5 ms·

I've always wondered why the FCC is regulating the content of amateur radio transmissions as opposed to merely the spectrum used. With the way regulations are s

I've always wondered why the FCC is regulating the content of amateur radio transmissions as opposed to merely the spectrum used. With the way regulations are set up, there's little to do on amateur radio than....talk about amateur radio. A bit stifling as far as potential innovations go. I've had several great ideas for amateur radio applications that are effectively useless without some method of privacy. There's not a compelling reason I can think of for the FCC doing anything more than regulating bandwidth, power, and duration of radio spectrum signals. On that premise, what couldn't they do with encrypted signals? It's not like abusers honestly identify themselves at the required intervals anyway. They could still triangulate abusers and issue fines. The only thing they wouldn't be able to do is tell users to watch their mouth. As far as one of the stated purposes being emergency management, I can't help but wonder if reserved frequencies (ala CB channel 9) are sufficient.

howard941 7y ago
Could you give an example of how the regs stifle? If you can avoid obscenities you can talk about whatever you like. Your political views, the asking price for your unused HT, whatever.
- godelski 7y ago
  The encrypted communication the parent is likely referring to isn't about speech. An example of something that would need encryption is something like accessing a server through radio. Or "iot" like devices, except we'll say HAMOT. I'm definitely not opening a server without encryption. Lots of applications for controlling devices you'd also want to encrypt so that they can't be hijacked.
  - howard941 7y ago
    Are you sure you have to encrypt? Those uses call for authentication.
    - godelski 7y ago
      Do I really want to authenticate without encryption? I understand that to be a bad idea.
      - howard941 7y ago
        Are you maybe thinking about it being a bad idea to decrypt without validating message integrity (i.e. decrypt without having or checking the message authentication code)? You absolutely can authenticate without encryption, it's one of the few ways you'll be able to get away with restricting access to functions and features legally on the ham bands. One time passwords and challenge/response authentication procedures are some alternatives.
        godelski 7y ago
        Well if I can use a key and otp that makes it safer. But I'm more thinking how do you send a password safely. On the internet we don't want to do that with http. As I understand it, if you send your password without encryption you are sending your password with plain text. I don't see why this is different with electrical signals traveling through the air vs electrical signals traveling through cables. I figure we'd want to use the same security practices regardless of what medium that signal is being sent through.
        kortex 7y ago
        Diffie Hellman. There are all kinds of schemes for Alice and Bob to share keys over a hostile channel. A brief secrets exchange isn't the same as an encrypted pipe. Once you have authentication, you can send whatever control signals you want in the clear, as long as they are signed. Message: set foo to baz Author: kortex Checksum: 0x1337ace5 Sig: 0xdeadbeef The endpoint checks for message integrity and authentication, and executes or rejects. The difference is cables are waveguides from A to B. Radio is a common bus.
        godelski 7y ago
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  > Could you give an example of how the regs stifle? As I pointed out just a few days ago, probably most hams worldwide interpret the regs as discouraging any polemic discussion like politics or religion. Since so many hams are elderly, there is also some distrust of foreigners lingering from the Cold War era. So communications, especially international communications, are so often limited to merely exchanging signal reports, maybe some gear talk or weather info, and then it’s 73. Besides that, amateur radio is a hobby that attracts a lot of socially-awkward anoraks, who are very self-conscious about entering into any conversation deeper than just talking about their gear. Sure, there is a community of eager ragchewers, but it is not so big comparatively, and even most of those ragchewers probably limit their deep conversations to people from the same country (or even to people from their own local club scene).
  - tlrobinson 7y ago
    I guess you’re not familiar with 14.313 MHz... (It’s been called the 4chan of ham radio)
    - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
      And that hangout represents how many hams worldwide? Let’s have a sense of perspective.
  - howard941 7y ago
    Speaking of the cold war, the supposed limited conversations of signal report, wx, DSV and 73 reminds me of all of my Soviet-era QSOs with stations on the other side of the iron curtain. Not today - although I did have one of your wham bam thank you mam QSOs with a Cuban station last year - in the 21st century you'll talk as long as the band stays open about anything with all but the Cubans and Chinese. You're wrong about how most hams interpret the regs, for whatever purposes, offensive in your ageism and stereotypes of hams who are no more or less awkward than your average high performing HNer. I don't know where you developed these beliefs but they don't reflect reality. How do you know the ragchew community is not so big? I am indeed a random guy on the internet but one who's been hamming for more than 40 years. Copyedits.
jdietrich 7y ago
>I've always wondered why the FCC is regulating the content of amateur radio transmissions as opposed to merely the spectrum used. Spectrum is allocated for specific purposes. We have spectrum allocations for aviation, for public safety, for business use, for broadcast and so on. Each of those services has specific regulations to ensure that it functions effectively and is not detrimental to users of other radio services. Amateur radio has a broad but specific range of purposes with some kind of social benefit - education, experimentation, public safety, international goodwill etc. The amateur radio service is regulated to ensure that it remains useful for those purposes. Encryption removes the ability of the FCC and the amateur radio community as a whole to see whether you're using the service legitimately, or illegally encroaching on amateur frequencies.
VLM 7y ago
Quality of Service. Multiple engineer-months of field strength estimates and measurements and extensive deconfliction to provide reliable broadcast service mean the part 73 licensing process is very expensive, yet it results in broadcast services that generally work pretty well. Of course its extremely expensive to regulate that level of QoS. On the other hand, the Ham Radio licensing process is like: try not to hurt yourself or others, take responsibility for your actions by attaching your callsign (aka legal contact, if it comes to that) to every transmission, and we guarantee absolutely nothing although you folks are historically pretty resourceful LOL. Naturally that costs about $5 to regulate that level of QoS. Every other service is somewhere in between. Part 87 for aircraft comms is a bit on the expensive side and extensively monitored and interference complaints are very aggressively enforced at a financial loss to the FCC (but, hey, public safety, so its worth it), Part 95-D for CB is for all practical purposes unregulated and as you'd guess its both basically unusable for any purpose and is also free. Over a very short period of time its tempting to be the first guy to pay Part 97 prices for a license then cheat the system and operate Part 90 services or even Part 73 services on that $5 Part 97 license. Over the long period of time, regulation existed for a reason, the reason has not gone away, and the price and paperwork burden of a Part 97 license would naturally rise up to the existing Part 73 system plus an extra $5 to fund the legacy ham radio service such that its now a net loss to merge parts 73 and 97 services. The overall process is essentially a wealth transfer from those who are the last to give in and ruin the commons to those who are the first to ruin the commons, which is usually not seen as a regulatory win in a theoretical sense. As a thought experiment, imagine a world of highly limited internet bandwidth and no net neutrality resulting in massive tiers of bandwidth and billing, and the government proposed regulation that if you set a "I'm a 911 call" bit in your packet, that would be not billed "free" service. You know if they allowed encryption of "911 voice call traffic", that the usual suspects would be trading blueray ISO files by the dozen per month using torrent clients with the "I'm a 911 call" bit set such that the BW was free. I'm not sure that works in the sense of everyone playing along in a system. In the very old days of radio there was no regulation, as being proposed; it didn't work very well. The FCC wasn't invented just for fun. The FCC is kinda like the EPA, didn't need the EPA in 10000 BC, and the only rational way to get into a future scenario where the EPA is no longer needed seems to be to go back to the population and living conditions of 10000 BC... So I wouldn't bet on "lets just rm -Rf the entire FCC" being implemented any time soon.

