5 ms·

This is highly relevant for the conspiracy theorists. Random number radio stations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

This is highly relevant for the conspiracy theorists. Random number radio stations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station A numbers station (or number station) is a type of shortwave radio station characterized by their unusual broadcasts, which consist of spoken words, but mostly numbers, often created by artificially generated voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters, tunes or Morse code. Now, if you take a look at any random tweet, you will notice that the location that it was tweeted from changes every time (often in the middle of the Sea). This could also be a hidden chunk of information that encodes/hides other relevant data. It is certainly not by accident that the lat/lngs change on each Tweet. If I had the time as an experiment, I'd probably try and find patterns between the lng/lats to see if the decimal equivalent means anything? How hilariously awesome would it be if when mapped on a globe, it builds up a large picture. (Fair warning.. this runs WebGL and will most likely nuke your browser for a few seconds http://data-arts.appspot.com/globe-search/ http://data-arts.appspot.com/globe-search/ )

JackWebbHeller 14y ago
The creepiest Numbers Station of them all: UVB-76 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76 Just listen to the buzzing sound clip... Sends chills down my spine. Then after years of 24/7/365 buzzing, a Russian voice reads a bizarre encoded message. Spooky.
- samwilliams 14y ago
  I am sure this is just interference or something and please excuse me if this is stupid thing to point out but I decided to check this out and listen to the live stream of this linked to via Wikipedia and after 5 minutes or so I started to hear a distorted conversation. It has continued ever since. Is this normal?
  - xentronium 14y ago
    It's said to be quite active since 2010 [1] [1] http://priyom.org/number-stations/slavic/s28.aspx http://priyom.org/number-stations/slavic/s28.aspx
    - samwilliams 14y ago
      I see, I was under the impression that had died down since feb 2011 though? That was the impression the Wikipedia article gave anyway.
  - zalew 14y ago
    I bet they are probably forgotten military/security projects who now just live their own lives. Creepy anyway.
- xentronium 14y ago
  Huge archive of info about number stations (including recordings and technical errors) can be found here: http://www.priyom.org/number-stations.aspx http://www.priyom.org/number-stations.aspx 'Priyom' is Russian for copy/over.
andyjohnson0 14y ago
Check out The Conet Project [1], a set of four CDs containing recorings of numbers stations. Downloadable/listenable via the Internet Archive [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conet_Project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conet_Project [2] http://archive.org/details/ird059 http://archive.org/details/ird059
blauwbilgorgel 14y ago
Seems to change too often for a number station. I wonder if foreign intelligence agencies would even consider using an American company for their covert communications. I think it is less spooky: My bet is on it being an iPhone app from years ago, maybe long pulled from the store. Its dev was using the Twitter account as a logging system. Maybe for something silly as highscores from around the world. "_dev" and "_prod" seem far too innocent names for an account that is trying to fly under the radar. EDIT: Perhaps it is used for indexation benchmarks? Deploy a tweet with a unique string and location, and check how long it takes before it shows up in the index or notification inbox?
- elliottcarlson 14y ago
  there is also a _staging one - obviously it's some kind of output for an app of some sort. googuns itself seems to be owned by Google Notifications
fuzzix 14y ago
If you'd like to listen in on these, you could try the Wide-band Web SDR: http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/ http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/ (Requires Java plugin)

JackWebbHeller 14y ago

The creepiest Numbers Station of them all: UVB-76 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76 Just listen to the buzzing sound clip... Sends chills down my spine. Then after years of 24/7/365 buzzing, a Russian voice reads a bizarre encoded message. Spooky.

samwilliams 14y ago
I am sure this is just interference or something and please excuse me if this is stupid thing to point out but I decided to check this out and listen to the live stream of this linked to via Wikipedia and after 5 minutes or so I started to hear a distorted conversation. It has continued ever since. Is this normal?
- xentronium 14y ago
  It's said to be quite active since 2010 [1] [1] http://priyom.org/number-stations/slavic/s28.aspx http://priyom.org/number-stations/slavic/s28.aspx
  - samwilliams 14y ago
    I see, I was under the impression that had died down since feb 2011 though? That was the impression the Wikipedia article gave anyway.
- zalew 14y ago
  I bet they are probably forgotten military/security projects who now just live their own lives. Creepy anyway.
xentronium 14y ago
Huge archive of info about number stations (including recordings and technical errors) can be found here: http://www.priyom.org/number-stations.aspx http://www.priyom.org/number-stations.aspx 'Priyom' is Russian for copy/over.

andyjohnson0 14y ago

Check out The Conet Project [1], a set of four CDs containing recorings of numbers stations. Downloadable/listenable via the Internet Archive [2]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conet_Project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conet_Project [2] http://archive.org/details/ird059 http://archive.org/details/ird059

blauwbilgorgel 14y ago

Seems to change too often for a number station. I wonder if foreign intelligence agencies would even consider using an American company for their covert communications. I think it is less spooky: My bet is on it being an iPhone app from years ago, maybe long pulled from the store. Its dev was using the Twitter account as a logging system. Maybe for something silly as highscores from around the world. "_dev" and "_prod" seem far too innocent names for an account that is trying to fly under the radar. EDIT: Perhaps it is used for indexation benchmarks? Deploy a tweet with a unique string and location, and check how long it takes before it shows up in the index or notification inbox?

elliottcarlson 14y ago
there is also a _staging one - obviously it's some kind of output for an app of some sort. googuns itself seems to be owned by Google Notifications

fuzzix 14y ago

If you'd like to listen in on these, you could try the Wide-band Web SDR: http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/ http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/ (Requires Java plugin)