Right. All right, it's that time of the week. It's time for the global Bob Show. The Globalbob show, we are the crossroads of technology and politics. As we teased out last week, got a real special show in store for you. Today, we're gonna talk about some old technology that is still relevant. Technology I'm talking about is number stations. We are broadcasting today from the Richard Cook broadcast facility, aka my radio room, of which I have dedicated the name, Richard Cook, which was my grandfather. And from all accounts that I heard, he was really the master of this broadcasting, and he started his own radio station, which we've talked about. So today, we're in the Richard Cook broadcast facility. I like to thank everybody that tunes in each and every week, and those that share the podcast, you can direct people to go to the global Bob show.com. Or they can reach out on the Facebook page Globalbob show. We also have a Twitter account at Globalbob show. And of course, you can email me or you can send me spam messages or questions or whatever you want. Globalbob show@gmail.com. Now before we get too far into this, I need to give a public service announcement. Let me tell you something that's really relevant right now. Now, we just enjoyed the Fourth of July weekend. So us here in the states had a three day weekend, which was very nice and relaxing. However, something that I have personally experience is that smishing is on the rise smishing if you guys remember from a couple episodes back, that is S M S phishing, what is SMS phishing, so we're going to break this all the way down. SMS phishing is the text messages that you get on your cell phone that say, your Amazon package is on its way, click here, because there's been some updated information. Or if you're like me, you have received some very highly targeted smishing, which I don't want to give the details of, because I'm not sure if maybe the person that's trying to fish me is also a listener of the show. But basically, I'm getting some very targeted text messages, that know some information, nothing, nothing major, but anyways, they're highly targeted, has my name in it has another person's name in it. And it says that they would like to thank me for the Fourth of July, weekend and stuff like that. So it's a very highly targeted. I've cooperated this with some other people that are receiving the exact same message. So whoever is trying to target us, I guess they know exactly what they could probably send to get us to click on. So anyways, just know that that's on the rise. Mine is highly targeted, but you may get one from Amazon, or UPS. Now these aren't really from Amazon and ups. And really the way I tell whether it's from Amazon UPS, FedEx or other people that send me tracking information, tracking updates. I look at my history, and I look and see because a lot of times they come from the same phone number so I'm like okay, yeah, I've been getting this for the last year from Amazon, FedEx ups, but just know that you got to take due care when you do get those messages. So that's my public service announcement for this week. So as it appears that the SMS phishing is on the rise. All right now off to the topic, Numbers Station. What's really cool about number stations are is that they're older technology, but they're still relevant even to today. So before we dive into number of stations and go through that, like to kind of build it up a little bit. So as you know, I'm a ham radio operator. And that's the ham radio operators that have really kind of aggregated a lot of information about these number stations. But why do ham radio operators listen to number stations? Well, one, there's a technique that ham radio operators like to practice and it's called de effing or direction finding. And so these numbers stations, they broadcast on a really regular interval. And so ham radio enthusiast, they enjoy trying to figure out where these number stations are. Now I have to mention the number stations are down in the H F band or the high frequency band. And basically, the high frequency band is below 30 megahertz. So 30 megahertz and below. That's the H F band. And this is the same band where shortwave radio libs and shortwave radio broadcasts have been going on for quite some time, we have ones like the Voice of America, we have BBC that broadcast and was shortwave radio broadcast, they tend to stay down in the lower frequencies because they can have a single transmitter in one country and then transmit around the world. So you'll see that in this space, there's a lot of religious broadcasts that go on there, because it's basically a real effective way to transmit your message around the world. Well, in the case of number stations, what they tried to do these number stations are one way voice channels. And it is speculated that they're used to communicate with spies and to give direction to them. And we're going to hear about a couple of cases where number stations came into play. But down in that HF band, where it can skip so the radiofrequency skips, and from there, it bounces off the ionosphere, it comes down to the earth, it goes up to the ionosphere and it makes a skip around the world. Now skip is a lot easier. And the lower bands, the higher bands tend to be frequency bands, and the signal kind of follows the contour of the earth. Those are called Ground waves. And with HF not only do you have ground waves, but you also have sky waves. And really all frequencies have sky waves and ground waves, they're just more apparent in the lower frequencies. Now before we continue on explaining number stations and all about them, let's take a listen to a number station. This is one of the most famous number stations. 