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Amateur Radio has a chance to become massively popular through a resurgence of interest in mesh networking but unfortunately laws are not evolving fast enough f

Amateur Radio has a chance to become massively popular through a resurgence of interest in mesh networking but unfortunately laws are not evolving fast enough for this to become possible. Right now it's illegal to transmit encrypted data over the air [0] which basically kills everything like. The areas where people are becoming increasingly active in radio are things like NYC Mesh which can only utilize a very small segment of the bands (and not even the ones hams use!) for running their networks. I'd love for an IP over Mesh network to become popular. Doing IRC and reinventing a lot of the early internet in a distributed manor would be very fun. [0] - Unless it is for the control of a satellite.

generalizations 5y ago
This is what I came here to say. The encryption prohibition destroys the biggest use case I can see, which is long distance mesh networks. Those networks would represent a leap forward for both HAM radio and for the development of a resilient, grassroots, worldwide communication system.
- jcims 5y ago
  There’s limited bandwidth available. I definitely think it’s worth experimenting, but my expectation would be that any bands that allow for encryption would quickly be saturated with traffic.
  - generalizations 5y ago
    I imagine there might be other mechanisms for limiting abuse - e.g., limit the traffic that any given call sign can generate. The call signs can help ensure it's non-commercial. Plus, don't people like doing fox hunts?
    - jcims 5y ago
      We would learn a lot, that's for sure. I wonder if they could time box an experiment for 5 years and see what happens.
      - Johnythree 5y ago
        Once the Commercial users get their foot in the door, you'll never be able to close it.
  - blitzar 5y ago
    People do experiment - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx6cm1rNDLM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx6cm1rNDLM
    - jcims 5y ago
      Of course, packet radio, APRS, etc have been around for decades. It's just not encrypted.
      - blitzar 5y ago
        You could build out an entire POC test net without encryption, but it feels like something is missing or it would have been done already. Lack of bandwidth / capacity to reach any meaningful speed, scale, reliability etc? Or just no demand given how effective copper / wifi / 5g is? Or perhaps the 'hobby' really is dead and there just are not the tinkerers there once were.
        generalizations 5y ago
        > Or perhaps the 'hobby' really is dead and there just are not the tinkerers there once were. The tinkerers are there, but encryption is a must-have. If HAM can't make that work, it's likely to die.
        jcims 5y ago
        All this fear mongering is just setting the stage for sale of the spectrum. The hobby is still growing and has been continuously for decades. https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/stats/index.html https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/stats/index.html It’s not growing like the Internet, but there isn’t space like the Internet. It’s fixed real estate that can only have so many people on at one time. If you cruise the HF bands in the evening there’s lots of chatter going on, there’s no room for 1000 times as many people. Yes it could grow faster, yes it could be much much much more welcoming to new people. The industry could support it with cheaper hardware and technology that allows for more tinkering. But if we want make wholesale changes to the regulations, like allowing encryption, it’s going to have to be very well thought out.
- op00to 5y ago
  There’s been long distance mesh networks since the 80s with packet radio. Unencrypted. Somehow they made it work then and it still works today.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  > a resilient, grassroots, worldwide communication system With the tsunamis, the impending climate collapse and social unrest this should be seen as a need rather than a hobby. Governments allocated huge chunks of the spectrum for commercial use (and pocketed lobby money) while keeping HAM radio unusable and public use spectrum tiny.
trangus_1985 5y ago
> illegal to transmit encrypted data over the air While a massive restriction, you can prevent interference (but not eavesdropping!) by signing your payloads. Maybe it's because ham radio and privacy aware people is a venn diagram with a lot of overlap, but it feels like perfect being the enemy of good.
- generalizations 5y ago
  Completely different threat model. I want to send messages to my friend that are private, and it would be awesome if we could do it p2p on a mesh net that doesn't require any centralized infrastructure. Modification of those messages isn't something I'm worried about. It's not perfectionism, it's a different use case.
  - trangus_1985 5y ago
    Yes, but ham radio is all about being open and a community of people communicating together. And if that's the use case you want, you should look elsewhere.... At least, that's what the people leading the ham radio community and arrl say. I'm not sure I agree with that, but I'm not sure I disagree either. I certainly think the community aspect is less important today due to the internet, but it's probably still crucial.
    - generalizations 5y ago
      > you should look elsewhere.... At least, that's what the people leading the ham radio community and arrl say. And that's what people are doing, which is (I'd guess) why we're commenting on an article about the uncertain future of HAM radio. Also, that's going to change the community, but it won't erase it. Just like the HN community isn't hampered by the presence of encryption.
      - trangus_1985 5y ago
        Yeah, I definitely think they come from an era where we all didn't have a pocket communicator that plugs us into any community at will. When I flung packets across the bay with a friend, we used cell phones to figure out antenna positioning and alignment. violating the spirit of the intention of these rules, imo, but hard to say
detaro 5y ago
Not going to happen. Amateur radio is very centrally about non-commercial use cases, with the encryption ban ensuring that's actually the case and trivially detected if not. Mesh networks for use by everybody for any purpose are a (valuable!) very different thing, living in differently regulated bands.
