4 ms·

#1 problem: requiring identification. Sorry, I don't want to provide ID. We are not in a police state yet. #2 problem: the snitching mentality. HAMs sure love

by 1996 7y ago

#1 problem: requiring identification. Sorry, I don't want to provide ID. We are not in a police state yet. #2 problem: the snitching mentality. HAMs sure love to snitch on those who don't follow the rules to keep their clubs very exclusive and very obedient #3 problem: banning a bunch of interesting uses. Can't transmit encrypted - linked to #1 and #2 I guess. Overall, a nice hobby for someone who aims to work at a FANG: if your life objective is to obey, serve and extend the order decided by the status quo, HAM is a nice matching hobby. If it's not for you, stay out of the snitchers band, and play on low power on the unlicensed bands instead. The smell of freedom is intoxicating.

JshWright 7y ago
I assume you also object to requiring a driver's license to operate a car on public roads?
- 1996 7y ago
  You mean license plate - if it was my full name, yes I'd object having that information available to everyone. FYI, I have black tape over the barcode that's on the back on my driver license, and the number and other non essential fields on the front. People can see my photo, my first name, the year I was born. They can't scan much out of that in bars.
inetknght 7y ago
Without the first two rules in effect, your cell phone, wifi, television, and emergency services would rapidly become unusable.
- 1996 7y ago
  You presume bad faith. I have a different opinion. I trust people, even without government ID. Someone said below: "If you're made aware of your mistake (failure to adhere to rules, spurious emissions, etc.) you're given the opportunity to stop transmitting until you fix the issue." I believe most people do not want to willfully commit mistakes. Letting them know is sufficient. There may be a few bad apple like in everywhere, but that's why you have laws and law enforcement.
  - jascii 7y ago
    If you -- in perfectly good faith -- accidently disrupt vital services, like emergency com's or air traffic control, potentially endangering human lives, then the identification requirement allows us (as in society) to contact you to remedy the situation. Without the identification requirement it would take a lot longer to track you down, puting human lives at risk.
    - teddyh 7y ago
      That’s the official dogma, and you’re parroting it perfectly. In reality, I sincerely doubt the problem would be that bad. Communications technology has advanced since 1960.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - jascii 7y ago
        Physics still holds true; if I create a signal in a certain spectrum, it will raise the noise floor for other signals in that spectrum limiting effective communication. It did so in the 60's, it does so now. No amount of calling it "dogma" or "parroting" is going to change that..
        1996 7y ago
        If someone is transmitting "signal in a certain spectrum" in a way that cause you harm, step 1) get on the mike and tell to that person their transmission is causing problem, step 2) they stop. No snitching or gov id required. I agree with the other person, this is just parroting the official position. The world has changed, and pseudonymous communication is a valid alternative: HAMs could simply be required to provide an email - good enough to add a layer of anonymity, and not sufficient to stop law enforcement.
        jascii 7y ago
        "get on the mike" what frequency? Modulation? What makes you think I am monitoring anything after say a relay got stuck keeping my gear permanently -unbeknown to me- in transmit. A reliable out of band back channel is needed. Currently that is what it is. I am not saying there are no better alternatives possible, go ahead design them and start the political process.. Pseudonymity? Yeah, that's working so well on the internet. Trolling and Spam are not a problem at all. Lets see how that works in a much more resource constrained environment like our radio spectrum.
paulirwin 7y ago
Identification is of course there to ensure accountability. But actually, as you learn with the exams, identifying yourself makes you less likely to get punished (i.e. with an FCC fine) if you're operating in good faith. If you're made aware of your mistake (failure to adhere to rules, spurious emissions, etc.) you're given the opportunity to stop transmitting until you fix the issue. But if you don't identify yourself and people or the FCC have to foxhunt you down, you're surely going to face a fine and/or revocation of license. What you might view as "snitching", others like myself view as keeping the bands open and enjoyable for everyone, or at least as many people as possible given the narrow bandwidth of HF bands. If you fire up a many-kW wide-band FM transmission on 160m where the band is only 200KHz wide for example, you're ruining it for everyone and possibly blocking emergency communications (see ARES/RACES). You're entitled to experiment and enjoy the band within the rules, which ensures you're not depriving everyone else of that opportunity, just as traffic lanes ensure you're not blocking oncoming traffic. But really, I have yet to hear of issues on the air with people "snitching" on others. Most hams are respectful to one another and are mature enough to know the system only works if everyone shares the limited bandwidth and coordinates with one another via band plans. The band plans help ensure that your SSB transmission doesn't interfere with someone else wanting to do Morse code CW or moonbounce or low-power beacon propagation reporting. The privilege to use this spectrum would disappear quickly if these rules were not in place and enforced. Encrypted and obfuscated communications are prohibited in these bands precisely because this is "amateur" radio. It should not have a purpose other than exploring radio science and communicating in a public and open way. It cannot be used for commercial purposes, either. Therefore encryption and obfuscation are not needed for these purposes, and you cannot ensure the transmissions are meeting the rules if you can't decode them. I might be wrong about this, but I believe encryption would be allowed for experimentation purposes as long as the protocol is publicly documented and you make the decryption keys publicly available. (You would also probably want to begin and end your transmission with a non-encrypted message explaining where to get more information to decode it.) If your concern is learning how to do encryption over radio, this would allow you to meet that goal, with the understanding that everyone would be able to decrypt your transmissions. There are "experimental" sections of the band plan available for this kind of experimentation and learning. If you wish to transmit on radio waves without identification, amateur rules, or with encryption, you can certainly do so in the ISM bands within regulatory power limits, or if you need commercial use, there are non-amateur bands out there. The spirit of amateur radio is to encourage learning about radio science and to communicate with other people around the world interested in this hobby, not to be the wild west of our limited radio spectrum.
waste_monk 7y ago
>#3 problem: banning a bunch of interesting uses. Can't transmit encrypted - linked to #1 and #2 I guess. As others have said, it's not generally a problem, and if there is something that requires confidentiality you're free to use another method e.g. phone, email, etc. But it's worth noting that not all cryptography is banned, just anything that obscures the contents of a transmission. For example, you can cryptographically sign messages to authenticate that they came from you. Similar to how you can use digital modes that aren't human-understandable (in the same way that morse or voice is) as long as the protocol specification is published somewhere such that it is possible someone could implement it from spec and decode the messages, or append checksums to your transmissions, etc. - as long as the content gets through in the clear it's OK.

