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#1
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How hard for a spy to receive 6855 or 8010 kHz?
Could a spy modify an AM radio by adding a few capacitors?
TIA Clark KC7FGB I read this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...122801190.html Messages to Spies Are Coded but Not Hidden Over Shortwave, Anyone Can Listen By James Gordon Meek New York Daily News Friday, December 29, 2006; Page A25 It turns out that anybody can tune in to the world's top spy agencies talking to operatives. All you need is a cheap shortwave-radio receiver, the kind available at any drugstore. Tune it to 6855 or 8010 kHz. On the hour, you might hear a girlish voice repeating strings of numbers monotonously in Spanish. "Nueve, uno, nueve, tres, cinco-cinco, cuatro, cinco, tres, dos . . .," went one seemingly harmless message heard last month on a Grundig radio. It was the Cuban Intelligence Directorate or Russian FSB broadcasting coded instructions from Havana to spies inside the United States. Turn the dial up to 11545 kHz, and you might hear a few notes of an obscure English folk song, "Lincolnshire Poacher," followed by a voice repeating strings of numbers. That's believed to be British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, broadcasting from Cyprus. On 6840 kHz, you may hear a voice reading groups of letters. That's a station nicknamed "E10," thought to be Israel's Mossad intelligence. Chris Smolinski runs SpyNumbers.com and the "Spooks" e-mail list, where "number stations" hobbyists log hundreds of shortwave messages transmitted every month. "It's like a puzzle. They're mystery stations," explained Smolinski, who has tracked the spy broadcasts for 30 years. While hobbyists guess at the meaning of each cryptic message or which spy service sent it, it's no mystery to intelligence officials, who confirmed the purpose is espionage. The signals are too strong to be made by amateurs and are often on licensed frequencies. The State Department once complained to the Israeli Embassy in Washington that "E10" was blocking a U.S. broadcast, a source said. "I can't imagine who else would waste the time in front of a microphone reading numbers" but a spy, said James Bamford, who has written about intelligence. Bamford calls number stations "simple but effective" spycraft. "It's extremely effective," agreed a senior intelligence official. "If you have a one-time pad, the code can't be broken, and you can send out dummy broadcasts as much as you want to confuse your enemy." A "one-time pad" is the key to unlocking coded shortwave messages that the CIA calls "one-way voice link." It is low-risk because it's known only to the sender and the recipient and used just once before being destroyed, said retired CIA officer Tony Mendez. Mendez said he would often imprint the code on microfilm or even a cigarette paper. Once inside the target country, a CIA operative could make a shortwave receiver out of simple materials. "The voices are not real people," he added. "They're computer-generated." A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment. One-time pads and coded radio began in World War I, said Thomas Boghardt, a historian at the International Spy Museum. Little has changed since, judging by recent espionage cases involving shortwave radios, including that of a man detained in Canada last month and accused of being a Russian spy. In Miami last week, Carlos and Elsa Alvarez pleaded guilty to lesser charges after the United States accused them of spying for Cuba. A prosecutor alleged in a court hearing this summer that they received shortwave "messages in five-digit groupings." An FBI interview transcript shows Alvarez admitted going into his bathroom "on Fridays to listen at 11" for messages aimed at the couple, code-named "David" and "Deborah." |
#2
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How hard for a spy to receive 6855 or 8010 kHz?
Clark Magnuson wrote:
Could a spy modify an AM radio by adding a few capacitors? Not well, but where can you buy an AM radio or capacitors anymore :-) ? Or was this some hypothetical 1940's time-travel question? A $10 super-el-cheapo pocket SW receiver from a discount store does just fine for picking up numbers stations. Some but not all number stations are CW or SSB and you'd need a BFO which is one step up from the super-el-cheapos. Tim. |
#3
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How hard for a spy to receive 6855 or 8010 kHz?
In article ,
Clark Magnuson wrote: Could a spy modify an AM radio by adding a few capacitors? Possibly, but I doubt that it would work well if you started from a standard US-type AM broadcast-band receiver. The frequencies that this article speaks of are up in the HF band, roughly 10 times higher than the AM broadcast-band frequencies, and these radios' built-in loopstick antennas are not well suited to receive these sorts of signals. A spy in most Western countries could simply buy an off-the-shelf AM/FM/shortwave receiver (very widely available). Simple but very effective direct-conversion or superheterodyne receivers (capable of receiving CW, SSB, and AM) can be built out of "junk box" parts by anyone with a modest amount of training and experience. Many of the popular QRP receiver designs could be tweaked to receive on these sorts of frequencies with very little difficulty. Now, if somebody had an old "7-transistor" AM radio (circa 1960 or so), it would likely be possible to salvage enough parts from it to build a simple direct-conversion shortwave receiver. I doubt that this would be possible (or at least not easy) for today's highly-integrated IC-based radios. -- Dave Platt AE6EO Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads! |
#4
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How hard for a spy to receive 6855 or 8010 kHz?
