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Cool project! I have always been interested in the amateur radio scene. So encrypting amateur radio comms is illegal in the US? Is there a particular reason fo
by Cyph0n 8y ago
Cool project! I have always been interested in the amateur radio scene.
So encrypting amateur radio comms is illegal in the US? Is there a particular reason for this?
- M0 8y agoThis one is not encrypted. Its plaintext or compressed (gzip I think). Crypto is only for digital signatures.
- sneak 8y agoWhat if you used a nonstandard proprietary compression algorithm? Does non-encrypted have to mean “widely documented/implemented compression”?
- souterrain 8y agoI believe the motivation is that the Amateur service is largely self-policed. If communications are encrypted, it becomes harder to encourage such self-enforcement.
- dbcurtis 8y agoAFAIK it dates back to the 1930’s when spy networks were HF Morse code. Clandestine ops used HF morse well into the 1970’s, perhaps later. Pretending to be a ham was a form of cover. Sadly, being a cracker-jack Morse code operstor doesn’t get you a job with the NSA any more :) Technology has moved on.
- brians 8y agoWell, not the NSA, no—but the same skills that help with Morse are still helpful for radio listening. The prohibition on scrambled meaning long pre-dates WW2, and goes back to old analogies about fencing a commons.
- emptybits 8y agoIt's also illegal in Canada. With amateur radio "dying" as an interesting hobby (my opinion, but widely held) it is often speculated that if encryption was permitted in amateur radio communications, there would be quite a resurgence in interest. I predict a new generation would start to pick up the hobby and find untold uses (and abuses) for it.
- wedowhatwedo 8y agoYes, if encryption was permitted, there would be a ton of interest...by commercial companies. Non-licensed users would out number licensed ones by huge amounts. It would put an end to amateur radio.
- tlrobinson 8y agoRequiring messages be signed by and for keys belonging to licensed amateurs might be sufficient to discourage abuse.
- janoc 8y agoAnd how would you distinguish licensed users from unlicensed ones if the messages are encrypted? Heck, the authorities have problems policing the bands even without having to deal with crypto.
- tlrobinson 8y agoLicensed amateurs would be required to register the public keys (not private keys, of course) they want to to sign messages on amateur bands.
- wedowhatwedo 8y agoThat's what this project does. It does signing, just not encryption. I would argue that this is OK legally.
- 8y ago
- vectorEQ 8y agobecause they can't intercept your keys so cleverly as when on the internet ;)
- rtkwe 8y agoThe amateur public radio bands are supposed to be open and useful to everyone so the broadcasts in those spectra are supposed to be readable by everyone as part of the accessible part. On top of that encrypted transmissions would be basically noise pumped into the system making the open uses more difficult and harder to police.
- jimktrains2 8y ago> The amateur public radio bands are supposed to be open and useful to everyone so the broadcasts in those spectra are supposed to be readable by everyone as part of the accessible part. Except that proprietary voice codices are allowed :(
- TrueDuality 8y agoTo a certain extent yes. This is only true on frequencies allowing digital voice encoding and they technically are still required to publish the working of the codec and how to identify them even if they are patent encumbered and you can't legally resell or distribute something to decode them. These protections are to ensure the FCC / government are always able to decode amateur transmissions. These aren't protections for the operators themselves. I completely agree with your sentiments though, the amateur bands should not allow proprietary commercialization.
- rtkwe 8y agoYeah it's a bit of a compromise there it looks like. At the time the only reasonable codecs that existed were proprietary and allowing them with the stipulation that the patents be available on a 'reasonable and non-discriminatory' basis so anyone could make a commercial radio based on the codecs. At least with a proprietary codec with that patent restriction anyone can still go out and buy a compatible radio and jump right on. And if the improvement to capabilities is large enough the trade off is worth it. It's not ideal but it's much better than allowing encryption where the transmissions aren't accessible to anyone by design.
- giancarlostoro 8y ago
- jasonjayr 8y agoThis project seems to just implement signatures + verifiability to clear text messages, which I think(I am not a HAM), is allowed under the rules.
- blattimwind 8y ago> So encrypting amateur radio comms is illegal in the US? Is there a particular reason for this? Encrypting amateur radio is illegal practically world-wide — every ITU member state bans it.
- jauer 8y agoNotable exceptions: emergency communications in .AU and with publication of key in .CA.
- coreymatyas 8y agoA notable exception in the US being for the telecommand of space stations (97.211b). There's also some grey area around encryption for telecommand of terrestrial craft --- you aren't allowed to "obscure the meaning of the communication" (97.215b), but other sections of Part 97 require preventing access to telecommand stations by unlicensed operators. This has raised questions over whether disallowing encryption is more important than risking telecommand stations being maliciously hijacked.
- rphlx 8y agoFWIW there's no conflict there in terms of the cryptography. A replay-protected, keyed authenticator of plaintext commands (HMAC, etc) is not encryption; it is authentication. In a similar sense you are allowed to put a rolling log-in password on a packet radio BBS, so that passive monitoring will see the password, but as soon as it's revealed, it's no longer useful for additional logins.
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 8y agoAnother notable exception: uplink control of certain aircrafts and spacecrafts
- dokument 8y agoAnother reason. If encryption was allowed then you would have a lot of commercial use on public bands but you couldn't enforce it, etc. It would ruin the public bands for everyone.