howard941 7y ago

Could you give an example of how the regs stifle? If you can avoid obscenities you can talk about whatever you like. Your political views, the asking price for your unused HT, whatever.

godelski 7y ago
The encrypted communication the parent is likely referring to isn't about speech. An example of something that would need encryption is something like accessing a server through radio. Or "iot" like devices, except we'll say HAMOT. I'm definitely not opening a server without encryption. Lots of applications for controlling devices you'd also want to encrypt so that they can't be hijacked.
- howard941 7y ago
  Are you sure you have to encrypt? Those uses call for authentication.
  - godelski 7y ago
    Do I really want to authenticate without encryption? I understand that to be a bad idea.
    - howard941 7y ago
      Are you maybe thinking about it being a bad idea to decrypt without validating message integrity (i.e. decrypt without having or checking the message authentication code)? You absolutely can authenticate without encryption, it's one of the few ways you'll be able to get away with restricting access to functions and features legally on the ham bands. One time passwords and challenge/response authentication procedures are some alternatives.
      - godelski 7y ago
        Well if I can use a key and otp that makes it safer. But I'm more thinking how do you send a password safely. On the internet we don't want to do that with http. As I understand it, if you send your password without encryption you are sending your password with plain text. I don't see why this is different with electrical signals traveling through the air vs electrical signals traveling through cables. I figure we'd want to use the same security practices regardless of what medium that signal is being sent through.
        kortex 7y ago
        Diffie Hellman. There are all kinds of schemes for Alice and Bob to share keys over a hostile channel. A brief secrets exchange isn't the same as an encrypted pipe. Once you have authentication, you can send whatever control signals you want in the clear, as long as they are signed. Message: set foo to baz Author: kortex Checksum: 0x1337ace5 Sig: 0xdeadbeef The endpoint checks for message integrity and authentication, and executes or rejects. The difference is cables are waveguides from A to B. Radio is a common bus.
        godelski 7y ago
Mediterraneo10 7y ago
> Could you give an example of how the regs stifle? As I pointed out just a few days ago, probably most hams worldwide interpret the regs as discouraging any polemic discussion like politics or religion. Since so many hams are elderly, there is also some distrust of foreigners lingering from the Cold War era. So communications, especially international communications, are so often limited to merely exchanging signal reports, maybe some gear talk or weather info, and then it’s 73. Besides that, amateur radio is a hobby that attracts a lot of socially-awkward anoraks, who are very self-conscious about entering into any conversation deeper than just talking about their gear. Sure, there is a community of eager ragchewers, but it is not so big comparatively, and even most of those ragchewers probably limit their deep conversations to people from the same country (or even to people from their own local club scene).
- tlrobinson 7y ago
  I guess you’re not familiar with 14.313 MHz... (It’s been called the 4chan of ham radio)
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    And that hangout represents how many hams worldwide? Let’s have a sense of perspective.
- howard941 7y ago
  Speaking of the cold war, the supposed limited conversations of signal report, wx, DSV and 73 reminds me of all of my Soviet-era QSOs with stations on the other side of the iron curtain. Not today - although I did have one of your wham bam thank you mam QSOs with a Cuban station last year - in the 21st century you'll talk as long as the band stays open about anything with all but the Cubans and Chinese. You're wrong about how most hams interpret the regs, for whatever purposes, offensive in your ageism and stereotypes of hams who are no more or less awkward than your average high performing HNer. I don't know where you developed these beliefs but they don't reflect reality. How do you know the ragchew community is not so big? I am indeed a random guy on the internet but one who's been hamming for more than 40 years. Copyedits.

