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No, we aren't and we like it the way it is. The last thing ham radio needs is corporations just taking our bands, or ham radio getting banned in unstable count

No, we aren't and we like it the way it is. The last thing ham radio needs is corporations just taking our bands, or ham radio getting banned in unstable countries over espionage concerns. If you want encryption, use a cellphone, LoRaWAN etc.

177tcca 6y ago
But...there's tons of projects already in use which use protocols that, if the regulatory body isn't following every open source project & actively updating their intake tools, effectively act as encryption schema.
- throwaway3neu94 6y ago
  Could you give me an example or two so I can better understand what you mean? You're not entirely wrong, an undocumented plaintext protocol is functionally not much different from encryption. However, those which are legitimate (ie, just undocumented, not intentionally encrypted/obfuscated) don't tend to cause problems as only one or few ham devs would be using them. They can only get widespread adoption by other hams if they are documented. So this regulates itself. A corporation, on the other hand, is not like some ham dev coming up with their own protocol. They can design their own protocol, and then roll it out on thousands (or much more) of transmitters. So just one corporation can cause quite a big problem, with zero public documentation. The laws as they are, together with direction finding skills, are the communities only (legal) tool to defend against that. That does not mean hams don't see the value in encryption. I do! But it's a trade-off, and I think this is the only way it can work. The legal change I would like to see is explicitly allowing cryptographic signatures. Right now it's a grey area (likely legal, but not court tested)
  - 177tcca 6y ago
    Great points, especially, > They can only get widespread adoption by other hams if they are documented. > So this regulates itself Until the first project gets traction that allows you to easily drop in public/private key encryption of payload.
    - throwaway3neu94 6y ago
      I'm not sure what asymmetric encryption has to do with this. There are already protocols that are widely used in ham radio that support encryption. For example, DMR supports encryption (because DMR can also operate in commercial bands, under different laws), it's just not used for ham radio and I've never seen a ham turn it on. Wifi supports encryption, and ham radio operators using it in ham radio bands (with more power) actually turn encryption on but document the PSK publicly (in an attempt to keep the non hams out, but make the encryption more an encoding that anyone could decode). In my experience, ham radio operators generally roughly follow the rules.
      - n0ot 6y ago
        Is this explicitly allowed? I've always thought it would be cool if amateurs were allowed to encrypt their communications, so long as they provided the decryption keys regularly over the same channel. You could incorporate cryptographic signatures, diffie-helmann key exchanges, all kinds of fun stuff, and so long as you periodically transmit the decryption key, you're not hiding anything. I'm not sure what the legality of this is.
        throwaway3neu94 6y ago
        It's thought to be legal but it is not explicitly allowed, and so it requires some legal interpretation and that is not court tested.
f-- 6y ago
I hear this argument a lot, but it feels like a weird back-justification for the restrictions imposed by the government. Yes, encryption would make some enforcement actions slightly harder, but we tolerate it in plenty of other settings where you have a constrained, shared resource. Wifi comes to mind. Nobody gets upset that you can't examine your neighbors' packets to make sure they're following the law or not using the spectrum for a purpose other than "bona fide" home wifi. Even though the wifi spectrum in urban areas is far more crowded than ham frequencies. For much of the hobby's history, the government was deeply distrustful of amateur radio. They flat out banned all operations during WWI and WWII. And a lot of ham radio folks reminisce about the good old times when the government had listening stations and amateur radio enforcement operations throughout the country, and would knock on the doors of any amateurs who did anything wrong. Well, they funded that not because they shared your passion, but because they wanted to keep Soviet spies at bay. The ban on encryption was supposed to serve the government's interests, nothing more. If you worry about corporations misusing the spectrum, it's sufficient to require identification in plain text; if somebody is using amateur callsigns but sending 9-to-5 chatter on a fixed frequency every day, and you pinpoint it to a local warehouse, that's more enough for enforcement action, right? Except... there is almost no enforcement these days, because the Cold War is over and the government lost all interest. Ham radio getting "banned in unstable countries" seems like a whimsical concern, too. First, many other countries do not restrict encryption the way US does. Secondly, in the era of the Internet, mesh networking, ubiquitous smartphones, etc, ham radio hardly registers on the radar for most governments. Maybe in North Korea... so let's ban encryption domestically, including in the short-distance VHF/UHF band, to stay on Kim's good side?
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  It's not just that.. The thing is also that if everyone starts using encryption the community is gone. Right now at night we turn on the radios and check the local repeaters for activity and whatnot. Hear some interesting QSOs. If everyone is chatting encrypted this won't work. It also would enable people to use it as a free alternative for a commercial license - after all when it's encrypted we can't check that it's not used for such a purpose anymore. Using locations as you suggest isn't enough as it will need really targeted surveillance. Also, for a warehouse any of the free radio modes are more than sufficient in range. The ban on encryption isn't really much to do with espionage. Spies don't need a license.

