I always thought it was weird and unnecessary to use EIRP power limits on 60m vs transmitter output power (before feedline losses and antenna gain) as on every other band.
The TX power limits were primarily driven by builder/operator safety - higher power requires higher amplifier voltages. If there is a lower requirement for a band to avoid interference with shared uses, why not just specify a lower power level? Why add a requirement that involves antenna and near-field environment modeling?
That's not really the point. You can work the whole world with 100mW on FT8. We don't need another low power band for digital only. If this is the route they want to go, make it unlicensed experimental operation and just limit the power to 1 W transmitter power. The whole point is having an amateur band is that it can be used for operation which might otherwise be problematic because I've agreed to work with the FCC if interference arises.
~10 watts into a dipole is plenty for both CW and modern data modes. SSB is harder but still doable. ARRL is right it probably limits its use for emergency interop, and I do support their proposal to keep the 100w limit. However, if the FCC goes with its original proposal I won't lose any sleep. Perhaps it can be a haven for QRP operations. The propagation on 60m is quite good day and night.
Doesn’t this kind of rub you the wrong way? The government telling you “hey, private citizen, we decided we are going to manage the EM spectrum, so you'd better follow our rules if you want to transmit anything.”
I understand it’s to help coordinate everything and make the space better for the largest amount of people, but referring to transmitting as a privilege, not a right, seems asinine
I'd love to hear a description of your utopia with a totally unregulated spectrum space.
Or perhaps your thinking is "I wish it was open, and everyone just mutually respected it".
Which is great. Everyone agrees. But most people realize that their mass mutual collaboration ideas will never work by the end of high school. "If we all stopped stealing we wouldn't need locks!"
Great, then you'll have no issue if the government hands me the rights to a band around 430 THz then (red visible light)? You'll soon forget that you used to be able to own red stuff.
Whether the FCC has the authority to regulate visible light wasn't particularly the point, though it is an interesting question. This article [1] was pretty interesting; the Telecommunications Act of 1996 does not restrict their authority by medium in several locations. If the medium is used for telecommunications, they may already have the authority to regulate it. The article in question is talking about lasers, but the same thing would apply to visible light if it were used for telecommunications.
The point I was trying to make is that these are practically the same thing just shifted around in wavelength. That it's somehow reasonable for the FCC to regulate some wavelengths of EM, but "reducto ad absurd" to propose that they could regulate others.
I agree, it would be absurd for the FCC to regulate visible light. I just think it's also absurd for them to plant their flag in another wavelength. I don't think anyone can "own" a wavelength anymore than they can own a particular level of gravity or voltage.
I mean it does feel right for the government to regulate visible light? The same way you can't have flashing lights on the road or have a massive blinding beacon in your backward, you can't yell on the airwaves. I'm sure if visible light could be seen from halfway across the globe, we would also have that regulated.
MIL-STD-188-110D defines a 38,400 baud modem at 48 kHz bandwidth. With 256QAM, the raw data rate is 240 kbps.
Of course, the 2.8 kHz bandwidth rule prohibits that in the ham bands. The FCC had originally declined to set a maximum bandwidth in their first ruling, but that caused everyone's head to explode (and that's one of the reasons this ruling has taken so long).
The HF ham bands aren't very wide. With the exception of 10 meters, from 50 to 500 kHz wide. Folks (including the ARRL) were afraid of abuse. With an SDR, you can generate a signal with any bandwidth you desire.
The reason the FCC didn't want to set a limit is because it's arbitrary. For example, MIL-STD-188-110D (which is an open standard) has a 2400 baud 3.24 kHz mode. But now it's illegal.
Taking the 2.8 kHz bandwidth limit into account, around 2000 to 2400 baud depending on the excess bandwidth of the root-raised-cosine filter used to shape the signal.
The bandwidth of a single carrier signal is symbol rate * (1 + RRC excess bandwidth). A typical excess bandwidth is 0.35, so 2000 syms/s * 1.35 = 2700 Hz.
You can use a tighter roll-off, like 0.2. 2400 syms/s * 1.2 = 2880 Hz. Unfortunately, the tighter roll-off increases the PAPR (Peak to Average Power Ratio) of the transmitted signal.
Your comment is 100% technically correct, except that people reading it may think that baud means numbers of bits per second.
If you have more than 2 possible symbols, you can do much more than that; 256QAM could be getting 8 bits/second/Hz under very strong signal conditions.