jdietrich 7y ago

>I've always wondered why the FCC is regulating the content of amateur radio transmissions as opposed to merely the spectrum used. Spectrum is allocated for specific purposes. We have spectrum allocations for aviation, for public safety, for business use, for broadcast and so on. Each of those services has specific regulations to ensure that it functions effectively and is not detrimental to users of other radio services. Amateur radio has a broad but specific range of purposes with some kind of social benefit - education, experimentation, public safety, international goodwill etc. The amateur radio service is regulated to ensure that it remains useful for those purposes. Encryption removes the ability of the FCC and the amateur radio community as a whole to see whether you're using the service legitimately, or illegally encroaching on amateur frequencies.

VLM 7y ago

Quality of Service. Multiple engineer-months of field strength estimates and measurements and extensive deconfliction to provide reliable broadcast service mean the part 73 licensing process is very expensive, yet it results in broadcast services that generally work pretty well. Of course its extremely expensive to regulate that level of QoS. On the other hand, the Ham Radio licensing process is like: try not to hurt yourself or others, take responsibility for your actions by attaching your callsign (aka legal contact, if it comes to that) to every transmission, and we guarantee absolutely nothing although you folks are historically pretty resourceful LOL. Naturally that costs about $5 to regulate that level of QoS. Every other service is somewhere in between. Part 87 for aircraft comms is a bit on the expensive side and extensively monitored and interference complaints are very aggressively enforced at a financial loss to the FCC (but, hey, public safety, so its worth it), Part 95-D for CB is for all practical purposes unregulated and as you'd guess its both basically unusable for any purpose and is also free. Over a very short period of time its tempting to be the first guy to pay Part 97 prices for a license then cheat the system and operate Part 90 services or even Part 73 services on that $5 Part 97 license. Over the long period of time, regulation existed for a reason, the reason has not gone away, and the price and paperwork burden of a Part 97 license would naturally rise up to the existing Part 73 system plus an extra $5 to fund the legacy ham radio service such that its now a net loss to merge parts 73 and 97 services. The overall process is essentially a wealth transfer from those who are the last to give in and ruin the commons to those who are the first to ruin the commons, which is usually not seen as a regulatory win in a theoretical sense. As a thought experiment, imagine a world of highly limited internet bandwidth and no net neutrality resulting in massive tiers of bandwidth and billing, and the government proposed regulation that if you set a "I'm a 911 call" bit in your packet, that would be not billed "free" service. You know if they allowed encryption of "911 voice call traffic", that the usual suspects would be trading blueray ISO files by the dozen per month using torrent clients with the "I'm a 911 call" bit set such that the BW was free. I'm not sure that works in the sense of everyone playing along in a system. In the very old days of radio there was no regulation, as being proposed; it didn't work very well. The FCC wasn't invented just for fun. The FCC is kinda like the EPA, didn't need the EPA in 10000 BC, and the only rational way to get into a future scenario where the EPA is no longer needed seems to be to go back to the population and living conditions of 10000 BC... So I wouldn't bet on "lets just rm -Rf the entire FCC" being implemented any time soon.