I've always thought this problem was interesting and it's one of the reasons it's a real shame that amateur radio doesn't allow encrypted communications. I get

I've always thought this problem was interesting and it's one of the reasons it's a real shame that amateur radio doesn't allow encrypted communications. I get that you can still do it anyways if you're willing to skirt an unjust law in the name of a higher code of ethics, but it would be handy to have it be a normal occurrence and get some herd immunity out of it. Of course I'm also aware it's not nearly that simple, that if ham bands allowed lots of discrete encrypted communication they'd just get filled up with commercial and business users taking advantage of the privacy and snatching up free bandwidth. I'm not a genius by a long shot, but I have to wonder if there's some solution for this. Maybe some kind of open-source encrypted radio modem which operates in ham or underutilized radio bands that someone could design and put out on a torrent server for people in these situations to access and build. It would be highly illegal to possess one, but what about just designing it? People using it in desperate situations under authoritarian regimes would likely already be operating outside the law.