This theorem states that the theoretical maximum channel capacity ("bandwidth" as measured by bits per second) is dependent on analog bandwidth (the other "bandwidth" lol) and signal to noise ratio.
Now that's the information theoretical maximum, but stuff like QAM as people mentioned, and other more advanced techniques like OFDM and "next layer" stuff like FEC can get you very close to the theoretical maximum.
I used to dialin to Pine (and Lynx) at 1200bps. If I remember correctly, I could read about as fast as the words came to screen. If you're just saving for reading later, 5kbps is tons for email.
It's really hard to do on modern operating systems. Too many services that will dogpile a low bandwidth link once they see that a network adapter is up.
Are you allowed to use phase to double or quadruple the effective signal "density" in the bandwidth? Or, is that part of the 2.8khz no matter how you "time" it?
(Not a ham. In microwave point to point space, you can usually get two customers on a direction by exploring the space around the 360 clock for angle/phase of the signal being sent, horizontal vs vertical is not uncommon)
What you are describing is antenna polarization, not phase. It seems another reply covered phase pretty well, but yes you are correct that you can also put more than one signal into the same bandwidth - so long as you are able to disambiguate them from one another. This can be done generally by 1) sending signals at different times but on the same frequency 2) sending signals at different frequencies at the same time (multiple carriers within the same bandwidth) or 3) sending separate signals between separate antennas at the same time and frequency. Using antennas with different polarity is a crude and simple form of spatial multi access, but as it turns out, it’s not the only way. This is the trickery behind how sm-ofdm / mimo and other spatial modulations multiply their spectral efficiency, with current state of the art being around 20 bits per second per hz in 8x8 configurations.
There are a few attempts today to combine polarization with QAM to effectively double data rates again without impacting SNR. You can have two polarizations of radio waves at any time (horizontal + vertical or left-handed + right-handed), and each of these polarizations can carry separate QAM-modulated data. Supposedly this all also works with MIMO as long as you have the appropriate antennas.
Spatial division works regardless of whether the antennas self interfere; it works better when they don't. Overlapping two polarity-isolated qam signals is a good way to explain rudimentary spatial multiplexing but the current state of the art is way way beyond that, I'm pleased to say.
Yes, that's basically Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM). You divide the "amplitude vs phase" 2D space into a grid of points (typically 4, 8, 16, 32, ...) and assign a code to each. That way you can send 2, 3, 4, 5, (...) bits per symbol. Of course, the downside is that you need a higher signal to noise ratio to resolve which point a symbol represents.
Yes. I'm pretty sure P25 and DMR are phase modulation modes. And nothing (bureaucratic, at least) is preventing experimental phase modulation modes from what I understand.
This is such a weird topic in the ham community. The reason this restriction exists has nothing to do with the retro-justifications used by the community.
For a long time, the US government genuinely feared that ham radio would be used for espionage. It had listening stations across the nation to monitor all communications. It flat out shut down the entire service (!) during WWII. And it came up with the idea that you have to communicate in the open, and that no form of obfuscation or encryption is permissible.
And then hams came up with this roundabout explanation that actually, it's good that you can't have privacy. No matter that it holds back a hobby that is by all usage metrics dying, and that there are many countries where encryption is allowed and doesn't lead to any terrible outcomes.
Privacy is useful in hobby uses. Maybe you want to talk to your spouse without a nosy neighbor listening. Maybe you want to periodically beacon your GPS location without the whole world knowing. There are so many cool things you can do, and there is spectrum that is... quite frankly, largely dead right now, and if you don't encourage new uses, it will be reclaimed by the government.
You talk about retrojustification, but in many parts of the world this has long been written into law, for example in the UK's Wireless Telegraphy act:
1(1) The Licensee shall ensure that the Radio Equipment is only used:
a) for the purpose of self-training in radio communications, including conducting
technical investigations; and
b) as a leisure activity and not for commercial purposes of any kind
As for it being "good" not to have privacy, it's really not about having privacy or not, but respecting the situation that there are different tools for different needs. If you need to speak to your spouse, there are tools to speak to them privately! Amateur radio isn't the only option, and it isn't the best.
The problem is that encrypted comms tie up spectrum space without giving anything back. Now, I don't ragchew, I think it's incredibly boring and unnecessarily toxic chat given most of the personalities and topics involved, but at least anyone can choose to drop in/out of that as needed.
What I'm more interested in is radio as a sport, where I can climb mountains and operate from them, pushing myself and engaging in that competitive activity with others. It's hard to do that if everyone has decided to start using the 2m band as their private internet link because it goes further than WiFi.