Or the spy could just login to any of the dozens of SW receivers on the web
and tune to his/her favorite spy frequency. But that's not romantic at all! "Clark Magnuson" wrote in message . .. Could a spy modify an AM radio by adding a few capacitors? TIA Clark KC7FGB I read this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...122801190.html Messages to Spies Are Coded but Not Hidden Over Shortwave, Anyone Can Listen By James Gordon Meek New York Daily News Friday, December 29, 2006; Page A25 It turns out that anybody can tune in to the world's top spy agencies talking to operatives. All you need is a cheap shortwave-radio receiver, the kind available at any drugstore. Tune it to 6855 or 8010 kHz. On the hour, you might hear a girlish voice repeating strings of numbers monotonously in Spanish. "Nueve, uno, nueve, tres, cinco-cinco, cuatro, cinco, tres, dos . . .," went one seemingly harmless message heard last month on a Grundig radio. It was the Cuban Intelligence Directorate or Russian FSB broadcasting coded instructions from Havana to spies inside the United States. Turn the dial up to 11545 kHz, and you might hear a few notes of an obscure English folk song, "Lincolnshire Poacher," followed by a voice repeating strings of numbers. That's believed to be British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, broadcasting from Cyprus. On 6840 kHz, you may hear a voice reading groups of letters. That's a station nicknamed "E10," thought to be Israel's Mossad intelligence. Chris Smolinski runs SpyNumbers.com and the "Spooks" e-mail list, where "number stations" hobbyists log hundreds of shortwave messages transmitted every month. "It's like a puzzle. They're mystery stations," explained Smolinski, who has tracked the spy broadcasts for 30 years. While hobbyists guess at the meaning of each cryptic message or which spy service sent it, it's no mystery to intelligence officials, who confirmed the purpose is espionage. The signals are too strong to be made by amateurs and are often on licensed frequencies. The State Department once complained to the Israeli Embassy in Washington that "E10" was blocking a U.S. broadcast, a source said. "I can't imagine who else would waste the time in front of a microphone reading numbers" but a spy, said James Bamford, who has written about intelligence. Bamford calls number stations "simple but effective" spycraft. "It's extremely effective," agreed a senior intelligence official. "If you have a one-time pad, the code can't be broken, and you can send out dummy broadcasts as much as you want to confuse your enemy." A "one-time pad" is the key to unlocking coded shortwave messages that the CIA calls "one-way voice link." It is low-risk because it's known only to the sender and the recipient and used just once before being destroyed, said retired CIA officer Tony Mendez. Mendez said he would often imprint the code on microfilm or even a cigarette paper. Once inside the target country, a CIA operative could make a shortwave receiver out of simple materials. "The voices are not real people," he added. "They're computer-generated." A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment. One-time pads and coded radio began in World War I, said Thomas Boghardt, a historian at the International Spy Museum. Little has changed since, judging by recent espionage cases involving shortwave radios, including that of a man detained in Canada last month and accused of being a Russian spy. In Miami last week, Carlos and Elsa Alvarez pleaded guilty to lesser charges after the United States accused them of spying for Cuba. A prosecutor alleged in a court hearing this summer that they received shortwave "messages in five-digit groupings." An FBI interview transcript shows Alvarez admitted going into his bathroom "on Fridays to listen at 11" for messages aimed at the couple, code-named "David" and "Deborah." |
#5
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How hard for a spy to receive 6855 or 8010 kHz?
Brian wrote: Or the spy could just login to any of the dozens of SW receivers on the web and tune to his/her favorite spy frequency. Could you clarify this? You mean there are Web sites where you type in an arbitrary frequency and hear what's being broadcast on it? -- Charles Packer http://cpacker.org/whatnews mailboxATcpacker.org |
#6
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How hard for a spy to receive 6855 or 8010 kHz?
asked:
Could you clarify this? You mean there are Web sites where you type in an arbitrary frequency and hear what's being broadcast on it? http://www.dxtuners.com/ -- Gandhi Lisa, if the Bible has taught us nothing else - and it hasn't - it's that girls should stick to girls' sports, such as hot oil wrestling and foxy boxing and such and such. |
#7
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How hard for a spy to receive 6855 or 8010 kHz?
Tim Shoppa wrote:
A $10 super-el-cheapo pocket SW receiver from a discount store does just fine for picking up numbers stations. Some but not all number stations are CW or SSB and you'd need a BFO which is one step up from the super-el-cheapos. Tim. Well, some numbers stations actually transmit modulated morse, so you wouldn't need a BFO. -- Gandhi Son, when you participate in sporting events, it's not whether you win or lose: it's how drunk you get. |
#8
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How hard for a spy to receive 6855 or 8010 kHz?
