Number station documentary - Tracking The Lincolnshire Poacher
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- Опубліковано 24 сер 2024
- Tune into shortwave radio at the top of each hour and you will stumble upon a confusion of mysterious-sounding messages: voices reading random groups of numbers interspersed with noises and bizarre musical quotes such as the folk song The Lincolnshire poacher or Mantovani's Swedish Rhapsody. These are the so-called "number stations". Nobody has ever admitted to broadcasting them, intelligence agencies have traditionally denied their use, and they are unlicensed. Simon Fanshawe embarks on thrilling detective journey into the clandestine world of radio cryptography, and attempts to solve one of the most unusual broadcast mysteries of all time, Producer Simon Hollis.
Come Join our Number stations and other weird shortwave oddities google plus community: plus.google.co...
-Braiden Robson
I am Working on a new video called "Number stations and other short wave oddities countdown". Here is a google doc consisting of a list for the current Number station and other shortwave radio oddities planned to be mentioned in the video: drive.google.com/file/d/1GCpq7wsvskkM3rPjjaolUG4sENXsb4Ml/view?usp=sharing
Feel free to suggest a number station or other strange signal that you know that isn't included in the comments below.
Hey, can you include the Magnetic Fields Numbers Station? That's one of my favorites.
A great suggestion! will add.
There used to be a Chinese jamming station that played most days during the 90's.
It was used to jam pirate radio signals that broadcast from the sea just off the Chinese coast. I have listened to weird radio transmissions all my life
Here's another 'oddity' 4:25 .
What's going on with the guy's _head_ ?
I gave a pretty good intro on how one-time pads are used. I think that's what they used.
This “Lincolnshire Poacher” audio would make a great ringtone, wouldn’t it?
Done ; )
Excellent idea. The Comnet channel played it and it freaked my then 18 year old daughter out. I hum it occasionally just to mess with her. If I put it as a ringtone, it’d drive her mad. I must plan........
My partner would end up killing me. He recognises this as a comic song by Kenneth Williams. I played this in his presence and he’s trying to get rid of the ear worm.
absolutely - yo've given me an idea
our office phones have UVB76-ringtones (among others), I wonder why?
My mother was a telegrapher in WW2. Her job was to copy down the morse code numbers for US Navy transmissions. She told me that she never knew what the messages contained but all the traffic was in 5 number sequences. She was busy all day receiving these coded sequences.
The volume of traffic suggest it was the same sort of thing the Bletchley Park crowd were getting from the German army and navy, i.e. reports of activity, supplies requested, where we are going next etc daily routine communications.
Sooooooo, her job was so secret, even she didn't know what she was doing?
@@freethrice alot of people did that.
@@freethrice it's certainly easier to keep a secret that way
@@freethrice still goes on to this day
My grandfather did a similar thing for USN during the Cold War! He was in Alaska intercepting Russian Morse code to try and decode. I wish he was still alive, I feel like he knew some things.
The disconnect between the audio and video tracks is almost maddening.
Anthony P
*Smoke some cannabis, you won't mind annoying things so much.*
The audio is from the BBC Radio 4 programme on it. The video is simply a visual filler.
one clip was on loop while he was talking haha dont know whats going on
not only that....they showed a Kenwood TS-570 which is way past the cold war era of radio days
@@MrJustin2105 all clips are
4:15 The guy on repeat is creepier than the number stations.
I could just imagine the agents in their man cave all together playing Fifa waiting for the transmission.
While the video is interestingly put together, people are clearly confused by the disconnect between the video and audio. As the publisher of this UA-cam video, you should have been honest about the audio's source and declared in the comment that this wasn't your work at all. This is originally a BBC Radio 4 documentary (with no original video, being a radio programme) - I was working at the BBC at the time it was made. By all means present this as your own mix of video but you really should explain that the mix of diversely sourced video is your work and not the actual documentary itself.
Hywel Williams this person makes money out of a publicly funded radio program. Stealing and reselling to advertisers. 😬
@@bokhans The video has already been claimed for copyright. The ad revenue goes to the claimants not the uploader.
