that this might have been a coded message for all the personnel in West Germany to destroy all the code sheets and other material because it could not be ensured that these people might not be unveiled by West German state authorities in future.
Vy 73 de Peter (DK7IH)
Man,there's just something super creepy about these stations.
these are always very fascinating.
Thanks Lewis. 👍👏
Sounds like that one station must have made a call possibly through a modem to an answering machine that would play the message then for some reason the number was changed but not updated for the number station.
The E21 message was clearly a handoff to a new secure channel.
Are there any stories for the actual use of this stuff? Like what were the people sending/receiving this stuff actually using it for?
Number stations i only came here to look at scaffold towers. Ps happy christmas to you pal...
Thanks!
Interesting to note that E01 is using 4 numbers at a time compared to the regular 5 number groups
Hadnt seen the e21 rec, do you have a link to it?
🌁😶🌫️Cool views, exotic esoteric signals, foggy atmospheric perspective. Technobabble to a n00b like me, but neat stuff to listen to and "watch". It reminds me of the biggest radio tower to me, _Sutro Tower._ Be sure to check it out if you visit California if you haven’t already, it needs your good-eye. Thanks for sharing and stay fuzzy.
"We're sorry; The number you have dialed: 9-1-1 - Has been changed to an unlisted number. Goodbye."
0:41 Where is the Drone footage of the misty tower located? Is it Winter Hill?
Certainly is Alex :)
Interesting to check world events for some of the number station dates, S1A Nov 5th 1978 - "Iranian PM Jaafar Sharif-Emami resigns to Shah. Khomeini followers attack British embassy/El Al office in Iran"
I used to hunt for these on my portable shortwave radio.
Has anyone ever tried to track down the phone numbers announced in that broadcast? And lived to tell the tale?
I wonder how many of these stations were noise stations made to confound signal interceptors?
i dont know why. But listening to these broadcasts gives me such a bad case of chills. there are tears running down my face. I dont know why, but it's the scariest thing ive listened to. but i keep doing it because, WHY AM I AFRAID OF IT. What is so horrifying about these broadcasts? Am i the only one who feels this way?
Im not like crying cause im emotional or anything, these videos just make my eyes water i guess. I love em tho
good site or place to find out all the stuff i hear on the airwaves? diff digi modes and such ..
The telephone recordings were voiced by what sound like Jane Barbie.
Lots of clips of her on the Evan Doorbell's YT channel (phone phreaking recordings).
Very cool
Did you get the E21 clip from Evan Doorbell?
Who’s that?
@@RingwayManchester A former phone phreak who has a huge collection of tapes with various telephone recordings, but also some shortwave recordings. Here's a link: th-cam.com/video/aCY9piA8iBw/w-d-xo.html
Ah thanks I’ll check this out.
Good one.
Interesting that 4 digit one had played a telephone message. Almost implies that it was an automated system.
Ha. Very interesting! Greetings from Bulgaria and thank you for the great content!
I am wondering if I can decode Havana's digital packets with a SDR setup? One thing I think is true of some numbers stations, is that they transmit to maybe non-existent spy networks just to be a nuisance.
My sentiments entirely. How to waste your opponents time and money trying to decode nonsense messages that cost you just a few pounds by comparison to transmit.
Here in Au the Strangest Secret Government Numbers Station is the Department Of Transport Vehicle Registration Section.
Nothing will ever be known about this in our lifetimes
the "phone error" the old number new number, if a US telnumber 541 would be Oregon outside of the N.W. corner.
541 was the exchange prefix, not the area code. It could have been literally anywhere.
@@erikawhelan4673 in the states it normally gives the full number, area code - exchange - subscriber number xxx-xxx-xxxx
@@Dratchev241 I'm well aware; but the recording only had seven digits. The fact that it was seven-digit local dialing does potentially narrow it down slightly, but probably not by much.
@@erikawhelan4673 likely the recorder blanked the last digits of the number before they posted it online. I would have done the same thing.
@@Dratchev241 Maybe.
I stumbled upon this video. Please let me know if I am way off base here but are these not broadcasting messages encrypted by one-time pads? Good luck great firewall of China type of thing.
This is a mighty tower structure
Thanks for your videos. Hello, i live in Torrelavega Spain and i receive at night on 1550 kHz an English station with fadding with very good music. Could you tell me what It is. Excuse my English
Its interesting to here telecom sounds used by a station. Maybe surplus telecom equipment was cheapest way to get programmable sythetic voices.
I remember hearing about a random phone number you could call and it would be a number station. Has anyone else heard of this?
The number stations videos are great. They are how i found the channel.
Probably otp22. It turned out to be an alternate reality game.
I would imagine telephone number stations are more popular now, but only in countries where either the phone lines are not monitored or the operator can use a satphone without worry of it being tracked, for example if embedded in a non state sanctioned terrorist organisation.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the reason for the announcement was because the transmitter is not domestically located, but instead autodials a number that is, and transmits the call which consists of the numbers. The number changes but the transmitter isn’t modified and it transmits that…. Except the same voice is used for both the usual content and the telco announcement so it’s likely a disguised message, albeit a short one.
What establishments are the footages in this video of?
That’s a DSN number.
Interesant
I don’t know if the FCC rules have changed or not because I don’t keep up anymore, but is it not illegal to re-broadcast material picked up on the air?
You can listen you can read them but you’re not supposed to re-broadcast them - unless things changed. Also those are standard five letter code groups that have been used for years and years and years. Even ships at sea use them to send happy birthday and merry Christmas telegrams. Standard radio telegraphy stuff. Didn’t know they still use it but apparently they do and, so what?!
It shouldn't really matter if the content is encrypted as it is. Making it illegal to listen to such broadcasts would possibly draw unwanted attention. It does vary from state to state within The US, and from country to country. I'm in Britain and am not aware of any such restrictions here.
@@paulanderson79 I don’t mean to be contentious but FCC rules and regulations do not vary from state to state in United States. They are mandated by communications commission (FCC) and they apply to all US citizens - and even go further than that in some cases.
E21 sound about like Wilma Flintstone!
Nice
The telephone message sounds like a lame attempt at disguising a message notifying a frequency change.
Is S01 Edna Sednitzer?
Numbers stations rule.
Did you try calling those phone numbers.? Or, do research on where they may have been connected to.
Ya NUMBER STATIONS !!!!
Thanks
What are the numbers about?
I'm just waiting for the one that is like:
Ascension 7-15-1-2-19-7-25-6-13-6-7-15-14-0
;)
Until then, we might never know the meaning of the numb3rs. :D
What do you think a number station looks like? I don’t mean it’s transmitter. I mean, it’s gear inside.. is it going to be a computer running windows NT or some really analog set up
Many eastern bloc stations used this device, made in east Germany. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station#/media/File:Sprach-Morse-Generator.jpg
Who knows? but certainly not NT.
@@thes764 very interesting!
@@smorrisby who knows but not windows NT.. so. What do you know? 😅 share your insight 😌
@@DSPrints_ A lifetime in telecommunications and computing coupled with a few years spent in electronic warfare.
yes sa