> If you need to speak to your spouse, there are tools to speak to them privately!
Apart from amateur radio, what tool exist, that does not require the assistance of private corporations, ISPs, service fees, patents etc? I go camping way outside of cell phone tower ranges and it would be should be legal to communicate with my group privately.
Radio is the only form of totally citizen controlled real time distance communication we have, if we do not count smoke signals. Snail mail encryption is already allowed. Encryption must be allowed on radio as well.
I think a legitimate fear of radio amateurs is that encrypted, fully autonomous, long distance communication is such a killer application that usage would explode from commercial devices sold to take advantage of the ham space, leading to some kind of WiFi cacophony.
Perhaps some kind of compromise is possible, where all encrypted ham must broadcast their callsign in the clear every few seconds.
> Perhaps some kind of compromise is possible, where all encrypted ham must broadcast their callsign in the clear every few seconds.
My thought is that it would always include that part. Maybe not every few seconds, but the same as the current rule - end of every broadcast or every 10 minutes, which ever is shorter.
With 2.8kHz of bandwidth, the requirements to obtain a license to transmit, and the restrictions on commercial use in the ham bands, I don't think your fears are warranted. I definitely think the ham bands would get more active for data uses, but I doubt they would get flooded with newcomers.
You must already broadcast your call sign at a regular interval when transmitting.
You want to use a piece of limited spectrum, don't want to pay for a private slice of it, and complain that you have to be 'public' in a public slice of it?
Yes. Just as I have a right to be on a public highway with whatever personal items I want in my trunk. I will agree to speed limits. I will not agree to letting any member of the public look in my trunk.
But the idea/premise of a highway is to move stuff (people, drugs in your trunk) from one location to another one.
The idea/premise of a private frequency band is to move data (voice, binary,..) from one point to another (or many).
The idea/premise of ham radio is to learn and experiment, to test your devices, compare with others, see how far your signal reaches, etc. It was never meant to be a means for private 1-on-1 conversations.
How will i test my receiver if your transmission is encrypted? What will I learn from that? How do I know that you're not abusing the bands for commercial use? And what do other ham radio operators gain from you transmitting encrypted data?
Who cares? Really, what is the big deal? Nobody is saying that it will always be encrypted. Other radio operators gain the ability to learn about encryption! And we expand the hobby, which as a new member is dying. The radio waves are dead. Why?
What countries allow general encryption on the ham bands (e.g. not limited exceptions for particular cases)
"The hobby is dying" has been a trope longer than nearly everyone in this thread has been alive - give it a rest.
We've always had allocations because there wasn't a commercial use for it. As soon as there is, we lose it. See the loss of part of 220mhz and all the higher frequencies we're in the process of losing to 5G/other commercial use. I recommend embracing this reality
How would one distinguish legal traffic from illegal? If encrypted communications were to be allowed, what is stopping people using the amateur bands for commercial use? This is the main concern of hams, not that it's good that you can't have privacy.
Sure you can. This still does not ensure that the communications embedded within the encrypted portion of the data does not violate amateur rules.
Encryption of communications effectively removes the ability of hams (and government regulators) to monitor their service for rule breakers. It would invite commercial users to exploit hams' valuable bandwidth.
I would go so far as to say encryption is not needed in the amateur radio domain, outside of limiting access to the control and configuration of remote devices. The established goals of the amateur radio service can be achieved without encrypted communications.
My goal is to be able to privately communicate with other people at a distance without relying on cell phone carriers, ISPs, or other brittle corporate infrastructure.
Privacy is a human right, and that applies over radio.
If I need to register my public keys like a license plate, fine, but the content is only the business of the recipient.
> So by this license only businesses are allowed to have private communications, not individuals?
The first words on that pages are "Individuals or entities desiring to […]".
You, as an individual, can get a license. It's probably just more common for legal persons [1] to go through the effort rather than natural persons [2].
Hypothetically you could get a license just for yourself, but only you'd be able to use it which might get kinda lonely. Using a LLC is much more practical as the entity can own the radios and assign them to authorized users acting on behalf of the company.
Forming a corporate entity and paying the frequency coordination fees are going to be minimal in comparison to the hardware costs to communicate at a distance (encrypted or clear) reliably.
Businesses are the only legal way to “group” people together and hold them accountable. Since you are purchasing a license for some spectrum, they need a way to hold that group accountable. A common business arrangement is to create a “co-op” to work together, usually owned equally by the members. For example, there are a couple of developer co-ops around here to get discounts on IDEs and resources by appearing as a large org. Almost like what you’d expect from a union, but most clearly not a union.