That's nitpicking innit?
thanks, thought I just smoked too much acid
@@Zaph_Kiel That’s weird. I could have sworn I accidentally dropped two hits of weed…
Saying they “may” be communications is such a bad way to start this. They are what they are: methods of clandestine communication. You’ll never decode them, and they’ll never go out of use as they are one of the best clandestine secure communication methods available to us. And they’re fun.
It's the one-time pad cipher.
I found a strange one. Managed to get a recording of it and put it up on my channel. Strangely enough, it’s clearly coordinates? Doesn’t seem to be your typical cypher.
Very fun
@Georgina Orwell have you watched the video yet? I think it would make it much clearer how numerous stations and cipher pads work.
The station broadcasts a series of numbers at a given time that correspond to letters and numbers on a cipher pad which then interprets a coded message. And the only person who has this cipher is the spy attached to the agency broadcasting the numbers station. If you don't have the cipher it's impossible to decipher.
So unless you kill the agent, take their cipher and then catch the numbers station at the right time with the right broadcast, you have no chance whatsoever of deciphering the message. That's pretty secure.
They are one-time-pad ciphers, and they are literally the most theoretically secure ciphers possible, which is why they are still used.
Shortwave Technology is the only telecommunication technology which would enable human communicate with each other without relying on relay station. Modern day internet relies heavily on relay station and underground cables and other infrastructure. In other words, Shortwave is truly wireless communication.
In the event of a nuclear holocaust shortwave radio WILL be our form of communication
@10:25 when he says that using the Lincolnshire Poacher motif as 'quirky and illogical', if you read the lyrics to the folk song, it's almost the broadcaster implying espionage in a wry way.
'...caught with a one time pad in a bar of soap. He was found guilty..... but at least his hands were clean."
*Like aren't most maxipads one time use anyway... so wtf?*
Rather, he had to bend over every time he wanted to decode a tansmission from the STASI.
@@HardlineAthiest maxi and other pads are actually "Sanitary Napkins". Yeah, I know only the first time. groan
Ah British humor. I don't like you guys as I'm a yank, but your humor is pure kino.
.... And someone listening the number radio station shouted: "BINGO!!! "
And how sweet to hear Simon Mason's voice again. Thank you for letting me see what the man looks like. He was very kind and helpful to this clueless newb back when I got into the game.
Yesterday I heard for the first time since last spring some guy's lawn....trimmer, hedger, not sure. It is EXACTLY the pitch of the The Buzzer (old school Buzzer anyway). Spooky.
Everytime I hear the Lincolnshire poacher, I feel like I'm been watched 👀👀
A bit of musical trivia, at 0:38 - The band Wilco's 2001 album 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot' was so named for this audio sample, which also appears towards the album's end.
Google MIJI. I was an Air Force Telecommunications Technician and as such one of few who have heard and been affected by these number counters. All they are is a jamming signal to disturb our radio transmissions. We sent low speed data over HF radio and every night or so our communications lost synchronization and the link crashed. When we then tuned up and monitored our frequency that had been clean and clear, we heard the numbers counting. The enemy was constantly looking for our data signals so they could interrupt them. MIJI stands for Meaconing, Intrusion, Jamming, and Interference. It was so common in the HF radio days that we had a name for it and a procedure to report any occurance. If it was intelligence communications for spies it wouldn't suddenly come on the air on the same frequency we were using because our data tone pack signal would make their counting unintelligible. The randomness of the Human Voice makes it ideal to interrupt data. Occam's razor is the principle that, of two explanations that account for all the facts, the simpler one is more likely to be correct. It was just a jamming signal.
Also google "Voice Frequency Carrier Telegraph" and "Voice Frequency Telegraph Group" to find out what kind of signal we were sending on HF Radio. The common name was "teletype tone pack." It was all Top Secret stuff back then, in the late 1970's. The enemy was the Soviets and their satellite countries along with the Red Chinese and their proxy states.
Pure rubbish mate
Thanks for uploading this! I heard it on BBC radio years ago.
Do you know the year it was broadcast?
@@TwentyTwenty90 Early 2000s I think
During the 60s I listen to a lot of short-wave transmissions and came across these number stations along with the transmissions of transformers and possibly of sun spots. There was also the National Bureau of Standards time setting transmission.
