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Not really a good article. You can and should apply the exact same argument to number stations as you apply to all the technology they criticize: they are vulne

Not really a good article. You can and should apply the exact same argument to number stations as you apply to all the technology they criticize: they are vulnerable to being compromised at the supply-chain/provenance level. I'm not a radio expert but I'm also pretty sure that you can interfere with their signals. And you can communicate using OTPs using a computer network as long as you're smart about it. Actually the one interesting point made is that nobody can track whether you're tuning into a particular station. On a network, there has to be some traceable path of connections between the transmitter and receiver: even if the message is hidden in some other content or transmitted through a bunch of proxies, that traceable flow of data must exist. It makes me wonder how common it is to open ephemeral p2p connections over shortwave to transmit data between two computers - I'm sure someone's thought of it, and I think I brought it up one time during a quant firm system design interview.

rdtsc 2y ago
> Actually the one interesting point made is that nobody can track whether you're tuning into a particular station That’s a juicy enough piece of information that they probably have something for it. Does the radio emit any heterodyne signals when tuned to particular frequency? Maybe a super-sensitive satellite, drone or other sensors can pick it up. Another option I could think of is to somehow infiltrate and compromise popular short wave radio models sold. Make them emit some signal marker which would identify the radio station it’s tuned to. Pretty far fetched but the three letter agencies have spent money on crazier stuff than that in the past
- weitendorf 2y ago
  My counter-counter-intelligence idea is that since you know where the radio broadcast station is, you can probably implement some kind of faraday cage with an aperture oriented towards the broadcast station. That way any kind of radiation emitted from the receiver also gets sent in that direction. That way detecting a signal emanating from the receiver requires being in the cone outside of that aperture (and I doubt those signals are so strong that they can be seen from space). I'm sure your counter-counter-counter measures might start from the premise that, with you also knowing the location of the broadcast station, you might be able to guess at the most likely receiving orientations if you knew the most likely places for a receiver to be located. Eg a shortwave reciever equipped with a faraday cage + aperture listening to codes from Russia in Manhattan would emit a cone in the direction of Stamford. But I also suppose that I might know my receiver emits this kind of signal, and use some other device to emit junk signals that look similar, or scatter around a bunch of receivers while only using one. Or I might try to only set up receivers in places where the cone would be inconvenient for you to intercept, or obvious that you were trying to intercept. Eg over the ocean.

rdtsc 2y ago

> Actually the one interesting point made is that nobody can track whether you're tuning into a particular station That’s a juicy enough piece of information that they probably have something for it. Does the radio emit any heterodyne signals when tuned to particular frequency? Maybe a super-sensitive satellite, drone or other sensors can pick it up. Another option I could think of is to somehow infiltrate and compromise popular short wave radio models sold. Make them emit some signal marker which would identify the radio station it’s tuned to. Pretty far fetched but the three letter agencies have spent money on crazier stuff than that in the past

weitendorf 2y ago
My counter-counter-intelligence idea is that since you know where the radio broadcast station is, you can probably implement some kind of faraday cage with an aperture oriented towards the broadcast station. That way any kind of radiation emitted from the receiver also gets sent in that direction. That way detecting a signal emanating from the receiver requires being in the cone outside of that aperture (and I doubt those signals are so strong that they can be seen from space). I'm sure your counter-counter-counter measures might start from the premise that, with you also knowing the location of the broadcast station, you might be able to guess at the most likely receiving orientations if you knew the most likely places for a receiver to be located. Eg a shortwave reciever equipped with a faraday cage + aperture listening to codes from Russia in Manhattan would emit a cone in the direction of Stamford. But I also suppose that I might know my receiver emits this kind of signal, and use some other device to emit junk signals that look similar, or scatter around a bunch of receivers while only using one. Or I might try to only set up receivers in places where the cone would be inconvenient for you to intercept, or obvious that you were trying to intercept. Eg over the ocean.