HFU HF Underground
General Category => General Radio Discussion => Topic started by: jordan on October 10, 2014, 2320 UTC
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To avoid FCC confrontation via a traceable (i.e. contract) cell phone number, do pirate radio DJ's ever use prepaid cell phones to give the number out over the air for song requests?
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Yup. Several have since the mid-90's.
You could possibly be traced by the tower(s) that receives the majority of the calls. A cellphone is nothing but a glorified low powered walkie-talkie dependent on line of sight propagation. Once the authorities get the general location of the phone towers hit most frequently by callers, df'ing the station shouldn't be hard.
However, a hit and run pirate that uses multiple sites/phones and keeps transmissions short could probably pull it off.
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We do live in the VOIP era. You can score a prepaid POTS adapter for as little as $10 and feed a phone hybrid with that. Don't want big brother to know where you and your IP are? No problem, use a proxy ;)
+-RH
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We do live in the VOIP era. You can score a prepaid POTS adapter for as little as $10 and feed a phone hybrid with that. Don't want big brother to know where you and your IP are? No problem, use a proxy ;)
+-RH
I have no clue what any of that stuff is, or how it works. Could you explain this to a newbie (myself) please?
Thanks!
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There are providers out there that have free VOIP numbers. You sign up for one under a phoney name, buy a POTS adapter and register it to the free phone number. You can then use the number as is, or get a google voice redirect number. At any rate, you give out the number and people call in.
A proxy is a web service that hides your geolocation by using some other IP or range of IP's. This is a service you pay for in most cases to browse the web anonymously. You can also use it for other things too, like streaming, chat, ect.
+-RH
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On shortwave, the FCC can do a long-range triangulation of the transmitter via their remote-controlled monitoring network a lot quicker than screwing around trying to track down the origins of cellphones, I would think.... They aren't very likely to bother with that.
... but if you wanted to stay a little safer, the battery should be removed from the cellphone when not in use for pirate radio calls-- otherwise it could still be tracked, even when "turned off", by government agencies with those capabilities....
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Don't you need some sort of court order to get cell phone info or maybe I'm watching too many bad movies!
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http://www.hfunderground.com/wiki/Wack_Radio
Apparently the way this worked was that the station would call business numbers after hours, looking for an answering machine to pick up. Back then the access codes were very simple, and the station would try a few for popular machine types until they got control. They would then program in their own message, and announce the number during the show. They would then periodically check the machine for messages from listeners.
Seems to me there was at least one station that had an 800 number that they would announce, for the same purpose; this may have been WACK also, but I don't recall.
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remember the good old days of using 'loop lines'...? brings back memories of Pirate Joe and Pirate radio new england ;-)
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The scenario Fansome describes sounds like what the old Newsline for Free Radio (at least thats what I recall it was named) in the 1990's used. That was a bit of pirate radio history that seems to have been forgotten, but before everyone was on the Internet, it was a good way to keep up on the latest pirate DX news. Even though they weren't a radio station (they did "pirate" an awnsering machine though), they sent QSLs out.
I remember calling their number after the whole thing collapsed...the guy who awnsered wasn't very friendly!