Activation Numbers?

Well, I really don't know much about these kind of things, but I'm sure some of you guys do...

One of my friends from school has an uncle who used to be a marine commander (or something of the sort, I haven't really talked to my friend about this in a while) His Uncle has an office that is usually locked and that he doesn't anyone in.

About 3 months a go my friend was at his uncle's house (who was away at the time) My friend noticed that his office door was open so he decided to go in and snoop around.

He looked in a drawer and saw some numbers on the back of a piece of notebook paper. He was curious so he took the number and made it look like he hadn't been in there. He showed me the number at school the next day and to me it looked like a phone number. So we called it, and it made the most annoying beep/ring/static noise I've ever heard. Definitely not AOL.

Then, every time we called, it would hang up at 34 seconds.

We didn't think too much of it, but I was talking to a guy on Xbox Live whose grandma works for the pentagon. He mentioned it to her and she said that they're commonly used to activate something, usually you have to dial certain numbers in a certain order but she didn't say much more than that.

What I was wondering if this could be something big, like an explosive, or a signal to launch an UMV it really has me stooped.

I remember the area code being one from Florida, I'll try to get it tomorrow and post it here.

...And no it wasn't a fax machine


[edit on 19-8-2007 by Mman19]

[edit on 19-8-2007 by Mman19]

It's possible that the code is used to link two telephone encryption units and get them to 'talk' to each other. Modern digital phone encryption systems have been in use for almost 20 years, and I am unsure if some of these (perhaps portable ones) still need codes, or can take codes.

The standard device is called a Secure Telephone Unit III, and works by taking your voice and converting it into a digital serial data stream, which is then mixed with a keying stream. It's then converted back into an audio signal for transmission through normal phone lines, but all the person on the other end would hear is totally random static until the two encryption units communicated properly.
Even if it isn't the STU-III, there's still everything from the KY-3 onwards, and perhaps even earlier.

Of course, the code may have nothing to do with encryption stuff at all.
Get googling.