177tcca 6y ago

But...there's tons of projects already in use which use protocols that, if the regulatory body isn't following every open source project & actively updating their intake tools, effectively act as encryption schema.

throwaway3neu94 6y ago
Could you give me an example or two so I can better understand what you mean? You're not entirely wrong, an undocumented plaintext protocol is functionally not much different from encryption. However, those which are legitimate (ie, just undocumented, not intentionally encrypted/obfuscated) don't tend to cause problems as only one or few ham devs would be using them. They can only get widespread adoption by other hams if they are documented. So this regulates itself. A corporation, on the other hand, is not like some ham dev coming up with their own protocol. They can design their own protocol, and then roll it out on thousands (or much more) of transmitters. So just one corporation can cause quite a big problem, with zero public documentation. The laws as they are, together with direction finding skills, are the communities only (legal) tool to defend against that. That does not mean hams don't see the value in encryption. I do! But it's a trade-off, and I think this is the only way it can work. The legal change I would like to see is explicitly allowing cryptographic signatures. Right now it's a grey area (likely legal, but not court tested)
- 177tcca 6y ago
  Great points, especially, > They can only get widespread adoption by other hams if they are documented. > So this regulates itself Until the first project gets traction that allows you to easily drop in public/private key encryption of payload.
  - throwaway3neu94 6y ago
    I'm not sure what asymmetric encryption has to do with this. There are already protocols that are widely used in ham radio that support encryption. For example, DMR supports encryption (because DMR can also operate in commercial bands, under different laws), it's just not used for ham radio and I've never seen a ham turn it on. Wifi supports encryption, and ham radio operators using it in ham radio bands (with more power) actually turn encryption on but document the PSK publicly (in an attempt to keep the non hams out, but make the encryption more an encoding that anyone could decode). In my experience, ham radio operators generally roughly follow the rules.
    - n0ot 6y ago
      Is this explicitly allowed? I've always thought it would be cool if amateurs were allowed to encrypt their communications, so long as they provided the decryption keys regularly over the same channel. You could incorporate cryptographic signatures, diffie-helmann key exchanges, all kinds of fun stuff, and so long as you periodically transmit the decryption key, you're not hiding anything. I'm not sure what the legality of this is.
      - throwaway3neu94 6y ago
        It's thought to be legal but it is not explicitly allowed, and so it requires some legal interpretation and that is not court tested.

f-- 6y ago

I hear this argument a lot, but it feels like a weird back-justification for the restrictions imposed by the government. Yes, encryption would make some enforcement actions slightly harder, but we tolerate it in plenty of other settings where you have a constrained, shared resource. Wifi comes to mind. Nobody gets upset that you can't examine your neighbors' packets to make sure they're following the law or not using the spectrum for a purpose other than "bona fide" home wifi. Even though the wifi spectrum in urban areas is far more crowded than ham frequencies. For much of the hobby's history, the government was deeply distrustful of amateur radio. They flat out banned all operations during WWI and WWII. And a lot of ham radio folks reminisce about the good old times when the government had listening stations and amateur radio enforcement operations throughout the country, and would knock on the doors of any amateurs who did anything wrong. Well, they funded that not because they shared your passion, but because they wanted to keep Soviet spies at bay. The ban on encryption was supposed to serve the government's interests, nothing more. If you worry about corporations misusing the spectrum, it's sufficient to require identification in plain text; if somebody is using amateur callsigns but sending 9-to-5 chatter on a fixed frequency every day, and you pinpoint it to a local warehouse, that's more enough for enforcement action, right? Except... there is almost no enforcement these days, because the Cold War is over and the government lost all interest. Ham radio getting "banned in unstable countries" seems like a whimsical concern, too. First, many other countries do not restrict encryption the way US does. Secondly, in the era of the Internet, mesh networking, ubiquitous smartphones, etc, ham radio hardly registers on the radar for most governments. Maybe in North Korea... so let's ban encryption domestically, including in the short-distance VHF/UHF band, to stay on Kim's good side?

GekkePrutser 6y ago
It's not just that.. The thing is also that if everyone starts using encryption the community is gone. Right now at night we turn on the radios and check the local repeaters for activity and whatnot. Hear some interesting QSOs. If everyone is chatting encrypted this won't work. It also would enable people to use it as a free alternative for a commercial license - after all when it's encrypted we can't check that it's not used for such a purpose anymore. Using locations as you suggest isn't enough as it will need really targeted surveillance. Also, for a warehouse any of the free radio modes are more than sufficient in range. The ban on encryption isn't really much to do with espionage. Spies don't need a license.