> Privacy is a human right, and that applies over radio.
You do not have a right to use common space (e.g., radio spectrum) without regard to the rest of society. If are given permission to use a common space, you have to use it with the stated conditions.
Which they can only do for unencrypted traffic, encrypted traffic by definition would not be examinable by the FCC for determining whether to assign fines.
They don't have to know what you are sending to know you are sending in a way you shouldn't. It's not even about the content of the encrypted traffic at that point. They just see broadcasts (which...good luck hiding them from the FCC) and if they see the bandwidth being used but aren't receiving a usable audio/data stream from it, it's really easy to tell if the rules are being followed.
Is the band you are transmitting over restricted in any way? If they say no encryption, it doesn't matter what you are encrypting. If you are caught broadcasting in that no encryption band, and they see broadcasts in that band that don't correspond with signals they can pick up, it's a red flag that it's encrypted traffic.
Think of it this way - hypothetically if I'm on an English only band, and it's illegal to speak Spanish because English speakers can't understand Spanish, and I get caught transmitting anything other than English it doesn't matter what the content is.
Encryption doesn't magically make the RF you are using invisible. It makes it unreadable. It's still broadcasting and can be picked up by sniffers that flag it as data it can't interpret. It is NOT a no-risk choice.
My original comment was made with regard to someone being incredulous that illegality would prevent someone from starting a business using encrypted ham bands. I said that the FCC fines are quite steep, implying that the risk of FCC fines for running an illegal encrypted broadcast would explain why someone would not like to be involved with such a business.
Obviously if the FCC opens up ham for encryption, it would be legal and totally fine. Currently it is not (the whole point of our conversation), and starting a business like that would be risky. You implied that the FCC can't fine you if they can't prove that you were sending encrypted traffic, and I argued that they'll still see the broadcasts and be able to tell they are encrypted.
So this is kind of a strange question for you to ask now lol
Your original reply to me saying the FCC gives out big fines:
>Which they can only do for unencrypted traffic, encrypted traffic by definition would not be examinable by the FCC for determining whether to assign fines.
If they can only fine unencrypted traffic, as you say in this comment, you posit that it is because they can't examine the contents of the encrypted transmission to know who to fine.
If you intended a different message, feel free to revise what you began our conversation with.
You positively asserted that they can only fine unencrypted traffic. You positively asserted that by definition, encrypted traffic could not be decoded to assign fines. By the logic of your comment, the FCC must decode the encrypted broadcasts to assign fines, which is false. They don't care what the broadcast contained. It violated RF restrictions. It gets fined if detected.
If you believe your comment implies anything else, you're going to have to explain your argument in more words than "it clearly does not imply that" because if it clearly implied what you claim, we wouldn't be arguing about what it "actually" means.
> You positively asserted that they can only fine unencrypted traffic.
No? The FCC can implement a blanket fine on all encrypted traffic on ham radio bands, if authorized by congress, without doing any 'determining' at all.
It seems as if your reading your own opinions and thoughts into my comments.
> For a long time, the US government genuinely feared that ham radio would be used for espionage. It had listening stations across the nation to monitor all communications.
Well this is all somewhat ahistorical. The people monitoring ham radio for abuses were, and are, ham radio operators.
A task which would, you know, be more difficult if everything was encrypted.
The secret is there's already tons of encrypted communications on the bands because of cheap chinese DMR radios that unlicensed teenagers use for airsoft and the like. It has yet to ruin ham radio and nobody has even noticed enough to attempt enforcement.
Agreed. I just got into the hobby, and the whole not allowing encryption or obfuscation is such a silly rule. It really limits what we can do.
And your point about unused spectrum is spot on. Outsides of a couple repeaters on VHF and UHF, there is near zero radio transmissions in those bands 24/7.
> The reason this restriction exists has nothing to do with the retro-justifications used by the community.
The original reasons not being such a big concern anymore don't mean that we've not spotted that these restrictions have a lot of useful features.
There are some great use cases that encryption would allow... and also, if it became commonplace on ham bands, turn them into an opaque, uninviting mess, too.
Because the modern tech world operates with security on by default. Amateurs should be able to experiment with radio and run the same protocols that pros use.
The pros have to bid at auction to tie up bandwidth with encrypted comms that cannot benefit or be used by others.
If people want encryption, they are welcome to use the ISM bands where it is allowed, or get licenses for the commercial areas of the spectrum.
