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There is also no legal basis for requiring radio controllers to have signature enforced firmware loading. If someone actually tried to write their own radio fi

There is also no legal basis for requiring radio controllers to have signature enforced firmware loading. If someone actually tried to write their own radio firmware and made a mistake, there very soon would be. Messing around with radio transmission is not a game. Make enough noise on the wrong frequency and now you're interfering with communications for emergency services responding to a disaster or air traffic control guiding flights in crowded airspace, with a very real danger of loss of life. And there is no way for anyone to stop you until they've physically tracked down the source of the bad transmission, which can take hours. I am very much in favour of rights to repair and against almost any restriction on what individuals can do with their own hardware, but giving people who don't know what they're doing unrestricted access to a radio transmitter on that basis is a bit like giving everyone in your city a button that detonates the nuke because you believe in a right to bear arms. At some point, you need to draw a line and say only qualified people past this point, or very bad things start to happen.

jsight 5y ago
People can buy software defined radios and effectively already have that access.
netr0ute 5y ago
You say all this as if the megacorps with signed firmware can't make mistakes.
- Silhouette 5y ago
  Of course they can. But usually they don't, not for something like this. I have been witness to the kind of search I mentioned. Usually it happens because of a freak hardware failure, not a malicious act or negligence. Unfortunately the innocence of all involved does not reduce the severity of the potential consequences. As I said, this stuff is not a game.
R0b0t1 5y ago
People do this all the time with routers. The FCC has been trying to require firmware signing but it has been pushed off for now because there is very little demonstrable harm. I can go buy a bunch of passives off of ebay and make a noisy oscillator that will kill everything for a couple blocks but nobody seems to do it.
- Silhouette 5y ago
  I have seen the "very little demonstrable harm" you mentioned with my own eyes in real time. It was little more than serendipity that saved lives that day. If someone did do what you described then IMHO they would be recklessly endangering the lives of others and should be treated accordingly.
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    This isn't a tenable argument for two reasons: 1. How far off the bell curve do we need to go? Do we trade all rights to do anything for diminishing returns in safety? 2. These modifications are happening right now. Bad instances are usually caught by EMS system tests or by people reporting gaps in cell coverage, etc, and are generally purpose build jammers. There are not many instances of frequency overlap. For most goods, especially consumer telecommunications equipment, other bands are protected by the fact the equipment is given a specific range to operate in anyway.
    - Silhouette 5y ago
      I am having difficulty working out what your position is here. Before you were talking about taking out multi block areas. Now you're talking about consumer equipment that is prevented from interfering with other frequencies. I was objecting to the former -- wherever you choose to draw your line, clearly interfering with safety-critical communications over a wide area should be well past it. The latter is a prudent step for mass market consumer goods.
  - netr0ute 5y ago
    What proof do you have? If you can't give a specific example, your argument might as well be corporate PR.
bluGill 5y ago
Note that for engines the EPA has been cracking down on all the mods that bypass software emission controls. The fines (though rare from what I know) have been large to small scale people selling such things. You can probably still make/mod your own engine by yourself, but if you sell and engine mod software you better meet emissions - I suspect that they will crack down on "free" open source mods as well which will kill collaboration (unless those involved are extremely careful to meet emission standards). The FCC hasn't cracked down - yet. As other have pointed out that is probably because they don't see a widespread problem and so the politics aren't worth it. I'm sure someone reading this is involved with radio, I hope they take the warning (I believe their response will be a form of we already know)
- Silhouette 5y ago
  Indeed. Not a lot of people are interested enough to experiment with radio transmission and fortunately the ones who are tend to be keen hobbyists who understand how the systems work and take care not to break things for everyone else. The kinds of outage that can be caused by rogue transmitters are rare. Often it's a hardware failure that is to blame when they do happen. Hardware failures are also rare but when you might have millions of transmitters within a small city, sometimes you discover that rare is not the same as never! There is always the possibility of malicious or negligent interference if an operator has the ability to modify their transmitter's behaviour sufficiently though. I would personally be OK with limiting the sale or use of equipment with those capabilities to only people who have shown they are competent, for much the same reasons that I am personally OK with restricting the use of cars to people who have passed a test. It obviously doesn't prevent all failures but it certainly lowers the risk of failures that could endanger many other people.

jsight 5y ago

People can buy software defined radios and effectively already have that access.

netr0ute 5y ago

You say all this as if the megacorps with signed firmware can't make mistakes.

Silhouette 5y ago
Of course they can. But usually they don't, not for something like this. I have been witness to the kind of search I mentioned. Usually it happens because of a freak hardware failure, not a malicious act or negligence. Unfortunately the innocence of all involved does not reduce the severity of the potential consequences. As I said, this stuff is not a game.

R0b0t1 5y ago

People do this all the time with routers. The FCC has been trying to require firmware signing but it has been pushed off for now because there is very little demonstrable harm. I can go buy a bunch of passives off of ebay and make a noisy oscillator that will kill everything for a couple blocks but nobody seems to do it.

Silhouette 5y ago
I have seen the "very little demonstrable harm" you mentioned with my own eyes in real time. It was little more than serendipity that saved lives that day. If someone did do what you described then IMHO they would be recklessly endangering the lives of others and should be treated accordingly.
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  This isn't a tenable argument for two reasons: 1. How far off the bell curve do we need to go? Do we trade all rights to do anything for diminishing returns in safety? 2. These modifications are happening right now. Bad instances are usually caught by EMS system tests or by people reporting gaps in cell coverage, etc, and are generally purpose build jammers. There are not many instances of frequency overlap. For most goods, especially consumer telecommunications equipment, other bands are protected by the fact the equipment is given a specific range to operate in anyway.
  - Silhouette 5y ago
    I am having difficulty working out what your position is here. Before you were talking about taking out multi block areas. Now you're talking about consumer equipment that is prevented from interfering with other frequencies. I was objecting to the former -- wherever you choose to draw your line, clearly interfering with safety-critical communications over a wide area should be well past it. The latter is a prudent step for mass market consumer goods.
- netr0ute 5y ago
  What proof do you have? If you can't give a specific example, your argument might as well be corporate PR.

bluGill 5y ago

Note that for engines the EPA has been cracking down on all the mods that bypass software emission controls. The fines (though rare from what I know) have been large to small scale people selling such things. You can probably still make/mod your own engine by yourself, but if you sell and engine mod software you better meet emissions - I suspect that they will crack down on "free" open source mods as well which will kill collaboration (unless those involved are extremely careful to meet emission standards). The FCC hasn't cracked down - yet. As other have pointed out that is probably because they don't see a widespread problem and so the politics aren't worth it. I'm sure someone reading this is involved with radio, I hope they take the warning (I believe their response will be a form of we already know)

Silhouette 5y ago
Indeed. Not a lot of people are interested enough to experiment with radio transmission and fortunately the ones who are tend to be keen hobbyists who understand how the systems work and take care not to break things for everyone else. The kinds of outage that can be caused by rogue transmitters are rare. Often it's a hardware failure that is to blame when they do happen. Hardware failures are also rare but when you might have millions of transmitters within a small city, sometimes you discover that rare is not the same as never! There is always the possibility of malicious or negligent interference if an operator has the ability to modify their transmitter's behaviour sufficiently though. I would personally be OK with limiting the sale or use of equipment with those capabilities to only people who have shown they are competent, for much the same reasons that I am personally OK with restricting the use of cars to people who have passed a test. It obviously doesn't prevent all failures but it certainly lowers the risk of failures that could endanger many other people.