AM radio
Many people born after 1980CE have never listened to an AM radio station, or even know what it means or why their car radio has one. It is the original technology for voice-based radio communications, dating back to the early 1900’s. When electricity was not ubiquitous and transmitters needed to be powerful, a small number of AM transmitters could cover a broad area. Yes, it was mono rather than stereo, full of hiss and static, and faded in an out when you were near the edge of a coverage area, but with a fifty thousand watt transmitter, one radio station could blanket several states.
Today, AM has been all but replaced by FM, and the number of large AM stations is mostly a legacy of hardware and permits that have never been allowed to expire. AM is the province of niche broadcasters and low-budget operations. Alternate language channels, sports radio, crackpots and political fringe commentators with call-in talk shows, religious broadcasts and such.
And this makes it perfect for small, widely spread groups of conspirators of all kinds. Because the output of an AM radio is completely unfiltered, low-bandwith data can be piggybacked onto a voice signal and broadcast over a multi-state area to anyone who knows when to listen and how to extract the data. A laptop and a disposable cell phone is all you need. Just park in a secluded spot near a cell phone tower and wait for the show to come on. A few minutes of time being an amusing caller to someone’s late-night UFO, religious, political or sports show is sufficient to transmit several pages of text, a short audio recording or a few pictures. The longer the message you need to transmit, the more entertaining, crazy or provocative you have to be. Neither the origin nor the destination of the hidden message can be tracked, with no need for fancy electronics or software to prevent tracing of internet-based communications or any worries about physical items being intercepted in the mail.
A select few late-night AM radio hosts, mostly those whose shows already lean towards a conspiracy bent, may know something of what is going on, but probably not exactly who, why or what is being said.
Most of those who use this method are “old school” conspirators, people at least in their 50’s who are part of some loosely knit group that numbers no more than a hundred or so, passing information and news back and forth on their particular niche conspiracy. They are usually intelligent and moderately sophisticated when it comes to technology, but are nowhere near cutting edge. They would be the types who added computers to their ham radio setups back in the 1980’s, or tinkered with homebuilt Enigma encoders.
They fly under the radar of most groups that try to track people like this for a couple reasons. The first is that they have been doing this for decades, and have not yet made any dangerous discoveries. No hidden UFO hangars, no government documents proving a faked Moon landing, no plan to mind control people with fluoridated drinking water, etc. Many of the older members do have files amongst those who track people who track conspiracies, but many of the files are so old they have been misplaced or never even digitized.
The other reason is that the peripheral events these groups investigate or believe in are of interest only to a very few. The NSA does not waste its time compiling dossiers on people who think haunted houses are a side effect of Russian radar experiments. The FBI does not send agents to check out people who believe that there is a treasure map encoded in the symbology of US currency, or groups who do nothing but share data on which foods contain Red dye #2. Because of course, Red dye #2 sensitizes the brain to the subliminal mind control images in children’s cartoons. I mean, how else do you explain Bronies?