Number stations are the most secure, foolproof way of sending an encrypted message anywhere in the world.
I can't think of any other explanation for number stations that makes sense. Since they are broadcast, unlike an email or phone call, there is no way to trace the recipient. Doing it by voice is a painfully slow way to transmit information, but a high speed digital signal would require specialized equipment to decode it, which would be incriminating if an agent was caught with it. A shortwave receiver, especially if purchased locally with cash, is not incriminating or traceable.
Or Fax!
How they will send the key to the other side of the communication?
@@russlehman2070 Owning a shortwave radio in 2019 is suspicious as fuck.
@@theloanranger2632 unless one had a convincing reason that one didn't use the internet at home.. poverty, perhaps. And at any time when you were 'at home' you'd need to have your one-time pad (hopefully made of rice paper) in your hand, ready to swallow it at a moment's notice, in case of raids. The penultimate scene of 'The Looking-Glass War' could happen to anyone in that situation, and something must be salvaged from the wreckage. But even so, numbers stations are more difficult for the enemy to defeat or uncover than other kinds of communication.
4:14 that guy incorporated the morse codes directly into his system
And here i thought i was the only one who thought it was creepy asf
I was under the impression that they used one-time pads. And the "static" isn't always static, there are carriers, sync generators, etc... I was in 3rd grade or thereabouts when I found my first one. The mores code was so quick it took me and my dad to even catch it all and this is when BetaMax was a thing. It freaked me out to the point I was afraid of telephones and had silent screams waking up from nightmares.
I'm sorry, what?
@@BraidenRobson what part confused you? The pads?
@@TheRealShadowspawn Your whole comment, really
@@BraidenRobsonOk, well number stations that would rotate were pretty cool. A "One Time Pad" is a key to decipher and thrown away afterwards. Not like SSL. With SSL you have one key that is always used. It can eventually be cracked. Some of the number stations would change after every message. Once the key changed it would take so much time to figure out what was encoded but the next encoding would change by the time the previous one was cracked. Not like the enigma machines, which would include the next key in the message for the next message. A person held a notepad of keys. After each message that key was destroyed.
Numbers stations sometimes would start with music, tones, songs, or just about anything that seemed obscure. That was an indication of what key to use. Anyone could buy a shortwave radio almost anywhere across the world, keep in mind. Sometimes you'd hear a bunch of musical tones. That would be the entry from the index of what key to use. Again, not like SSL.
I stumbled upon one by accident as a kid. I became a ham radio nut. There's a "carrier" that is defined, what key to use before the data was actually sent. Only two people had that key, it was one-use only. If someone had access to the "pad" they could get all of the data, but that "pad" was protected and easily destroyed. A new key could be sent, but only if the "pad" had the chapter, verse, edition, issue, page and word in any edition of say the bible, farmer's almanac, white pages, any book or circular like a newspaper of magazine.
Like 1, 5, 25, 4, 3, 16, 25, 3, 67, 33, or just 1, 5, 3, 2, 4, 7, 16 could be referenced, if the end user had the "key", to national geographic issue 11 1979 pages 22, 42, 57, 3, 45, 14 and the "1, 5, 3, 2, 4, 7" would be the count of the words in the first sentence of each page, or count backwards from the last word in each page, etc. The pad held the key of which source to read from. The intro specified which source for the key. They had to match up. But all the sender and receiver would know is which key to use (which source of common media that was publicly distributed).
If nobody had a copy of that notepad or "one time pad" there was no way for anyone to crack it. If they just randomly listened in, without the "source" key, again a hard copy one-time-pad, the next message would take just as much time.
Sir Author Conan Doyle even made a mention about it in one of his Sherlock stories. It stands the test of time if you really give credit towards it. A one time key. The sender has one, the recipient has one. Which one to use is part of the introduction, then destroyed.
Like you and I shared something on a piece of paper. That paper had specific wikipedia entries for one key. Another key would be a slashdot url. A third could be something from reddit. The intro for which part would be memorized and not on paper. Like Metallica's first billboard album is number 3 (reddit). The first episode of the Brady bunch would be 1 (wikipedia). The 2nd episode of Happy Days would be 2. The radio station would play an intro that matched each of those entries in some way. "Sunday Monday Happy Days" is played, in tonal or vocal form, or a short quote from that episode that isn't in the Brady Bunch or any of Metallica's lyrics from Master of Puppets.
