[PumpkinSpice]

This is such a weird topic in the ham community. The reason this restriction exists has nothing to do with the retro-justifications used by the community.

For a long time, the US government genuinely feared that ham radio would be used for espionage. It had listening stations across the nation to monitor all communications. It flat out shut down the entire service (!) during WWII. And it came up with the idea that you have to communicate in the open, and that no form of obfuscation or encryption is permissible.

And then hams came up with this roundabout explanation that actually, it's good that you can't have privacy. No matter that it holds back a hobby that is by all usage metrics dying, and that there are many countries where encryption is allowed and doesn't lead to any terrible outcomes.

Privacy is useful in hobby uses. Maybe you want to talk to your spouse without a nosy neighbor listening. Maybe you want to periodically beacon your GPS location without the whole world knowing. There are so many cool things you can do, and there is spectrum that is... quite frankly, largely dead right now, and if you don't encourage new uses, it will be reclaimed by the government.

[abstractbeliefs]

You talk about retrojustification, but in many parts of the world this has long been written into law, for example in the UK's Wireless Telegraphy act:

1(1) The Licensee shall ensure that the Radio Equipment is only used:

a) for the purpose of self-training in radio communications, including conducting technical investigations; and

b) as a leisure activity and not for commercial purposes of any kind

As for it being "good" not to have privacy, it's really not about having privacy or not, but respecting the situation that there are different tools for different needs. If you need to speak to your spouse, there are tools to speak to them privately! Amateur radio isn't the only option, and it isn't the best.

The problem is that encrypted comms tie up spectrum space without giving anything back. Now, I don't ragchew, I think it's incredibly boring and unnecessarily toxic chat given most of the personalities and topics involved, but at least anyone can choose to drop in/out of that as needed.

What I'm more interested in is radio as a sport, where I can climb mountains and operate from them, pushing myself and engaging in that competitive activity with others. It's hard to do that if everyone has decided to start using the 2m band as their private internet link because it goes further than WiFi.

[lrvick]

> If you need to speak to your spouse, there are tools to speak to them privately!

Apart from amateur radio, what tool exist, that does not require the assistance of private corporations, ISPs, service fees, patents etc? I go camping way outside of cell phone tower ranges and it would be should be legal to communicate with my group privately.

Radio is the only form of totally citizen controlled real time distance communication we have, if we do not count smoke signals. Snail mail encryption is already allowed. Encryption must be allowed on radio as well.

[cornholio]

I think a legitimate fear of radio amateurs is that encrypted, fully autonomous, long distance communication is such a killer application that usage would explode from commercial devices sold to take advantage of the ham space, leading to some kind of WiFi cacophony.

Perhaps some kind of compromise is possible, where all encrypted ham must broadcast their callsign in the clear every few seconds.

[apple4ever]

> Perhaps some kind of compromise is possible, where all encrypted ham must broadcast their callsign in the clear every few seconds.

My thought is that it would always include that part. Maybe not every few seconds, but the same as the current rule - end of every broadcast or every 10 minutes, which ever is shorter.

[bradfa]

With 2.8kHz of bandwidth, the requirements to obtain a license to transmit, and the restrictions on commercial use in the ham bands, I don't think your fears are warranted. I definitely think the ham bands would get more active for data uses, but I doubt they would get flooded with newcomers.

You must already broadcast your call sign at a regular interval when transmitting.

[shawnz]

It seems like that frequency space would be doing more good for more people if that were the case?

[ajsnigrutin]

You want to use a piece of limited spectrum, don't want to pay for a private slice of it, and complain that you have to be 'public' in a public slice of it?

[lrvick]

Yes. Just as I have a right to be on a public highway with whatever personal items I want in my trunk. I will agree to speed limits. I will not agree to letting any member of the public look in my trunk.

[ajsnigrutin]

But the idea/premise of a highway is to move stuff (people, drugs in your trunk) from one location to another one.

The idea/premise of a private frequency band is to move data (voice, binary,..) from one point to another (or many).

The idea/premise of ham radio is to learn and experiment, to test your devices, compare with others, see how far your signal reaches, etc. It was never meant to be a means for private 1-on-1 conversations.

How will i test my receiver if your transmission is encrypted? What will I learn from that? How do I know that you're not abusing the bands for commercial use? And what do other ham radio operators gain from you transmitting encrypted data?

[apple4ever]

Who cares? Really, what is the big deal? Nobody is saying that it will always be encrypted. Other radio operators gain the ability to learn about encryption! And we expand the hobby, which as a new member is dying. The radio waves are dead. Why?

[threemux]

What countries allow general encryption on the ham bands (e.g. not limited exceptions for particular cases)

"The hobby is dying" has been a trope longer than nearly everyone in this thread has been alive - give it a rest.

We've always had allocations because there wasn't a commercial use for it. As soon as there is, we lose it. See the loss of part of 220mhz and all the higher frequencies we're in the process of losing to 5G/other commercial use. I recommend embracing this reality

[apple4ever]

It is dying. ARRL has even said so. I don't care about the past. It's true now.

