A Gift for a Spy

When I went home for Mother's Day with my brother, my uncle gave me a gift - a shortwave radio! I've always wanted one of these things and my uncle has always been an enthusiast of ham radio and all things nerdy and technical.

I remember being a kid and having he and our aunt visit on Christmas - I'd sit with his radio and listen to it all night. I was amazed and it sparked my imagination that I could be listening to stations broadcast from Japan, Mexico, Russia, Germany, Holland, the Middle East - wherever - and it would magically come out of this little boxy machine with a speaker on it. In many ways I'm still to this day intrigued by these kinds of things - the internet has done a far better job of bringing the world together but it will never replace the feeling of turning that little nob and catching a broadcast from the other side of the planet.

If you've ever listened to shortwave radio, you are probably familiar with the sort of programming you can get. The way it works has a lot to do with the ionization of the atmosphere as well, and the time of day. At almost any hour of the day you can get two ears full of bible-thumping apocolyptic Christianity - religion seems to be dominant. On the other hand, you can receive BBC-style updates from countries all over the world, much of it in English. China, in fact, has something called CRI (China Radio International) that repeats a 1-hour show daily along the lines of "Yes, you like us, China is great, we're doing great things, please spend your time and money here!" However, there is something I just learned that has got me wishing I had my radio right now.

Shortwave radio, for years, has been used as a method of communicating with covert (of the most secret and dangerous variety) operatives working for organizations such as MI6. One of the most well-known of these is nicknamed "The Lincolnshire Poacher." This is a mysterious, and frankly creepy, broadcast where they repeat bars of an English folk song, followed by a thoroughly English sounding lady repeating strings of five numbers. Operatives use the broadcast in combination with "one-time pads" to receive the messages. Wiki it up sometime. Amateurs have deciphered that the broadcast comes from the island of Cyprus and even have a broadcast schedule outlined. Besides things like this you can sometimes receive broadcasts from transcontinental flights, military concerns, conspiracy theory networks and all kinds of crazy stuff. Its these "rogue" broadcasts that have got me interested.