But amateur radio is a public commons for those who have the interest in getting licensed, and encrypted comms being normalised damages that, making it less accessible to others and discouraging interaction between enthusiasts.
I fear that with encryption allowed, amateur radio will become a collection of competing 1-to-1 links and hidden commercial activity taking advantage of the cheap spectrum at everyone else's expense.
There is a lot of utility in having a bunch of 1-to-1 links. If you look at the internet you will see that it supports multitask, but it is rarely used nowadays. You would expect to see similar things from other communication protocols. The days that everyone's communications went to everyone are over.
Even if there is hidden commercial activity going on, is that really so bad? Imagine if the internet banned commerce on it, there wouldn't be so much investment into it.
There is a lot of utility in 1 to 1 links, but you don't need encryption to do that, while adding it does encourage it at the expense of other modes.
As for commercial activity, the whole point of the amateur spectrum is specifically to carve out portions of the spectrum protected from commercial interests! I agree that commercial, and also unlicensed use of radio is important, but leave commerce out of the tiny portion (and it really is small) part of the spectrum that's specifically regulated to be free of commercial interference.
What percentage of the Internet, and the devices that connect to it, is devoted to ads, spam, malicious traffic, and the prevention of malicious traffic?
I’d rather not have the ham bands reduced to more of the same.
Why are ads lumped in? Typically they are only a fraction of the content they are sponsoring and they provide a service to consumers by connecting them to businesses they may find value in.
Nothing stops spammers from spamming on HAM right now and it's 1 to many which makes it more effective.
The existing regulations would still exist if encryption was allowed. Spammers still are incentivized to not encrypt their spam to maximize the number of listeners that exist.
If encryption were allowed, there would be no way to observe that hams were using their licenses in ways that comply with most of the FCC rules that differentiate "amateur" from professional radio use cases.
In my view, of course many hams would use encryption in reasonable ways but quite likely other uses of the spectrum would proliferate that are explicitly forbidden by the rules that carve out the amateur service as distinct from all the other ones.
This same argument applies to all encryption. If E2EE is allowed people can't monitor that people aren't breaking the law on whatever messaging service. Privacy is deemed to be more important than being able to enforce the law.
> people can't monitor that people aren't breaking the law
Typically even without encryption there are laws banning monitoring of such communications. For example, tapping into someone's analog phone line or listening to unencrypted mobile phone conversations, etc.
Conversely, even system we view as private are routinely monitored by governments, etc.
Amateur radio rules seem to derive both from the idea of preventing public nuisance and also the idea of public resources (like national parks, etc.). The amateur spectrum is like a park -- visitors are not allowed to open businesses on the land, nor are they allowed to be a nuisance to others.
"The pros" pay for a slice of bandwidth every year.
If you want private communication, use a private frequency. If you want to use a shared spectrum, do it in a way, where everyone can tell you to buzz off.
But the idea behind ham radio is that everything is open for everyone to learn, try and experiment, and not that you can have private conversations without paying your phone bills.
This is like having an open public square, and then someone decides to "privatize" an area, cordon it off, put temporary walls around and not-let anyone else look at (well.. listen) to what's happening there.
No, it's like reading an invisible book in a public square. You are may be reading like everyone else, but since no one can violate your privacy and see what you are reading they can't tell if you are reading something that is government approved.
But the whole idea of ham radio is, that anyone can ask you what you are reading, and that you're not wasthing that space with your privacy. It's about learning and technical experimentation and not about free private communication.
You want to take a bit of the spectrum away from everyone else and not let them neither listen nor join the conversation.
You can get a private frequency, pay a bit of money for that, and be private as much as you want.
You're allowed to send encrypted traffic to a remote controlled vehicle. Solution: put wheels and servos on your transceiver, and hack together a means to move and steer it via radio signals. It is now a remote controlled vehicle. Then maybe just send some encrypted data and voice along with the occasional command to steer and accelerate.
Troll comment, mostly, but reading the text of the regulations it might be viable.
While I wouldn't want encrypted traffic completely taking over the bands, part of the spirit of amateur radio is encouraging experimentation and expanding technical understanding [1]. Encryption is pivotal to modern wireless communications, and allowing it would expand amateurs' ability to experiment and building understanding in radio encryption.
Methods like spread-spectrum communication are allowed. It's not the same as encryption, but it it similar in that people without knowledge of the frequency hopping pattern are not capable of receiving the transmission [2].