- generalizations 5y ago
  > living in differently regulated bands People keep repeating that, but it's not actually true. There are no bands available for long range (50-100 miles between hops), decentralized, encrypted, mesh networks that are cheap enough for random people to connect to. You're probably thinking of random wifi meshnets that only work in densely populated cities. That's very different, and the limitations of those networks is exactly why HAM radio meshnets are so attractive.
  - detaro 5y ago
    I meant more structural, based on your mention of NYC Mesh: high-speed, carrying all-purpose (including commercial) traffic for random users. You are not getting that by allowing encryption on ham bands, that's fundamentally something different (and regulation world-wide would never allow that under "amateur radio"). What you want for that is expanded spectrum/power/easier permits for long-distance links, e.g. in the 60 Ghz band or even in WiFi bands. Edit: or in reverse, what kind of current ham radio use would you want to use more openly? Maybe I'm misunderstanding your scenario. Edit2: E.g. the closest thing maybe is hamnet. Which is literally IP networking, unencrypted, on modified Ubiquiti or Mikrotik WLAN gear so it uses ham bands right next to its usual frequencies and more power. As soon as you take the amateur radio restrictions out, it's just long-distance wifi links, which already have a clear space what they are regulations-wise, the regulations just don't permit as much for it.
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    would it be possible for such a system to scale without overwhelming the spectrum? I'm not a radio guy. But feels like if the mesh network became popular it could get clogged.
Johnny555 5y ago
But then it's no longer Amateur Radio, it'll just be another unlicensed spectrum like the Wifi spectrum since there's no way to know who is using it or what data is going over it. There may be value for this to the public, but it's not the same as Amateur Radio.
- mmaunder 5y ago
  It can be if it's not available for commercial use. The WiFi spectrum is for commercial use. The ham spectrums could still require a license and could only be used for hobbyists. We'd need a way to verify who the sender is via unencrypted comms, but the rest could be encrypted. Maybe a standard header every 5 mins.
  - Johnny555 5y ago
    How do you know whether Joe Blow H6F5KY is sending out personal messages to his wife from work, or broadcasting orders to his fleet of delivery drivers?
    - drewcoo 5y ago
      Ah. So it's not amateur unless it's policed!
      - Johnny555 5y ago
        I'm pretty sure you were being snarky, but you're exactly right, otherwise it'll just become a commercial network. A "no commercial traffic but there's no way anyone could verify it" rule wouldn't be very effective.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        jjoonathan 5y ago
        At low scale it's not a problem and at large scale it can't be hidden. What would the nightmare scenario look like? Drama? The community gits gud at MIMO, to work around the abuse, and HFDF, to track it down and police it? I'd watch that movie. Hell, I'd play that game, sign me up! If all else fails, what about new legislation involving cryptographic signatures and bandwidth quotas? What if those spawn a secondary market where people take the HAM test just to rent out their callsign for crypto tokens? Would that be a bad thing or spawn a crazy collectively-owned disintermediation of telcos? Would the world really be such a bad place if instead of paying $60 to ATT I could pay $30 to some teenagers who memorized RF facts long enough to pass a test? I'd say that HAM can evolve or it can die -- but eventually the people holding it back will literally die and then it will evolve all the same. That's how actual evolution works. You can't stop the future. Still, you can hold it back, and it's unfortunate to see that happening, from a community of techies no less.
mmaunder 5y ago
I actually think this is an excellent point and a good path forward. There's a LOT of spectrum available for this, and the HF bands could be particularly interesting. Right now we have large swaths of the bands used by contesters and rag chewers. That could be used for useful TCP/IP experimentation by hobbyists, which is what the hobby was intended to be.
- op00to 5y ago
  Each of those rag chewers is a scientist doing experiments. He or she must build a station suitable to be heard. Which antenna works best in their own case? What about feedline? This is not a simple task, especially for the ragchewer class where you want to be clearly heard. You have a very narrow view of the hobby.
  - op00to 5y ago
    Rather than downvote me, address why you think I’m wrong.
- sciurus 5y ago
  The entirety of HF is barely more spectrum than a single wifi channel. There's nothing stopping experimentation with HF packet today, but you have to be realistic about what you can accomplish.
aoeuasdf 5y ago
>illegal to transmit encrypted data over the air This restriction comes up quite a lot in discussions about "modernizing" ham radio. I predict that if encryption was universally allowed, the ham bands would quickly become saturated with encrypted channels as hobbyists and not-hobbyists start using the bands for their personal communications networks. The two main problems with allowing encryption are that 1. The HF bands often have worldwide propagation with very low power levels, which turns local interference into national or international interference, and 2. With encrypted communications it would be impossible to enforce other amateur radio laws, such as forbidding commercial uses. I think that allowing encryption on dedicated slices of the UHF bands would be a more realistic approach.
- mmaunder 5y ago
  There's a difference between modernization and monetization. Commercial traffic can remain banned. License requirements remain in place. And we can have a standard way to transmit digital callsign before an encrypted packet. There are volunteers right now who do a great job of policing the use of ham bands, and FCC does actually initiate enforcement actions including 5 figure fines.
  - aoeuasdf 5y ago