by 1996 7y ago

JshWright 7y ago

I assume you also object to requiring a driver's license to operate a car on public roads?

1996 7y ago
You mean license plate - if it was my full name, yes I'd object having that information available to everyone. FYI, I have black tape over the barcode that's on the back on my driver license, and the number and other non essential fields on the front. People can see my photo, my first name, the year I was born. They can't scan much out of that in bars.

inetknght 7y ago

Without the first two rules in effect, your cell phone, wifi, television, and emergency services would rapidly become unusable.

1996 7y ago
You presume bad faith. I have a different opinion. I trust people, even without government ID. Someone said below: "If you're made aware of your mistake (failure to adhere to rules, spurious emissions, etc.) you're given the opportunity to stop transmitting until you fix the issue." I believe most people do not want to willfully commit mistakes. Letting them know is sufficient. There may be a few bad apple like in everywhere, but that's why you have laws and law enforcement.
- jascii 7y ago
  If you -- in perfectly good faith -- accidently disrupt vital services, like emergency com's or air traffic control, potentially endangering human lives, then the identification requirement allows us (as in society) to contact you to remedy the situation. Without the identification requirement it would take a lot longer to track you down, puting human lives at risk.
  - teddyh 7y ago
    That’s the official dogma, and you’re parroting it perfectly. In reality, I sincerely doubt the problem would be that bad. Communications technology has advanced since 1960.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - jascii 7y ago
      Physics still holds true; if I create a signal in a certain spectrum, it will raise the noise floor for other signals in that spectrum limiting effective communication. It did so in the 60's, it does so now. No amount of calling it "dogma" or "parroting" is going to change that..
      - 1996 7y ago
        If someone is transmitting "signal in a certain spectrum" in a way that cause you harm, step 1) get on the mike and tell to that person their transmission is causing problem, step 2) they stop. No snitching or gov id required. I agree with the other person, this is just parroting the official position. The world has changed, and pseudonymous communication is a valid alternative: HAMs could simply be required to provide an email - good enough to add a layer of anonymity, and not sufficient to stop law enforcement.
        jascii 7y ago
        "get on the mike" what frequency? Modulation? What makes you think I am monitoring anything after say a relay got stuck keeping my gear permanently -unbeknown to me- in transmit. A reliable out of band back channel is needed. Currently that is what it is. I am not saying there are no better alternatives possible, go ahead design them and start the political process.. Pseudonymity? Yeah, that's working so well on the internet. Trolling and Spam are not a problem at all. Lets see how that works in a much more resource constrained environment like our radio spectrum.