The intro for the message would indicate slashdot. Without someone knowing what's on both pieces of paper, they wouldn't figure out that the words were picked from the page using counting of words 22,66,234,921,35,11,56,13,1,5,522,1321,72,256,145,25,27,88,67,164 on that page. Those numbers mean nothing to anyone else. After it's done repeating, the key is destroyed. Onto the next key.
I hope you kinda get it.
Then again, it's just a theory.
@@TheRealShadowspawn damn!
I thought this was going to be a hunting video, but I still watched it!
I think they overthought the big ben issue. Leave it to the brits to think the germans would monitor big ben.
I remember in about 1984 myself and a family member playing with my mums 1970s stereo that had shortwave
We pressed VHF, MW, LW and SW even listening to Radio Moscow and feeling like we were doing something bad.
I remember picking up a numbers station and telling my mum
She said oh it will be a test, but we as two teenagers thought bet its for spy's and turns out we were right.
Spooky stuff, it was the UK and the cold war was going on as we knew from the library with all the paint your windows white, take a door off and get under it pamphlets.
Oh and that cartoon where his insides prolapsed and he died of diarrhea
Loved the On Her Majesty's Secret Service score throughout!
I need to get back on the air, looking for VFO bait. I liked seeing the variety of radios in this feature, saw a few i have or have had! 857d, frg-9600, and i might have missed others. Using a good SDR with a longwire is great as a quick portable receiver.
Note that they only mention that it's "tracked down to Cyprus in the Mediterranean."
Well could be Cyprus, the so-called Turkish Republic of Cyprus, the UN or the UK
I'm a radio nerd too and love all this stuff. This is incredibly fascinating to me.
So, you used video from another report from CBS, then paired it with the audio of the documentary from BBC Radio 4. Don't see the point, but hey, you do you, dude.
Wiki: "The Lincolnshire Poacher was a powerful shortwave numbers station that transmitted from Cyprus from the mid-1970s to June 2008" (and this BBC show was broadcast in April 2005.)
Those stations are supposed to sound scary/funny, in order to attract as many listeners in the target area as possible, which will be an additional camouflage for the intended recipient. Of course, the government of the target area has exact the opposite intentions and outlaws listening to it.
My guess is a lot of these stations are related to each other, and are an international network of radio comm.
I never heard a person talking about where the transmissions came from ... methods to know the position of the sources are well known for decades
I was gonna say, why haven't the transmission sites been triangulated? (Or have they?)
Sweetest interval signal this side of Swedish Rhapsody.....he started to comment before noticing you have that as well. The CONET stuff is just too much fun.
For the Lincolnshire Poacher number station take the first 2 numbers and the last 3 of every 5
1°08'00.0 6°01'02.0 18 612 do this for every single number they send and look at the pattern.
Can you elaborate further please?
@@VashVenus No, i cannot and you should stop.
@@akentrus785 why
Fascinating. I believe the number stations are still out there. Recently discovered being broadcast from Cuba.
Number broadcasts have been known to come from Cuba for over 40 years.
just about every country has number stations just because they're impossible to decode unless you have the OTPs to decode them with, so to decode it, you basically need to:
1. kidnap and steal the OTPs from a foreign spy
2. have the host country not realise they have a spy missing
3. figure out which frequency they're broadcasting messages on
4. listen basically 24/7
5. have the right OTP and have the message be directed towards you
6. know what the hell the message means (because it'll likely be some sort of weird script like "eagle seven joshua box joshua leopard tango")
i remember as a child discovering morse code signals on my radio all it said was "ABC" in morse code but it was fascinating
there's one located in Israel that just broadcasts "TAH" over and over in morse code. Nobody even cares about it but it's fascinating
The English transmissions have been DF'd to Warrenton Virginia USA... near NSA headquarters.
