One of the questions in the SWL community that came up was, has anyone noticed any increase or other change in numbers station activity before or since the terrorist attacks. The general consensus is that there has been no appreciable difference in numbers activity. This does certainly appear to be a strange occurrence, since one would think that intelligence agencies would be passing enormous amounts of traffic to their agents.

One thing that we can assume about "normal" numbers traffic is that most messages are dummy messages, or message groups sent to cover the lack of normal traffic and to make the enemy waste time on decryption efforts.

The E3 "Lincolnshire Poacher" station (as well as her sister station E4 "Cherry Ripe") send numerous messages on a daily basis, each consisting of 200 groups. It's hard to imagine that every message is a valid message. This is one way to hide messages, as opposed to remaining silent until a high number of messages need to be sent. Anyone attempting traffic analysis won't notice anything different. Lincolnshire Poacher is located in Cyprus, broadcasting presumably to agents in the Middle East.

Since all the evidence points to Mideastern terrorists, it may be worth keeping an ear on number stations broadcasting to/from the Middle East in the near future. There's no guarantee that there will be any difference in message traffic, but it's worth looking out for.

Lincolnshire Poacher (E3) - As noted earlier, LP is located on Cyprus and believed to be broadcasting to agents in the Middle East. Frequencies used are 5746, 6959, 8464, 9251, 10426, 11545, 12603, 13375, 14487, 15682, 16084, 16314, and 16475 kHz. Transmissions are normally used on parallel frequencies. Different frequencies are used at different times of the year. Messages are always 200 groups long, each group sent twice.

4XZ (M22) - 4XZ is listed as Haifa Naval, Israel. Supposedly this station is used to transmit messages in CW to Israeli naval vessels, but transmissions are always one-way broadcasts consisting of 5L groups. Occasionally some Hebrew plaintext is noted. Most of the time the VVV DE 4XZ marker is sent. Messages are sent at random times. Message numbers in the preamble are sent backwards. Frequencies used are 5911, 6920, 6417, 9256, 10046, 12984, 16317, 17050, and 18481 kHz.

Mossad (E10) - The Mossad stations consist of a female voice reading 5L message groups consisting of international phonetics. Messages are sent twice. Various callups are used on different frequencies, and callups with a "2" after the three-digit call mean that no message will be sent. Occasionally, message strings will be sent in place of messages. for example, I once heard one of the stations repeating SYN28P14F553. One can only guess what these strings mean. Some E10 frequencies used are 4560, 4880, 6840, 6912, 10125, 10352, 12950, 14750, 15980, 17170, 17410, and 19715 kHz.

In closing, I would like to say that my thoughts & prayers go out to the families and friends of those who lost their lives in the recent tragedy.