Ultimately I'm not particularly invested in permitting encryption in amateur radio - my personal involvement is mostly homebrewing simple equipment - but I'd consider it a plus. I doubt it'd displace public participation around local repeaters and the existing radio activity.
2. Well, if they have an SDR with a wide enough bandwidth they can receive spread spectrum communications. And with modern SDR's that probably not that rare.
The problem with encryption is that it discourages interaction between hams (which is already pretty bad, tbh). Yes, you’re supposed to announce your callsign, but my bet is that unsavory characters would take advantage of that. I think it’s pretty cool to listen in on different protocols and see what people are trying out (M17 is an excellent example).
FHSS is pretty trivial to “decrypt” these days with an SDR.
While you’re not wrong about experimentation, I feel like ham radio should be focused more on the radio side of things rather than encryption implementations. Implementing the hardware and software encoding/decoding is the hard/fun part (at least to me). Encryption should come as a piece of cake after than if you can achieve a given bitrate.
And again - there already are bands that allow encryption. A couple hundred bucks and a few applications, and you’re free to go nuts.
And I completely forgot, but ISM bands do allow encryption, are free, and there is plenty of hardware out there readily available.
I’m trying to dig up the M17 messages on the chipsets, but until then - WiFi is incredibly popular and operates on ISM bands. Same with LoraWan, and I have seen some proprietary 900Mhz mesh devices (I think called Milo(?)).
The M17 project found some low cost transceivers that operate on a pretty low level, and I think those would be relevant for future development on ISM for people wanting to use encryption.
I just don't see anything fundamentally unique about an encrypted communications stream that would require it to be used on the ham bands for 'furthering the radio arts.' Any stream being developed or tested for use over the air should be able to be effectively tested in the clear as allowed by amateur rules. Then further testing (incorporating encryption) can be done over internet or closed circuits. It seems to me that encryption as such is unlikely to have any fundamental effect on the outcome of on-air testing.
What I am hearing is we should only be permitted to have encrypted communication if we are near a cell phone tower and pay a corporation the appropriate fees?
I’m just coming back to this thread to answer some of the other comments over the next few days, but WiFi does count here. It operates on ISM bands, AFAIK there are OSS chips, and it allows encryption.
What’s more interesting to me is that the M17 project has found some chips on aliexpress that are lower level and work on a multitude of bands. I’m trying to find this and will update when I do.
Seconded. You can still have a requirement to ID in the clear if you want, but all other modern radio systems are encrypted and any interesting protocols will be largely indistinguishable from encryption from a regulatory point of view. Ham radio is first and foremost for experimentation, not ragchew, and there's no point maintaining a radio service that is fundamentally crippled.
My concern is that the moment you implement encryption you've opened a race to the bottom in people abusing the license for purposes outside the license. Even if you know who it is, you don't know what they're doing.
The temptation to use up the limited spectrum for reasons outside the spirit of the license will undoubtedly be taken by some, we know how bad it can be already when you can clearly identify it.
It’s not crippled; It’s the opposite. Its the only radio service where when you want to do something new with it, you are supposed to publish how. If you want to do something different, use a different band where it’s permitted. The amateur bands continue to have a valid purpose the way they are.
I would advocate strongly for additional spectrum becoming available for public use as it is evacuated as an alternative to the fcc reselling it. I have zero problems with /new bands/ being made available on potentially /new services/ that would allow for what you want.
I see these takes pop up all the time but I have yet to hear of a legitimate use case that wouldn't be solved with digital signatures which are allowed under current rules
The most common case people run into: I want to be able to interface with literally any other communication technology in common use without having to strip TLS.
The basic case: Alice wants to talk to Bob and would rather not have their crazy neighbor listen in and threaten violence because psychosis (Don't believe me? Hang out on the fun parts of the HF spectrum).
The public service use case: a disaster occurred, I need to send medical information to a known recipient. Other countries have allowances for this but the US does not.
The because it's literally unenforceable anyway case: yeah, go after noise sources that don't have an ID but prove to me my shitty CW transmitter with a trillion ppm of phase noise isn't actually broadcasting encrypted PSK within pulses.
Eh yeah I've heard these. The important bit to remember is Part 97.113 on prohibited transmissions: "Communications, on a regular basis, which could reasonably be furnished alternatively through other radio services." That's the bit that trips these up rather than the encryption prohibition.
The common case: this is vague and probably falls under the above. What's an example?
The basic case: use phones. All of us that have spent time on HF are well aware of the antisocial behavior sometimes found there. I don't think you'll run into any ham that's against stricter enforcement in this area.