I am Bulgarian Bored Boris and I actually broadcast the numbers on my credit card bill. :-P
Jiji
Is nobody going to mention the container marked "flammable" in that office? What's up with that?
some of them are in romainian, wich is strange. And one of the creepy song is also romainian, from a radio station named "antena satelor". The song is played betwen advertisments
here is a tantalizing prospect ... that there are equivalent encrypted youtube channels that are the equivalent of a traditional 'numbers station' ...
antigen4 Check out a channel called ‘Webdriver Torso’
@@sonicscrewdriver01 That's a youtube test channel....was debunked a loooooooooooong time ago.
two dangerous; internet is always a two-way communication which means you can track down the recipient
Ana Montes was caught because she tried to use a 'one time' pad TWO times.... allegedly the key was a John Steinbeck novel.
heavy
The grass is quiet green for this time of year.
will put into action
2 o'clock in English 🤣😂
Numbers stations were old and had existed for decades when the "cold war" began. They were created along side radio itself.
Okay at 9:37 they show a rocket that looks like a plane. It is this sort of decoy design that many speculate was used on 911.
The voice of the numbers of the Lincolnshire poacher sound like Ethel Jane Cain's voice 1935 Winner of the post office perfect voice for the speaking clock. ua-cam.com/video/y190uj3Bo3M/v-deo.html. The system was very complex in those days a took up a large room. I will never forget her voice when I rang up the speaking clock as a child.
It means: "It are not raining in Tokyo."
I wonder how his wife is, what was her name?: 'Radiant Flower Of The Divine Heavens'. I wonder if her feet are still playing her up?
All your base are belong to us.
It's *obviously* a FEMALE voice reading out the numbers, and not a male as they said.
A UK band called 'Hostile Foreign Powers' did a song called Gongs & Chimes, sampling the famous German numbers station with the voice of Magdeburg Annie. Great track and video, search it on UA-cam!
How can I say,,,,,,RAF Akrotiri and Akrotiri Radio Relay at the salt lake, next to the FLR/9,,, largest antenna arrays I have seen. Home of the Poacher. Shout out to the "Voice of Peace" not a numbers station, but those guys played some decent R&R, kept me rockin 1980-1983 while working Project Olive Harvest.
a-pose hevey
Been reading about this for months. I don't understand, and it's driving me Mad! I'm done and i will not return!
Funny. I searched for hours and hours and hours.....nothing. My wife asked what I was looking for. I told her, she started twirling the dial......and found a Spanish numbers station in 8 minutes. D'oh!
Stereolab album around 2:50!
One of those amazing videos where people talk in slow motion but at normal speed. Yeah
here because of a man spinning while in an A pose
The voice of Akin Fernandez (@2:38) sounds a lot like the much used History Channel expert and military historian Dr Aryeh Nusbacher, now known as Dr Lynette Nusbacher. Don't you think?
THE NUMBERS MASON!!!
The codes correspond to the names of people who will die in accidents that day.
(Cue the Theremin)
Love the telegraph key with no connections.
Maybe it's remotely energized like the great seal bug? ;o)
that's why it's called...wireless communication (sorry)
Beautiful video.
They say they may just be paranoia
But if that's the case
Why has no one ever come out and said what they are?
That means at least something sketchy is going on
Yes, sometimes governments do secret stuff...
because they are still in use and whatever system is used to derive information from these is changed with each use. i tell you to listen for one of 3 specific codes at a specific time on a specific day. 1 means drink beer, 2 means drive to wherever, and the third code means to carry out super secret operation A. i blast out codes one two and three alongside 34^5 other random codes at all times untill that date and time, and so long as neither of us tell anyone else what the date and time of the information pass was, no one but us will know what the real message is, and next week, when i talk to our other spy buddy, codes 1 2 and 3 will all be completely different, and in all likelyhood, hidden some several billion digits deeper into the alphanumeric rabbithole.
so why not just keep using them if they are just too dumb to beat with computers?
I think I have numberwang
It's probably international drug dealers or worse... an international human trafficking ring.
Number stations are awesome!
Has anyone listened to inaudible frequencies within the broadcast. The music may be a distraction for an actual modulated signal. Dunno just a thought.
500th subscriber. Congratulations!
This was posted on my Birthday in 2017..Thats weird
Must have been successful even in the age of electronics to use the number stations to pass info.