    If the transmission consists of <CALLSIGN><ENCRYPTED PAYLOAD> then there is no way to determine if the payload is commercial in nature. One particular example is business owners using amateur radio spectrum for business communications. Or some wise-guy using amateur spectrum for his high frequency trading to beat the speed of copper.
    - cwkoss 5y ago
      can you actually beat copper?
      - op00to 5y ago
        Yes. It is a simple Google search away.
sliken 5y ago
If encryption was legal the commercial sector would take over and fill all available bandwidth. The lack of encryption is what keeps it amateur and not commercial.
- Johnythree 5y ago
  Absolutely this.
riffic 5y ago
yeah I don't want encryption on the amateur bands.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> Right now it's illegal to transmit encrypted data over the air I don't get it. Why would encrypted transmissions be illegal? Doesn't that make local wireless networks illegal? Always thought that was weird. Cryptography is used all over the internet today yet it it's illegal to encrypt radio transmissions.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  It's illegal to encrypt amateur radio transmissions. Other transmission modes may allow it depending on regulations for that particular use. For wifi, it's absolutely allowed.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  Some legacy Cold War law I think
- II2II 5y ago
  The main reason for this is historic, though there is probably some desire to maintain the restriction to ensure the amateur bands are used by amateurs. While encryption itself is old, its widespread civilian use is relatively recent. There was a time when one could easily pick up receivers to listen into everything from telephone conversations (cordless and cellular), to commercial bands, to the police. Encryption was largely seen as a thing used by the military and intelligence organizations. There were other reasons for encryption being of limited use. The cost of hardware to encrypt (and decrypt) signals was a factor. The relatively limited role of radio communications due to reliability also played a role. While most of us are only familiar with the end-user facing aspects of computers, the digital revolution played a more important role in communications. It has changed everything from how we share the spectrum to making communications more reliable. It has also opened up higher frequency bands in a cost effective manner. While enabling new applications, many of which involve more the transmission of more sensitive information, it has also made it easier to intercept communications and enabled the bulk collection of data. In other words, we view encryption as a necessity today when we didn't in the past because it is a necessity today when it wasn't in the past. That being said, I don't think that encryption is necessary for most aspects of amateur radio.
- 5y ago
tlrobinson 5y ago
You don’t actually need encryption for thing like IP networks and IRC. I believe you are even allowed to use digital signatures, you just can’t encrypt the payloads. I would argue a digital signature is not “messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning” So yeah, you can’t use it as your ISP but you can do quite a lot. The problem is finding enough other people in your area to set up nodes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_multimedia_radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_multimedia_radio
gpsx 5y ago
I don't know what is going on in the ham radio space, but it does seem like there are a lot of potentially interesting applications. Regarding mesh networking, you don't have to have encryption to do that. It could still be very interesting, you just have to know that people can inspect your transmissions. If they didn't allow this restriction, I imagine the system would just be overrun. I think it would be very popular even with just a clear text internet over ham radio. You would probably even need additional restrictions to keep it from being overrun - like maybe only dedicated "ham radio internet" web sites would be allowed, as opposed to being just access to the (standard) internet.
- kongin 5y ago
  >Regarding mesh networking, you don't have to have encryption to do that. It could still be very interesting, you just have to know that people can inspect your transmissions. If they didn't allow this restriction, I imagine the system would just be overrun. You can't have traffic that is ssl, ssh, or any other encrypted protocol. Stop and think how useful a network you can have without that, no emails, no websites, no authenticated connections between computers. The only things we have left are http, telnet and anonymous ftp. Welcome to the 80s Arpanet, but anyone can modify your packets undetectably.
  - sliken 5y ago
    Keep in mind the bandwidth is pretty limited. Even a single page view takes a fair amount of data these days. However, signed packets do not violate the HAM rules, and is pretty common. People controlling systems (like repeaters) can ssh to them, with encryption disabled (there are patches), but still using signatures to avoid worries about packet modifications. js8call for instance can do "mesh" networking, but the bandwidth is a few 10s of bytes per minute. But you can send messages through multiple hops to allow things like getting messages through to people you can't directly contact.
  - gpsx 5y ago
    I get your point that a node in the network can transfer a different packet. But I think people will have to be more creative with the protocol. For example, other nodes can hear both your transmission and next hop and can detect the packet was changed. I'm not sure you could make it 100% reliably, but the network could be self policing. Hopefully it would be one of those things that doesn't work in theory, only in practice. (And if not, then the rules would have to be updated.)
Johnythree 5y ago
As soon as encryption was allowed, the Ham bands would be full of commercial traffic. The main reason for encryption is to allow for self regulation, and if you can't self regulate if the traffic is encrypted.
hyperstar 5y ago
> Right now it's illegal to transmit encrypted data over the air does this include caesar-shifted morse?
- ComputerGuru 5y ago
  It’s not a technical restriction, it’s a semantic one (think spirit vs letter of law).
  - hyperstar 5y ago
    is that a yes?