Public service: SHARES is probably the move here. I think I would support waivers similar to how they were previously allowing PACTOR 4 though. Despite what the ARRL says I'm a little dubious of our utility in disasters these days in any case.
I mean sure you can come up with any number of ways to get away with it but that doesn't mean we should endorse that behavior.
Re common case, it's typically an accidental thing. Lots of people are standing up things like ham mesh networks and similar but anything internet proximal has a very high likelihood of leaking cypher text over the air.
Re basic case, I should refine my statement a bit, HF is currently populated enough that having more traffic there is probably not advisable yet. If I was given a magic pen, I'd probably allow encryption on the lesser used HF bands and 6m on up.
As far as public service/phones/other services, I don't really buy into the disaster prepper stuff that's been popular as of late, but there's an opportunity for amateur radio to remain relevant. Rather than trying to prevent encryption and keep all that stuff on other ISM type bands, putting some of it under the ham umbrella could be very positive development.
In the case of emergency, the restrictions on your license no longer apply. You can use whatever means necessary to establish the desired communications.
There is a difference between disaster and emergency. The emergency exception is for immediately saving a life. It is basically that if need to call 911 and can’t, you can break rules on radio.
There are lots of people who think the rules are suspended during disaster. That is only true if actively saving a life during a disaster.
Cool, so a central component of a disaster response is preparation. How do you practice for that when you can't do real key enrollment/management outside of a real disaster?
For experimentation you should be able to use those protocols with the cipher replaced with a null cipher. The aspects of the protocols that are radio-related should not be affected.
I’ve been an Extra since 1978. I love ham radio and I love encryption, but I’m against encryption on ham radio for the same reason I’m against encryption for radio stations on the broadcast bands. It’s a limited natural resource and we should all get some benefit from it. I should be able to tune around the ham bands and listen in.
I'm fairly certain that if you wanted long distance encrypted communications, you could just grab a LoRa module today and send out some AES-encrypted stuff and no one will bother you.
Isn't the point of the Ham community supposed to be about low-tech solutions? I wouldn't quite say they are "preppers", but maybe "prepper-adjacent" ?
Leaving some radio frequencies for unencrypted communications or Morse code or whatever hams are doing was the point of the ham frequencies, right? For encryption, we've got like everything else (cell phones, WiFi, etc. etc.)
Isn't encryption, by definition, obscuring the meaning of messages to everyone except authorized recipients?
I guess you could transmit the contents of messages in plain text but cryptographically sign the contents to authenticate. This would probably be useful to remotely administer infrastructure: e.g. have an "net operator only" mode for a repeater when pileups occur or somebody is not abiding by rules.
You could transmit stuff encrypted with AES as long as you also transmitted your key (and scheme) in plaintext, afaik. So you could use ham radio to experiment with an encrypted scheme that you'd later use with non-ham bands/licenses.
Has there ever been a case of anyone actually being fined for using encryption?
It seems this antiquated law is enforced only by chilling effect.
Maybe this issue just needs some good old civil disobedience, like back when crypto export regulations were skirted by printing PGP code in a book.
Also sending of physical mail with privacy has established case law for 4th amendment protections. Somehow this does not apply when the message does not touch paper?
Given the rule seems rarely, if ever, enforced, and similar laws from the same historical justification are already repealed, I say just collectively ignore it.
Use encryption openly over radio (otherwise following all rules, have callsigns in the clear, etc), and let the FCC decide try to justify fining people for exercising their right to private corporate-free distance communications to the press.
If you want private conversations, use private frequencies. If you want a "public square" type of communications, then just accept that there's no privacy.
That's definitely an inflammatory comment and I would applaud you more if you put effort into it. But I'll bite.
If encryption were allowed, it should be frequency constrained so the majority of the bands were in the open, and non-encryption citizens can still listen to the open airwaves.
Hard disagree. There should be more effort made to promote authentication and message signing (which does not require encryption to obscure meaning) and less tolerance for the use of proprietary codecs, modulations, and protocols (unpublished codes) like AMBE and PACTOR in amateur radio. It is unfortunate that there are many hams who misunderstand or mischaracterize Part 97 rules; even if there was broad support for the position of allowing “encryption” in the amateur community (there isn’t) you could never get it done. It has taken a decade of concerted effort to get this 300-baud nonsense wiped out against an overwhelmingly vocal cadre of people who seem to … really hate sailboats?! C’mon
Me, personally, I would like to see the bands filled to capacity and it be common/everyday that ordinary people use 2m/70cm data modes for things besides DX’ing.