paulirwin 7y ago

Identification is of course there to ensure accountability. But actually, as you learn with the exams, identifying yourself makes you less likely to get punished (i.e. with an FCC fine) if you're operating in good faith. If you're made aware of your mistake (failure to adhere to rules, spurious emissions, etc.) you're given the opportunity to stop transmitting until you fix the issue. But if you don't identify yourself and people or the FCC have to foxhunt you down, you're surely going to face a fine and/or revocation of license. What you might view as "snitching", others like myself view as keeping the bands open and enjoyable for everyone, or at least as many people as possible given the narrow bandwidth of HF bands. If you fire up a many-kW wide-band FM transmission on 160m where the band is only 200KHz wide for example, you're ruining it for everyone and possibly blocking emergency communications (see ARES/RACES). You're entitled to experiment and enjoy the band within the rules, which ensures you're not depriving everyone else of that opportunity, just as traffic lanes ensure you're not blocking oncoming traffic. But really, I have yet to hear of issues on the air with people "snitching" on others. Most hams are respectful to one another and are mature enough to know the system only works if everyone shares the limited bandwidth and coordinates with one another via band plans. The band plans help ensure that your SSB transmission doesn't interfere with someone else wanting to do Morse code CW or moonbounce or low-power beacon propagation reporting. The privilege to use this spectrum would disappear quickly if these rules were not in place and enforced. Encrypted and obfuscated communications are prohibited in these bands precisely because this is "amateur" radio. It should not have a purpose other than exploring radio science and communicating in a public and open way. It cannot be used for commercial purposes, either. Therefore encryption and obfuscation are not needed for these purposes, and you cannot ensure the transmissions are meeting the rules if you can't decode them. I might be wrong about this, but I believe encryption would be allowed for experimentation purposes as long as the protocol is publicly documented and you make the decryption keys publicly available. (You would also probably want to begin and end your transmission with a non-encrypted message explaining where to get more information to decode it.) If your concern is learning how to do encryption over radio, this would allow you to meet that goal, with the understanding that everyone would be able to decrypt your transmissions. There are "experimental" sections of the band plan available for this kind of experimentation and learning. If you wish to transmit on radio waves without identification, amateur rules, or with encryption, you can certainly do so in the ISM bands within regulatory power limits, or if you need commercial use, there are non-amateur bands out there. The spirit of amateur radio is to encourage learning about radio science and to communicate with other people around the world interested in this hobby, not to be the wild west of our limited radio spectrum.

waste_monk 7y ago

>#3 problem: banning a bunch of interesting uses. Can't transmit encrypted - linked to #1 and #2 I guess. As others have said, it's not generally a problem, and if there is something that requires confidentiality you're free to use another method e.g. phone, email, etc. But it's worth noting that not all cryptography is banned, just anything that obscures the contents of a transmission. For example, you can cryptographically sign messages to authenticate that they came from you. Similar to how you can use digital modes that aren't human-understandable (in the same way that morse or voice is) as long as the protocol specification is published somewhere such that it is possible someone could implement it from spec and decode the messages, or append checksums to your transmissions, etc. - as long as the content gets through in the clear it's OK.