[trangus_1985]

> 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]

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]

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]

> 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]

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

[generalizations]

> 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.

Makes sense. And my cohort comes from an era when we can talk to anyone, anywhere, but the channels are controlled and watched. The ability to communicate isn't special anymore, but the ability to communicate independently and privately is. We don't want communication, we want known-good (dare I say, safe?) communication channels.

[trangus_1985]

> the channels are controlled and watched

Do you think that ham radio couldn't be? Or isn't? What you really want is privacy, authz/authn concerns, and decentralization, it sounds like. And TCP/IP is about as useful as a "PHY" layer for your application as is ham radio.

Plus, solutions like what you're describing require a relative ease of use - unless you only want to talk to the 17 other people in your geographical area who have similar technical backgrounds.

[skwirl]

Also what the federal government says.

You can still experiment with and build an encrypted mesh network, but you need different licenses to do so.

[Causality1]

Yes, but ham radio is all about being open and a community of people communicating together

My question is whether this kind of regulated openness is more worthy of the spectrum assigned to hams than some alternative scheme might be. It's certainly not a very efficient use of spectrum.

[na85]

>Yes, but ham radio is all about being open and a community of people communicating together.

Maybe on paper. Where I live it seems to be about old grouchy white guys gatekeeping and LARPing that they would be of any value in a natural disaster.

[sliken]

Check out LoRa.

[trangus_1985]

Trying to avoid proprietary things, where possible. Especially at the protocol/application layer.

Lora and other chirp based protocols are incredibly cool, and I've been playing with them

[syedkarim]

What are the other chirp-based protocols?

[generalizations]

The bandwidth is abysmal, IIRC.

[goodpoint]

Abysmal, asymmetrical and it's all proprietary.