Here's an example: I was in an amateur rocketry group. One of our primary telemetry connections was wifi; 802.11b channel 1 is in an amateur band. We used directional antennas on the ground, cylindrical patch antennas on the rocket, and 1W of power (which is why we needed amateur licenses, to exceed the standard 100mW for wifi) and we could reliably communicate via standard IP while the rocket was a long distance away and breaking the sound barrier. The ESSID was one of our callsigns.
Our standard telemetry protocol was unencrypted packets, because ham radio. But a common need while debugging the rocket on the launchpad was to SSH in (it ran Linux). So our options were:
- Use something obsolete with much worse UX, like telnet.
- Use SSH and try to convince it to run without encryption, an option which is a bad idea for every other use case and which modern SSH rightfully refuses to contemplate.
- Use SSH with published keys, and hope that suffices to meet the spirit of the regulation.
- Add some complexity to the system to reduce power level while on the pad so that we weren't actually using a ham license.
- Safe the engines, go out to the pad a mile away, and hook up to the wired umbilical for debugging.
Removing the encryption restriction would allow using standard SSH and similar systems.
Leaving aside the question of whether a 3 meter tall rocket that breaks the sound barrier is a "model craft", that just says "The control signals are not considered codes or ciphers intended to obscure the meaning of the communication.". It's not completely unambiguous that SSH and other protocols qualify as "control signal" (they were not used to control the "craft" itself), nor whether they qualify as "telemetry" per 47 CFR § 97.217. This exception unambiguously gives a pass for control protocols that aren't obvious to observers on the frequency, but not necessarily for communication protocols that are actually encrypted.
Those statutes might provide the necessary exception but that's not unambiguous.
Yes unfortunately "model craft" is not defined anywhere in Part 97 that I can find.
I can't say I understand the rest of the first paragraph - Part 97 doesn't actually ban encryption, just "codes or ciphers intended to obscure the meaning of the communication", from which "telecommand of model craft" is specifically exempted.
I'm not as familiar with the Part 15 rules - do they allow high gain antennas? Since this case is about stationary command and control, I wonder if lower power + high gain wifi antennas at both ends would close the link.
I'm saying that "control signals" and "telemetry" also aren't clearly defined, and while dedicated protocols like those used to control an RC airplane are clearly "control signals", it's not obvious if SSH-over-IP-over-wifi to poke around and debug an avionics system counts as either "control signals" or "telemetry". You could make a case that it is, but it seems much closer to the line and not obviously permitted.
> Since this case is about stationary command and control
It's not; this was the same system used while the rocket was in motion, and part of the point of using the same system was to make sure it's working before launching.
> I wonder if lower power + high gain wifi antennas at both ends would close the link
We were using high-gain antennas already, and IIRC that didn't suffice within the 100mW power limit.
I've always wanted to make a ssh-telnet hybrid that sends data plaintext but with an authentication mechanism so that commands get sent in the clear, to meet the requirement that it's not encrypted, while the authentication layer prevents others from spoofing commands.
thinking about it, presharing keys and then using gpg to authenticate the message should work. just need client and server programs to make it convenient.
I'd be pretty tempted to use 70cm for some business uses if it were legal. Good range and cheap tx/rx PCBs readily available. However I'd end up using 20kb/s of data 24/7 over a large range. Can't have very many people doing that or there's no bandwidth left.
This is also the absolute worst nightmare of all the ragchew/gout-net types. The thing is [opens SDR waterfall] 70cm/2m is a wall of blue occasionally punctuated by a lonely repeater kerchunk so I'm not sure what's driving the fear.
In fact, the most reliable traffic is the one narrow APRS frequency full of generally indecipherable digital packets from all the proprietary over-landing rigs.
My inspiration has been this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMZ8mawceuk (Building a Linux Packet Node) and inspired me to buy a used Kenwood TM-D700 to operate a packet node station.
I think something like that coupled with something like https://hamwan.org/ to route high-bandwidth traffic could be a great combo, almost like an adaptive bandwidth.
The 2m/70cm bands wouldn't be that useful for data. They are 4MHz and 30MHz (in US) wide. By comparison, Wifi is 20MHz, LTE is 1.4-20 MHz. The bandwidth wouldn't be that high for general use.
One place that extra space would be useful is for digital walkie-talkies, as an expansion of FRS.
https://www.arrl.org/news/deadline-extended-to-november-28-2...