Wouldn't number stations be quite useless as a secure information transmission medium nowadays? I mean think of it, no matter how amazingly encrypted your transmitted message is, if someone/an organization cares enough they'll triangulate the signal until they find the transmitter. Once they find the transmitter there's several ways to find who is actually operating the station. Even assuming the person behind the number station transmitter is smart enough to never be anywhere near the transmitter while it's broadcasting or operational, surely fingerprints, a hair, a scent, something will be there to identify the person who visited the site to physically set up the transmitter at some point. It's quite likely that the transmitter is actually operated via internet or a LAN so that someone never has to visit the site to avoid this problem, but there are still so many ways to track down the network nodes until the operator is found. Possibly these number stations are more advanced than we assume or they are simply archaic relics that serve no sizeable purpose or threat to where they aren't really worth pursuing. Perhaps they are also simply a red herring, that's what I'm personally sure it is, though there is no way for any of us to be sure of this or of what exactly they are meant to cover up and detract attention from.
Can't tell if you're a troll or an idiot
You going to have a harder time tracking down the listener
The word is schedule not shedule
hmmmm..... UVB-76? edit: i have a question.... if i go to the location of the UVB-76 and somehow connect a transmitter..... (to be honest if i see the control panels of the UVB-76 or even antenna i will be very scared) will i be able to send a message?
If I were doing it I'd have several, some would broadcast rubbish , one would be good. Or none would be good, just to waste massive resources. The MI5 guy was interesting. All you need is a selection of random numbered books, page and word numbers, offset in some way, random pad ... unbreakable. And even if you break it, it might be a fake broadcast anyway just to toy with you. So fascinating.
I don't see long wires or Yagi's like I used to in the 70-80's, a dying hobby, but a very usefull one.
I use a 66ft EFHW wire antenna. It’s resonant on 40, 20, 15 and 10 meters 😎
Communication of aliens and lizards and alien lizards.
Fairburn ga just last week before 25 of and com cast was talking about a Russian boat going to sc some thing is going on in fairburn ga or Comcast ATL
My pick for voices for my fantasy number station are: Emma Peel, Lauren Bacall, Tom Baker, Benny Hill.
Brian Blessed..?
@@bmartin7961 Yes, I could imagine a spy hiding quietly in an attic somewhere, tuning in for his message, and having his headphones blown off as Blessed bellowed out the numbers.
What a beautiful day in Switzerland...
Fascinating!
hasn't anyone ever tried to trace or triangulate any these signals and find the peeps doing it?>?
Wasn't this a radiodocumentary on Radio 4 some years ago.
Thats what they want you to think .Remain calm 54 4 45 78 .
Thanks for the video Braiden. I used to listen to the BBC in W Africa 90s to 2010 on shortwave 15490 and 17830, sometimes between thier transmittion times there was something like churchbells (which would go on for what seemed a long time) I cant remeber any numbers though? But have always wondered why or who would be transmitting it, if it could be similar to this video?
This isnt his work, its a bbc radio programme he recorded and uploaded as his own
This is a bizarrely assembled product, and I've just got to do a Sinister Prime Minister Pete Nice move, and give it the ol' gas face.
4:34 hold up dis a bop
My favorite number station is 177013.
Lmao I prefer 133013
I think 4 is the best
Still working at 4.625Mhz...the Buzzer.
Did you edit the video together, Braiden Robson? It was very well done.
what! has no one ever watched fringe? It's the first people.. ask Sam Wise
Like radio…just listen. 👍
It sounds alot like church bells, yes.
It is not church bells. Bells at that tone have more Gong to them..
I think the recording is a large grandfather clock instead..
Nicht “zwo”, aber “zwei”.
In ww2 we have so called Hallamaan porukka (Eversti Hallamaa)😉...
"Zwei", not "zwo" - this can be heard perfectly clearly at 10:43
Nein; ist zwo.
It's the coding of the universe leaking into the physical world
This video is weird! I don't mean the subject matter, just the way the video doesn't seem to be linked to the audio. This looks very suspicious.
🤔
Does Maxwell Smart listen to this?
KG84C No likes? I’m outraged.