Identification is of course there to ensure accountability. But actually, as you learn with the exams, identifying yourself makes you less likely to get punishe

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.