[geofft]

More broadly, the purpose of the ham radio allocation is learning / experimentation / personal use between hams / etc., not production services (and not even personal use between a ham and a non-ham, e.g., while listening in on ham frequencies doesn't require a license, a ham intentionally broadcasting to those listeners is not authorized under their license). These rules predate the world in which encryption for everything is commonplace, and they envision a world in which encryption means that other people can't learn from your communications practice. These rules are also written to discourage actual commercial users from using the ham frequencies, to keep the frequencies clear for hams.

Now that we live in a world where my writing this message to you (and, in fact, to the world, publicly under my name) goes over an encrypted channel and it would be unthinkable if it didn't, and where my texts to my friends about where to get dinner happen over an end-to-end secure messenger, and where most competent cryptography is developed in public, it's not clear the rules make sense any more. But that's where they come from.

BTW, one ham has argued that encryption for the purpose of using a standard protocol like WPA/802.1x (or, probably, SSH or SSL) that is otherwise compliant with the intent of the amateur service is legal, because the purpose of the encryption is not obscuring their meaning, the obscured meaning just a side effect of other goals: http://www.n5dux.com/ham/files/pdf/Data%20Encryption%20is%20...

[mycall]

Sometimes I wish a large company, like Google, bought large spectrum and released it to the public. We fight over Mhz here and there, but tons of the spectrum is allocated but barely used.

[wyxuan]

There would be zero use in that. Anyway, that spectrum can't be used due to how the tech isn't there to tap into it

[acct1771]

How many Alexa units were sold in the last 5 years..?