97975375977 Now that number station you just heard was called link char poacher. And there's a bunch of different names for number stations because no spy agency or government has really ever taken claim to run in these number stations. And so hobbyist and enthusiast they give them names like that one was Lancashire poacher, which was an English of folk song. Now there's other ones on there that are called the Mad violinist and Yosemite Sam. So a lot of times the way they get their name is from the preamble because number stations all contain this preamble. And from there, though it's kind of like I feel like it's telling everybody okay, get your pieces of paper ready and pencils and Decoder Rings. Because what's coming next is a string of numbers or words. Now, the string of number and words or words. That's called a one time pad. Now one time pad is old technology, but it's very secure and it uses random numbers or one words. And when they generate the numbers and words, then there's also a key. And when they put this all together, someone can broadcast this message out in the open, and then the spy or whomever listens to this. And then from there, they can open up their one time pad book and see what the instructions are. Now, there's a lot of ways that they do this. So when the spy goes into the foreign country, he knows that he needs to listen in on this particular radio frequency at this particular time, and then listening for the preamble. And then they can start writing down the string of words. But the pad or the book needs to be secure, because if someone was to have that book, then they could listen in on the radio, and then see what the instruction is. So these books have been written on various things that could either be concealed or destroyed. One such book was written on rice paper, and so when the spy would go to that page and decode, then they can eat the spy paper, the rice paper, I mean, I guess it is spy paper, because it's meant to be eaten. But what was funny was is that I was reading an article or book or somewhere years ago, and they said that they actually had a problem with the ink while the rice paper was able to be digested so they you know, sense was destroyed the ink was given some of the people upset stomach. So I thought that that was kind of interesting. Now, not all of its written down on rice, paper and gum, but some have been used with microdot technology. Now, microdot technology is pretty neat. And it's a way to shrink the letters and numbers and words and books down into something very, very small. So if you all remember, probably in the 70s 80s, maybe the mid 90s, they had microfiche, which you could go down to the clerk of court and you want to look up some public records, they would hand you a piece of micro fish, and you would put it on the machine and slide it around. And essentially, it was a light that shined through the film, and it would blow it up to like the size of paper, a lot of old newspapers use micro fish, think of micro fish, but on steroids, meaning super, super, super tiny, small. That is what microdot technology is now they had to figure out how the spy could keep this book on them and how they could very easily get rid of it if say they were to get caught. Now, the other thing that makes number stations very, very effective is that it doesn't require advanced technology to listen to and decode. Let's say we were to go to a foreign country. And we're going to come in with our laptop computers and all this fancy electronic equipment that may raise somebody's eyebrows like Hey, who's this person bringing in, you know, laptops and maybe some kind of encryption technology? Well, with the number station, you can just tune it in on a shortwave radio. And you don't even have to carry the shortwave radio with you. You can buy shortwave radios probably in most countries, and no one would think any of it because it's just a radio and especially in some of the developing countries, third world countries, they still use shortwave radio a lot. So let's listen to the link sharp poacher one more time. 77171715 So the links are poacher, like I've mentioned before, is one of the most famous number stations. Now it started operating out of the 60s. And when it first came on the air no one knew where it was from other than they would tune in to this radio station or various radio stations and they would hear this, this crazy thing these tune and then with the string of information after it, but it was later found that it was operated out of the country of Cyprus. Cyprus is a small island nation. And its preamble, as we mentioned before is the English folk song called the link Shire poacher, amateur radio operators were able to direction find this and got in pretty close and from what they figured out that it was actually being operated from the Royal Air Force Base in Cyprus. So as I mentioned before, Intel agencies and governments have never openly really admitted that they have number of stations. And it's only been speculation of what they've been used for. But however, if you have something cryptic like this, that's being broadcast from a government facility, namely an Air Force Station, then chances are probably it's related to the government. Now links are poacher, whenever it started transmitting it transmitted for a long, long time. It's last transmission was actually in 2008. So you can see that this was started probably during the Cold War, and maybe to communicate with spies. And then after 2008, it just boof went offline. Now the US and British intelligence, they've been long speculated through a number stations. However, there are plenty of number stations that are being broadcasted every day. And one in particular, that's kind of close to my home, is Cuban number stations. So not just Americans and British and American allies. But there's number stations that are thought to be Latino of nature, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, almost every Romania, so almost every country seems to have had their hand and number stations at some point in time. But the Cuban number stations or the voice de la chica and a teach shown was two different number stations. And we know that a 10 shown was used to transmit coded messages to Cuban spies inside the United States. And for us here in Florida, we always keep our ear tuned to our neighbors to the south. They're only about 90 miles off the coast of Florida. And so anything having to do with Cuba usually makes local news. And this actually made national news. And there was evidence in the case against five Cuban spies that was presented that shows that they were receiving instructions via the number station. Now how do we know this? Well, the Cuban intelligence agency, they kind of made a mistake. Remember how I talked about how important it is to keep this pad secure and this book secure? Well, they didn't write their pad on a stick of gum, or rice paper, or even a micro DOD, they actually had a computer program that the spies would run, and they would type the message into the computer program. And it would use that to decrypt the information. And in the case of spy craft, that is a big no, no. Usually, the more high