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> The laws of ham radio are literally "you must not encrypt anything" Wait, really? Why is this the case?
by nexuist 7y ago
> The laws of ham radio are literally "you must not encrypt anything"
Wait, really? Why is this the case?
- tesseract 7y agoTo enable enforcement of amateurism.
- pmlnr 7y agoSimilarly why gopher is not encrypted: https://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw.lite?gopher://tilde.team:70/0/~rain1/phlog/20190608-encrypting-gopher.txt https://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw.lite?gopher://tilde.te...
- fragmede 7y agoThe FCC, which has explicit purview over how radio frequencies are used, details the rules for amateur radio in part 97. In particular, "Amateur" is explicitly defined there to not allow commercial interests to use those radio waves. The US government allocated portions of the radio spectrum for use by (licensed) amateurs, kind of like the national parks. I'm not allowed to cut down trees in Yosemite and run my own private road so I can make a shortcut and drive right up to Half Dome. The prohibition against encryption comes from a similar place. If you're looking for privacy, ham radio is not the medium to use. FCC part 97 covers amateur operation (in the US), and the relevant part is §97.309 (4)(b), which states "data emissions using unspecified digital codes must not be transmitted for the purpose of obscuring the meaning of any communication." The intent of the "unspecified digital code" matters. My reading of this is that unspecified codes for authentication are allowed. I've always wanted to build telnet with authentication - if interested, others could to watch what I'm doing, but not be able to impersonate me.