Too many narcs on the ham bands would track you down for operating encrypted ham packet radio. You're better off using something like LoRa over the ISM bands. Build out a network of hidden mesh nodes over the area you'd like to operate and that's probably the closest you'll get to a true clandestine network. Of course the major issue with transmitting any RF energy is that someone can watch the spectrum and look for those transmissions and eventually track down your nodes. LoRa uses DSSS which if operating at minimum power, could help hide transmissions.
If you want to add some illegality to the system, you could piggyback on amsats or open relay satellites like FLTSATCOM to expand your network and hide better.
Actually LoRa uses chirps designed for iiuc partially analog demodulation to be very energy-efficient.
For hiding you'd be able to use actual DSSS with e.g. AES encrypting a suitably fine grained clock piggybacking on GPS as a time reference, keyed by a shared secret.
Then just hone in with e.g. a Costas loop like a GPS receiver does to it's satellites (where the sequence is sourced from a simple clocked logic circuit that's cheap and offers better than random spreading gain at the cost of being cryptographically useless) and demodulate the payload the same way.
You could start off at GPS synchronous sequence generator timing, and slowly shift it at increasing delay until lock in is archived or an implausibly long implied travel distance (signal loss!) is reached (then you can give up and start over, go to sleep and try later, etc.).
Sort of, yes, but it's quite a bit more nuanced than that.
The actual rules say you're not allowed to obscure the meaning of a message. Use of encryption itself is not specifically prohibited, but you're not allowed to hide the information being sent. So, "encryption" is technically allowed for things like authentication and signatures, under most interpretations of the rule.
It is correct that you're not allowed to use your ham license for any commercial purpose. But again, there are narrow exceptions: a teacher getting paid to teach a class on amateur radio or science in general can transmit to demonstrate the technology, or an astronaut or military member making contacts with amateurs for goodwill purposes or as part of an exercise.
at the risk of this not flying well with some ham people here but i'd say the heck with those regulations i'm encrypting and that's the end of the story it's called clandestine for a reason after all
The ‘no encryption’ rule in ham radio is intended to encourage experimentation and openness. Ham radio has always been about exploring, learning, and sharing knowledge, much like open-source software. If transmissions are encrypted, it becomes nearly impossible for others to decode, learn from, or experiment with them. The idea is that anyone with the right knowledge of the protocol should be able to communicate with anyone else on the airwaves, supporting the spirit of why this spectrum is reserved.
That said, balancing this with modern needs for security and privacy is a real challenge. Good communication protocols today are designed with these protections in mind, and the inability to use encryption arguably limits what amateur radio enthusiasts can do with newer radio technologies.
Privacy, however, has traditionally not been part of ham radio—this is why you’re required to identify yourself with a call sign, and contact info is publicly available. The identity of the sender is expected to be open. Maybe there’s room to allow for some privacy around the content of the message itself, but the sender’s identity should still be clear. I’m not sure what the right balance is, but simply allowing complete encryption that hides the message, the transmitter’s identity, and the transmission protocol itself doesn’t seem to align with the purpose of amateur radio.
The ‘trash bands’ (ISM bands) are probably a much better place for experimenting with full-bore encryption and privacy. From these experiments, we might learn a balanced approach that could be backported to the amateur spectrum, preserving the spirit of why these bands exist while adapting to modern privacy needs.
"Not flying well" has nothing to do with it. If you are transmitting on the amateur bands without a license, that's illegal. If you do it with any regularity, you are causing interference and some hams are better than you'd think at locating sources of unwanted interference.
There are plenty of other anything-goes bands for you to use, there's literally no reason to do your pirate radio on the ham bands. Except to get those warm fuzzy counter-culture feels I guess.
That's the tricky part... if you're going for legal and license-free you're pretty much left with the ISM bands and very limited transmit power. There's nothing stopping you from getting a real spectrum license and narrowband licenses in the 2m and 70cm bands aren't actually that expensive but there's also equipment certification requirements, generally.
If you want to add some illegality to the system, you could piggyback on amsats or open relay satellites like FLTSATCOM to expand your network and hide better.