generalizations 5y ago

This is what I came here to say. The encryption prohibition destroys the biggest use case I can see, which is long distance mesh networks. Those networks would represent a leap forward for both HAM radio and for the development of a resilient, grassroots, worldwide communication system.

jcims 5y ago
There’s limited bandwidth available. I definitely think it’s worth experimenting, but my expectation would be that any bands that allow for encryption would quickly be saturated with traffic.
- generalizations 5y ago
  I imagine there might be other mechanisms for limiting abuse - e.g., limit the traffic that any given call sign can generate. The call signs can help ensure it's non-commercial. Plus, don't people like doing fox hunts?
  - jcims 5y ago
    We would learn a lot, that's for sure. I wonder if they could time box an experiment for 5 years and see what happens.
    - Johnythree 5y ago
      Once the Commercial users get their foot in the door, you'll never be able to close it.
- blitzar 5y ago
  People do experiment - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx6cm1rNDLM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx6cm1rNDLM
  - jcims 5y ago
    Of course, packet radio, APRS, etc have been around for decades. It's just not encrypted.
    - blitzar 5y ago
      You could build out an entire POC test net without encryption, but it feels like something is missing or it would have been done already. Lack of bandwidth / capacity to reach any meaningful speed, scale, reliability etc? Or just no demand given how effective copper / wifi / 5g is? Or perhaps the 'hobby' really is dead and there just are not the tinkerers there once were.
      - generalizations 5y ago
        > Or perhaps the 'hobby' really is dead and there just are not the tinkerers there once were. The tinkerers are there, but encryption is a must-have. If HAM can't make that work, it's likely to die.
        jcims 5y ago
        All this fear mongering is just setting the stage for sale of the spectrum. The hobby is still growing and has been continuously for decades. https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/stats/index.html https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/stats/index.html It’s not growing like the Internet, but there isn’t space like the Internet. It’s fixed real estate that can only have so many people on at one time. If you cruise the HF bands in the evening there’s lots of chatter going on, there’s no room for 1000 times as many people. Yes it could grow faster, yes it could be much much much more welcoming to new people. The industry could support it with cheaper hardware and technology that allows for more tinkering. But if we want make wholesale changes to the regulations, like allowing encryption, it’s going to have to be very well thought out.
op00to 5y ago
There’s been long distance mesh networks since the 80s with packet radio. Unencrypted. Somehow they made it work then and it still works today.
goodpoint 5y ago
> a resilient, grassroots, worldwide communication system With the tsunamis, the impending climate collapse and social unrest this should be seen as a need rather than a hobby. Governments allocated huge chunks of the spectrum for commercial use (and pocketed lobby money) while keeping HAM radio unusable and public use spectrum tiny.

