[RF_Enthusiast]

Broadcast transmitters need certification or other forms of verification as a way to certify that they do not put out spurious emissions. Many uncertified transmitters put out emissions at 10.6 and 21.2 MHz above the operating frequency. 90.5 MHz plus 21.2 equals 111.7 MHz, which is in middle of a band of frequencies used for aircraft navigational aids. You can easily imagine how that can be a danger.

Pirate stations generally don't fork out the extra cash to get a certified or verified transmitter. And uncertified/unverified transmitter manufacturers generally don't test for compliance regarding interference to public safety bands.

[TechBro8615]

Should we be worried about hostile powers building radio transmitters to interfere with emergency broadcasts, but only turning them on before they launch a nuke at us?

[Dalewyn]

This desperate grasping for straw to try and justify illegal use of radio is sad to witness.

Radio is available for use for everyone with proper licensing and certification; there's even a block of frequencies reserved for amateur use (read: ham radio).

The US is a country based on rule of law, your anarchist arguments aren't providing useful discussion.

[TechBro8615]

My comment wasn't attempting to justify use of illegal radio, and your comment was unnecessarily rude, but I'll ignore that (and I won't call you an authoritarian statist).

My comment was questioning the efficacy of FCC regulations against protecting from a "real" threat, i.e. same kind of argument as "gun free zones only stop good guys with a gun while not stopping bad guys with a gun."

If anything, I was asking if there should be more regulations to protect against threats that attempt to obfuscate their presence.

[Dalewyn]

The FCC is, admittedly, reactionary in general because of geographical reality; generally they receive a complaint and then they investigate in response.

Any incidents that go beyond just interference will likely involve other regulatory and law enforcement agencies anyway, so it's unlikely the FCC itself needs more powers for now.

[factormeta]

>Radio is available for use for everyone with proper licensing and certification; there's even a block of frequencies reserved for amateur use (read: ham radio).

yeah, but it is not legal to encrypt the ham radio traffic, kinda defeats the whole point of having a frequency for DIY usage.

[KyeRussell]

No it doesn’t.

[TallGuyShort]

I come across a lot of digital signals and there are people who like to experiment with different digital modes. In practice, it's hard to distinguish this from encryption.

[nuclearnice3]

How would "hostile powers building radio transmitters to interfere" justify pirate radio?

[brightlancer]

I think they meant that if illegal broadcasts are such a danger, should we be worried about hostile powers deliberately exploiting that?

Conversely, if we're not worried, are illegal broadcasts such a danger?

[kmeisthax]

I don't the parent comment you replied to is saying "if Russia hasn't killed our radios yet than pirate radio is fine". They're wondering if it's a potential attack at all - and if you don't know much about radio then that's a perfectly reasonable thing to think. It's only after you learn about energy dissipation and so on that you realize that the hostile power needs to be pretty close to the actual thing they want to jam.

Though it's not like Russia hasn't already tried anyway[0].

I'm pretty sure most people here are going to at least know what ham radio is. That's not the reason why people here are sympathetic to pirate AM/FM radio broadcasters. It's moreso because the AM and FM radio bands are basically a cultural dead zone: ClearChannel and friends bought them all up in decades past and turned them into garbage. This is the sort of misallocation of resources that economists tend to have a blind spot for. According to them, efficient markets[1] are perfect allocators and anyone not having their tastes satisfied are just harbingers of failure[2] angry that their Crystal Pepsi got discontinued. The reality is that there's literally no reason to have eight stations all playing the same mainstream format in one market, and the FCC has dropped the ball on maximizing public utility of the spectrum.

'Cause here's the thing: yes, radio is "available for use" with proper licensing and certification, but that's basically an elaborated no. It's sort of like saying "copyrighted material is available with proper licensing". Nobody is going to be able to afford the licenses, if they're even offered, because the FCC runs on an auction system. And it turns out that that the mainstream station formats are really, really profitable to the point where you can outbid everything else. Is this an actually worthwhile use of the AM/FM bands to have what are effectively duplicates of the same station on every band in every market?

[0] Ok, it was a radar system, not a jamming system, but that's just a difference of intent. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbi6eoh63ZQ

[1] Fun fact: did you know the Efficient Markets Hypothesis implies P = NP? It's true - if markets are perfectly efficient then they can solve boolean satisfiability problems, which are NP-complete, and thus you can break all crypto.

On the other hand, inefficient markets also imply all those finance soothsayers with their technical analysis can actually beat the market.

[2] "Harbingers of failure" are people who are unusually good at buying doomed products. See https://news.mit.edu/2015/harbinger-failure-consumers-unpopu...

[RF_Enthusiast]

I don't think so. The amount of infrastructure (most notably, power) needed to operate such a transmitter that would make a meaningful impact to emergency broadcasts would raise red flags on the local level well in advance.

[stevenhubertron]

Look at Ringway Manchester on YouTube. Goes deep on this.