Dave Platt ) writes:
In article , Clark Magnuson wrote: Could a spy modify an AM radio by adding a few capacitors? Possibly, but I doubt that it would work well if you started from a standard US-type AM broadcast-band receiver. The frequencies that this article speaks of are up in the HF band, roughly 10 times higher than the AM broadcast-band frequencies, and these radios' built-in loopstick antennas are not well suited to receive these sorts of signals. A spy in most Western countries could simply buy an off-the-shelf AM/FM/shortwave receiver (very widely available). Simple but very effective direct-conversion or superheterodyne receivers (capable of receiving CW, SSB, and AM) can be built out of "junk box" parts by anyone with a modest amount of training and experience. Many of the popular QRP receiver designs could be tweaked to receive on these sorts of frequencies with very little difficulty. Now, if somebody had an old "7-transistor" AM radio (circa 1960 or so), it would likely be possible to salvage enough parts from it to build a simple direct-conversion shortwave receiver. I doubt that this would be possible (or at least not easy) for today's highly-integrated IC-based radios. First, a "spy" is not going to need to build a radio. They will be able to get their hands on something locally, or (as in WWII), they'll be parachuted in with the needed equipment. And in this day and age, with so many means of communication (and at least for the moment, no all-encompassing wars), there are all kinds of mainstream means of contacting spies without being tracked. Traditionally, spies were not radio experts, unless their job was to accumulate information on radio matters. But, if someone really did need to assemble a shortwave radio, I suspect it's far easier today than in the past. At the very least, no more difficult than in the past. Thirty years ago, magazines were full of simple superhets based on standard AM radios. Some would rework the front end circuitry to tune a shortwave band, and the fact that ICs are used rather than transistors isn't likely to make that really difficult. I can remember in 1971 when RCA introduced the CA3088 AM radio IC, and QST ran an article pointing out how it could be used. Obviously not the best choice, but an IC instead of transistors isn't likely to make a worse receiver. The limitations would come from image rejection and lousy selectivity (and maybe lack of IF gain), and those were all there with transistor based radios. Others would strip off the front end tuned circuits, and simply use the AM broadcast receiver as a 455KHz IF, building a mixer and oscillator to feed into it. And of course, many would add a converter to an existing AM broadcast radio. Sacrifice one radio to build a converter for another. Then you get double conversion, which would be a good thing given the common 455KHz IF for most AM broadcast radios. For best results, use a car radio for the radio, since they often have better selectivity and of course are well shielded compared to portable AM radios with their loopstick antennas. Need a BFO? Those can be tossed together easily with a transistor off some scrap board, and an IF transformer from a scrap radio (and I seem to recall some using ceramic filters as the frequency determining element in a BFO, and if those work, they are easily available out of scrap radios, compared to ceramic resonators). ICs may offer better performance. Since transistors in an IC are cheap, they may be more likely to use a balanced mixer. Grab an IC out of a radio, and you've got your mixer (and you have a choice of the mixer from the AM or the mixer from the FM section). Some have put together SSB receivers out of narrow-band FM receiver ICs (they simply ignore the FM detector), and someone used merely the mixer out of a more complicated receiver IC for a direct conversion receiver. A lot of FM broadcast radios use IF strip ICs that don't allow for separate use of the IF amplifiers from the limiters, but I've stripped at least one car radio that offered up an MC1350 IF amplifier. For that matter, use the FM IF strip as a quasi-synchronous detector for AM, or if it's of the right design, feed a BFO into the limiter input and you've got your product detector. Find a CB set, and you get better IF selectivity, and many will be double conversion. Retune the front end, and replace the synthesizer with a tuneable oscillator. Get really lucky, and the garage sale will offer up an SSB CB set, for even narrower selectivity and of course CW/SSB reception with no mods. Circa 1942, you'd have far more trouble getting parts. Oh, I suppose there were more local electronic stores, but there was hardly any consumer electronic equipment. Nowadays it's really really common. And that supplies so many useful parts. Michael VE2BVW |
#9
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How hard for a spy to receive 6855 or 8010 kHz?
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#10
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How hard for a spy to receive 6855 or 8010 kHz?
This is the 21st century!
All one needs to do is post a seemingly ordinary message (like this one) in any newsgroup (like one dealing with Disney movies). Use the public library and a pre-arranged name. Bingo! The message appears near instantly all over the world, and in convenient, printer-friendly format.;-) Even easier on the receiving end. Come on guys! Chuck ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups ----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =---- |
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