Nobody said it has to be commercial (but I also disagree with that part), but allowing encryption actually will get people using the radio waves.

Because right now, they are dead. 24/7, nobody transmitting.

[scotteric]

How would one distinguish legal traffic from illegal? If encrypted communications were to be allowed, what is stopping people using the amateur bands for commercial use? This is the main concern of hams, not that it's good that you can't have privacy.

[edrxty]

You can still have an In-The-Clear ID requirement, ie frame packets as:

AB0CDE--*UI93.8u[3u9,8husoa...

[Crunchified]

Sure you can. This still does not ensure that the communications embedded within the encrypted portion of the data does not violate amateur rules. Encryption of communications effectively removes the ability of hams (and government regulators) to monitor their service for rule breakers. It would invite commercial users to exploit hams' valuable bandwidth.

I would go so far as to say encryption is not needed in the amateur radio domain, outside of limiting access to the control and configuration of remote devices. The established goals of the amateur radio service can be achieved without encrypted communications.

[lrvick]

My goal is to be able to privately communicate with other people at a distance without relying on cell phone carriers, ISPs, or other brittle corporate infrastructure.

Privacy is a human right, and that applies over radio.

If I need to register my public keys like a license plate, fine, but the content is only the business of the recipient.

[mike_d]

Think of Ham like Usenet or posting to a forum. You are in the public square talking for all to hear.

If you want something more akin to private email, that is possible you just need a difference license. https://www.fcc.gov/wireless/bureau-divisions/mobility-divis...

I have frequency allocations (well technically a radio shop manages them for us) and use AES128 encryption with no issues.

[lrvick]

So by this license only businesses are allowed to have private communications, not individuals?

[throw0101a]

> Privacy is a human right, and that applies over radio.

You do not have a right to use common space (e.g., radio spectrum) without regard to the rest of society. If are given permission to use a common space, you have to use it with the stated conditions.

[btreecat]

Isn't that why you would use a letter and post system?

[zeckalpha]

Have you looked into laser?

[apple4ever]

Why does that matter? I don't think it does.

[deepsun]

I think because any commerce is visible (e.g. they register with Secretary of State, pay taxes etc).

If it's a tiny commerce, no-one would notice. Probably. Neither ham community.

But no one seriously would invest time and money in a business that's, well, illegal.

[wiml]

> But no one seriously would invest time and money in a business that's, well, illegal.

I ... what? That really doesn't jibe with my observations of the world.

[I_Am_Nous]

FCC don't play when they assign fines.

[MichaelZuo]

Which they can only do for unencrypted traffic, encrypted traffic by definition would not be examinable by the FCC for determining whether to assign fines.

[I_Am_Nous]

They don't have to know what you are sending to know you are sending in a way you shouldn't. It's not even about the content of the encrypted traffic at that point. They just see broadcasts (which...good luck hiding them from the FCC) and if they see the bandwidth being used but aren't receiving a usable audio/data stream from it, it's really easy to tell if the rules are being followed.

[justin66]

> For a long time, the US government genuinely feared that ham radio would be used for espionage. It had listening stations across the nation to monitor all communications.

Well this is all somewhat ahistorical. The people monitoring ham radio for abuses were, and are, ham radio operators.

A task which would, you know, be more difficult if everything was encrypted.

[edrxty]

The secret is there's already tons of encrypted communications on the bands because of cheap chinese DMR radios that unlicensed teenagers use for airsoft and the like. It has yet to ruin ham radio and nobody has even noticed enough to attempt enforcement.

[ianburrell]

DMR isn’t encrypted. You can listen to them with any SDR. The voice codec is patented but well known. DMR itself is a standard.

[piperswe]

DMR can be encrypted, and I know from experience that there are people (not me, but people) running encrypted DMR on ham bands.

[Johnythree]

Occasional, random uses of encryption would not attract much interest.

But as soon as some company sets up an encrypted node in a location that will attract users, there will be much interest in what it's purpose is.

The whole point of the regulation is to make defying the regulations on a commercial scale a risky operation.

[pclmulqdq]

Those radios are very low power, so they don't really get in anyone's way.

[edrxty]

There are power limitations on spread spectrum emissions in some of the bands, you could have the same thing here.

[apple4ever]

Agreed. I just got into the hobby, and the whole not allowing encryption or obfuscation is such a silly rule. It really limits what we can do.

And your point about unused spectrum is spot on. Outsides of a couple repeaters on VHF and UHF, there is near zero radio transmissions in those bands 24/7.

[mlyle]

> The reason this restriction exists has nothing to do with the retro-justifications used by the community.

The original reasons not being such a big concern anymore don't mean that we've not spotted that these restrictions have a lot of useful features.

There are some great use cases that encryption would allow... and also, if it became commonplace on ham bands, turn them into an opaque, uninviting mess, too.

[ztetranz]

>there are many countries where encryption is allowed

I don't think that's true. I assume you mean on the ham bands.