It used to be that when spies wanted to communicate with each other, they would set up a radio station that broadcast unsettling beeps or the monotone recitation of numbers. It was all done in the public domain — you just didn’t know what it all meant, unless you had a way to decrypt it.

So there’s an odd item in Motherboard today about In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, putting money into the encrypted chat app Wickr. We know this because, like a numbers station, In-Q-Tel operates somewhat publicly, filing 990 tax forms for the public to scrutinize. But do we have any idea what these numbers mean? Not really. READ MORE