trangus_1985 5y ago

> illegal to transmit encrypted data over the air While a massive restriction, you can prevent interference (but not eavesdropping!) by signing your payloads. Maybe it's because ham radio and privacy aware people is a venn diagram with a lot of overlap, but it feels like perfect being the enemy of good.

generalizations 5y ago
Completely different threat model. I want to send messages to my friend that are private, and it would be awesome if we could do it p2p on a mesh net that doesn't require any centralized infrastructure. Modification of those messages isn't something I'm worried about. It's not perfectionism, it's a different use case.
- trangus_1985 5y ago
  Yes, but ham radio is all about being open and a community of people communicating together. And if that's the use case you want, you should look elsewhere.... At least, that's what the people leading the ham radio community and arrl say. I'm not sure I agree with that, but I'm not sure I disagree either. I certainly think the community aspect is less important today due to the internet, but it's probably still crucial.
  - generalizations 5y ago
    > you should look elsewhere.... At least, that's what the people leading the ham radio community and arrl say. And that's what people are doing, which is (I'd guess) why we're commenting on an article about the uncertain future of HAM radio. Also, that's going to change the community, but it won't erase it. Just like the HN community isn't hampered by the presence of encryption.
    - trangus_1985 5y ago
      Yeah, I definitely think they come from an era where we all didn't have a pocket communicator that plugs us into any community at will. When I flung packets across the bay with a friend, we used cell phones to figure out antenna positioning and alignment. violating the spirit of the intention of these rules, imo, but hard to say

detaro 5y ago

Not going to happen. Amateur radio is very centrally about non-commercial use cases, with the encryption ban ensuring that's actually the case and trivially detected if not. Mesh networks for use by everybody for any purpose are a (valuable!) very different thing, living in differently regulated bands.

generalizations 5y ago
> living in differently regulated bands People keep repeating that, but it's not actually true. There are no bands available for long range (50-100 miles between hops), decentralized, encrypted, mesh networks that are cheap enough for random people to connect to. You're probably thinking of random wifi meshnets that only work in densely populated cities. That's very different, and the limitations of those networks is exactly why HAM radio meshnets are so attractive.
- detaro 5y ago
  I meant more structural, based on your mention of NYC Mesh: high-speed, carrying all-purpose (including commercial) traffic for random users. You are not getting that by allowing encryption on ham bands, that's fundamentally something different (and regulation world-wide would never allow that under "amateur radio"). What you want for that is expanded spectrum/power/easier permits for long-distance links, e.g. in the 60 Ghz band or even in WiFi bands. Edit: or in reverse, what kind of current ham radio use would you want to use more openly? Maybe I'm misunderstanding your scenario. Edit2: E.g. the closest thing maybe is hamnet. Which is literally IP networking, unencrypted, on modified Ubiquiti or Mikrotik WLAN gear so it uses ham bands right next to its usual frequencies and more power. As soon as you take the amateur radio restrictions out, it's just long-distance wifi links, which already have a clear space what they are regulations-wise, the regulations just don't permit as much for it.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  would it be possible for such a system to scale without overwhelming the spectrum? I'm not a radio guy. But feels like if the mesh network became popular it could get clogged.