tech you go, the better chance of your communications method being intercepted and broken. And I don't want to go into all of coding theory and cryptography. But the main reason why is is that it's very hard for computers to generate things that are truly random. And moreover, just like with pictures that are posted online, even there could be hundreds of copies. And no one knows whether there's one copy or 100 copies. And so really, when you're dealing with things that are this sensitive, you need to make sure that you keep it old school and have exactly the amount of copies that are required for the communication. So Cuban intelligence you made a mistake on this one. And what happened? Well, the FBI had these Cubans in their crosshairs. And they were able to break into an apartment of one of the Cubans, and they were able to copy the codebook and pad off. And they did this in 1995. And then in 1998 is when all of this broke. So for three years, the FBI could just tune into the same frequency and they could to listen in on the coded message, they would type it into the stolen computer files that they got, and boom, it would decrypt it. Now, that's the Cubans, we've talked about sending numbers into the US. And we've talked about the British from Cyprus, send in numbers around the world, but give it up to your good old amateur radio operators here. And they've traced number stations right here in the US. And of course, the FCC, Federal Communications Commission and the FBI and CIA, NSA, no one's gonna admit to who runs these these number stations or even what they're used for. Like I said, there's tons of speculation around this. And one of the ones is this Yosemite Sam, he, you know, he starts off with his preamble and the voice of Yosemite Sam, and that is, you know, an American cowboy type for my overseas listeners, you know, so it's kind of, you know, they speculate that it's the US government running this Yosemite, Sam, but it could be false operations as well, you know, I mean, if you want to disguise who's running something, then maybe put it in a language that is native to that country. So anyways, Yosemite Sam, and with his preamble, it is kind of funny, you can go out on YouTube and just type in number station, Yosemite, Sam, and you can hear what he talks about. But back to the D F and or direction finding, they've actually found where there's a station, here in Florida, that was down at West Palm Beach airport. Now, what's interesting about that is that West Palm Beach airport, is a public airport. But it's not a Naval Station, or it's not a military installation. And so amateur radio operators have tracked a number station that they believe was that the West Palm Beach airport. Now, they've also tracked down number stations in the past that were broadcasting out of homestead Air Force Base. So these are just a few examples of these number stations. Like I said, no one has ever come forward and said that this is what they're used for. But we do have the evidence from the Cuban five that were prosecuted of which we listened in on Cuban number stations and decrypted them because of the stolen pad that they got. So we know what's being used for spies. But other speculation is is that these are used for military command and control these frequencies. And that maybe in an apocalyptic event, that they could use these radio frequencies to communicate with key staff. And so these number stations are just transmitting gibberish, just to keep that frequency occupied, so nobody else will use it. So that's one theory. There's another number station. And I guess it still is a number station, kind of, but it's called the buzzer. And the buzzard is just what it sounds like. Just like its nickname. Its preamble is a buzzing set. Now that's been traced to Moscow. And it's speculation that maybe the buzzer is some sort of deadman switch that would launch nucular attack in the event that there is a nuclear exchange and the command and control of Russia is wiped out. But like I said, we don't know. However, what we do know is that these HF bands are very efficient at transmitting both voice and digital communications around the world. And this is no more evident than with the war going on between Russia and the Ukraine. And you can go out to YouTube and various other sites and type in Russian h f communication. And you can hear him on there using HF radio to call in airstrikes. You can hear them arguing on HF radio, and you can tell that they're not or they don't seem to be professional radio operators because you'll hear him cussing in Russian now I'm don't know Russian, but the way I know their customer in Russian and what they're saying in Russian is because it's being translated inside the videos and so that's how I know that they're not professional because everybody knows you don't cuss on radio and usually on radio specially with military and we see this a lot of times with the space shuttle whenever it when go up, and also to the SpaceX, that on the radio people are very crisp, they, you know, they have that radio talk. It's very militaristic. And in these videos where the Russians are using the HF bands, you can hear him cussin, and then hollering and screaming, just, it's just not professional at all. Well, we're coming up on the bottom of the half hour. And I would like to thank everybody that has stayed tuned in to the show here. And this has been really neat to talk about number stations, and even more to, you know, do a little research here before the show. And it's kind of cool that something that's this old is still unbreakable technology. Now my new the book would have to be stolen. But you know, there's tons of stuff that we see in the news all the time where this encryption was broken, and that encryption was broken. But on these one time pads, because there's only one key that unlocks it, that this just the most perfect encryption and it requires nothing electronic, or anything. So, this has been your field commander Bob, and I've enjoyed taking you across the highways and byways of this podcast as it relates to technology and government. And we just really like to thank everybody who tuned in. Also, please send your comments, questions concerns, to Globalbob show@gmail.com. Or you can reach me out on Twitter or the Globalbob show Facebook page. And until then, I hope everybody gets out there Decoder Rings and listens in on shortwave radio and find some number stations. Until next time,