Johnny555 5y ago

But then it's no longer Amateur Radio, it'll just be another unlicensed spectrum like the Wifi spectrum since there's no way to know who is using it or what data is going over it. There may be value for this to the public, but it's not the same as Amateur Radio.

mmaunder 5y ago
It can be if it's not available for commercial use. The WiFi spectrum is for commercial use. The ham spectrums could still require a license and could only be used for hobbyists. We'd need a way to verify who the sender is via unencrypted comms, but the rest could be encrypted. Maybe a standard header every 5 mins.
- Johnny555 5y ago
  How do you know whether Joe Blow H6F5KY is sending out personal messages to his wife from work, or broadcasting orders to his fleet of delivery drivers?
  - drewcoo 5y ago
    Ah. So it's not amateur unless it's policed!
    - Johnny555 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure you were being snarky, but you're exactly right, otherwise it'll just become a commercial network. A "no commercial traffic but there's no way anyone could verify it" rule wouldn't be very effective.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - jjoonathan 5y ago
        At low scale it's not a problem and at large scale it can't be hidden. What would the nightmare scenario look like? Drama? The community gits gud at MIMO, to work around the abuse, and HFDF, to track it down and police it? I'd watch that movie. Hell, I'd play that game, sign me up! If all else fails, what about new legislation involving cryptographic signatures and bandwidth quotas? What if those spawn a secondary market where people take the HAM test just to rent out their callsign for crypto tokens? Would that be a bad thing or spawn a crazy collectively-owned disintermediation of telcos? Would the world really be such a bad place if instead of paying $60 to ATT I could pay $30 to some teenagers who memorized RF facts long enough to pass a test? I'd say that HAM can evolve or it can die -- but eventually the people holding it back will literally die and then it will evolve all the same. That's how actual evolution works. You can't stop the future. Still, you can hold it back, and it's unfortunate to see that happening, from a community of techies no less.

mmaunder 5y ago

I actually think this is an excellent point and a good path forward. There's a LOT of spectrum available for this, and the HF bands could be particularly interesting. Right now we have large swaths of the bands used by contesters and rag chewers. That could be used for useful TCP/IP experimentation by hobbyists, which is what the hobby was intended to be.

op00to 5y ago
Each of those rag chewers is a scientist doing experiments. He or she must build a station suitable to be heard. Which antenna works best in their own case? What about feedline? This is not a simple task, especially for the ragchewer class where you want to be clearly heard. You have a very narrow view of the hobby.
- op00to 5y ago
  Rather than downvote me, address why you think I’m wrong.
sciurus 5y ago
The entirety of HF is barely more spectrum than a single wifi channel. There's nothing stopping experimentation with HF packet today, but you have to be realistic about what you can accomplish.

aoeuasdf 5y ago

>illegal to transmit encrypted data over the air This restriction comes up quite a lot in discussions about "modernizing" ham radio. I predict that if encryption was universally allowed, the ham bands would quickly become saturated with encrypted channels as hobbyists and not-hobbyists start using the bands for their personal communications networks. The two main problems with allowing encryption are that 1. The HF bands often have worldwide propagation with very low power levels, which turns local interference into national or international interference, and 2. With encrypted communications it would be impossible to enforce other amateur radio laws, such as forbidding commercial uses. I think that allowing encryption on dedicated slices of the UHF bands would be a more realistic approach.

mmaunder 5y ago
There's a difference between modernization and monetization. Commercial traffic can remain banned. License requirements remain in place. And we can have a standard way to transmit digital callsign before an encrypted packet. There are volunteers right now who do a great job of policing the use of ham bands, and FCC does actually initiate enforcement actions including 5 figure fines.
- aoeuasdf 5y ago
  If the transmission consists of <CALLSIGN><ENCRYPTED PAYLOAD> then there is no way to determine if the payload is commercial in nature. One particular example is business owners using amateur radio spectrum for business communications. Or some wise-guy using amateur spectrum for his high frequency trading to beat the speed of copper.
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    can you actually beat copper?
    - op00to 5y ago
      Yes. It is a simple Google search away.

sliken 5y ago

If encryption was legal the commercial sector would take over and fill all available bandwidth. The lack of encryption is what keeps it amateur and not commercial.

Johnythree 5y ago
Absolutely this.

riffic 5y ago

yeah I don't want encryption on the amateur bands.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> Right now it's illegal to transmit encrypted data over the air I don't get it. Why would encrypted transmissions be illegal? Doesn't that make local wireless networks illegal? Always thought that was weird. Cryptography is used all over the internet today yet it it's illegal to encrypt radio transmissions.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
It's illegal to encrypt amateur radio transmissions. Other transmission modes may allow it depending on regulations for that particular use. For wifi, it's absolutely allowed.
the_only_law 5y ago
Some legacy Cold War law I think
II2II 5y ago
The main reason for this is historic, though there is probably some desire to maintain the restriction to ensure the amateur bands are used by amateurs. While encryption itself is old, its widespread civilian use is relatively recent. There was a time when one could easily pick up receivers to listen into everything from telephone conversations (cordless and cellular), to commercial bands, to the police. Encryption was largely seen as a thing used by the military and intelligence organizations. There were other reasons for encryption being of limited use. The cost of hardware to encrypt (and decrypt) signals was a factor. The relatively limited role of radio communications due to reliability also played a role. While most of us are only familiar with the end-user facing aspects of computers, the digital revolution played a more important role in communications. It has changed everything from how we share the spectrum to making communications more reliable. It has also opened up higher frequency bands in a cost effective manner. While enabling new applications, many of which involve more the transmission of more sensitive information, it has also made it easier to intercept communications and enabled the bulk collection of data. In other words, we view encryption as a necessity today when we didn't in the past because it is a necessity today when it wasn't in the past. That being said, I don't think that encryption is necessary for most aspects of amateur radio.
5y ago

tlrobinson 5y ago

You don’t actually need encryption for thing like IP networks and IRC. I believe you are even allowed to use digital signatures, you just can’t encrypt the payloads. I would argue a digital signature is not “messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning” So yeah, you can’t use it as your ISP but you can do quite a lot. The problem is finding enough other people in your area to set up nodes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_multimedia_radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_multimedia_radio

gpsx 5y ago

I don't know what is going on in the ham radio space, but it does seem like there are a lot of potentially interesting applications. Regarding mesh networking, you don't have to have encryption to do that. It could still be very interesting, you just have to know that people can inspect your transmissions. If they didn't allow this restriction, I imagine the system would just be overrun. I think it would be very popular even with just a clear text internet over ham radio. You would probably even need additional restrictions to keep it from being overrun - like maybe only dedicated "ham radio internet" web sites would be allowed, as opposed to being just access to the (standard) internet.

kongin 5y ago
>Regarding mesh networking, you don't have to have encryption to do that. It could still be very interesting, you just have to know that people can inspect your transmissions. If they didn't allow this restriction, I imagine the system would just be overrun. You can't have traffic that is ssl, ssh, or any other encrypted protocol. Stop and think how useful a network you can have without that, no emails, no websites, no authenticated connections between computers. The only things we have left are http, telnet and anonymous ftp. Welcome to the 80s Arpanet, but anyone can modify your packets undetectably.
- sliken 5y ago
  Keep in mind the bandwidth is pretty limited. Even a single page view takes a fair amount of data these days. However, signed packets do not violate the HAM rules, and is pretty common. People controlling systems (like repeaters) can ssh to them, with encryption disabled (there are patches), but still using signatures to avoid worries about packet modifications. js8call for instance can do "mesh" networking, but the bandwidth is a few 10s of bytes per minute. But you can send messages through multiple hops to allow things like getting messages through to people you can't directly contact.
- gpsx 5y ago
  I get your point that a node in the network can transfer a different packet. But I think people will have to be more creative with the protocol. For example, other nodes can hear both your transmission and next hop and can detect the packet was changed. I'm not sure you could make it 100% reliably, but the network could be self policing. Hopefully it would be one of those things that doesn't work in theory, only in practice. (And if not, then the rules would have to be updated.)

Johnythree 5y ago

As soon as encryption was allowed, the Ham bands would be full of commercial traffic. The main reason for encryption is to allow for self regulation, and if you can't self regulate if the traffic is encrypted.

hyperstar 5y ago

> Right now it's illegal to transmit encrypted data over the air does this include caesar-shifted morse?

ComputerGuru 5y ago
It’s not a technical restriction, it’s a semantic one (think spirit vs letter of law).
- hyperstar 5y ago
  is that a yes?