Comment by mesh
6 hours ago
This is a cool project, but fyi, in the US, this would require a license to broadcast (not receive), and I am pretty sure encryption, even with a license, is not legal (again, when broadcasting from US).
And then only on certain bands:
https://www.arrl.org/files/file/Regulatory/Band%20Chart/Hamb...
I would expect this system to ultimately be used under a commercial HF license rather than an amateur license, given the feature set and that it seems to have much more in common with military systems like ALE than amateur practice. That said, because of the scarce supply of HF bandwidth, commercial HF licenses are quite restrictive in the US. For the most part, you are only allowed to apply for one if you are an infrastructure operator that needs a contingency communications capability for disaster response. That said, the FCC has permitted experimental licenses for some commercial applications like high frequency trading, so perhaps the situation will become less restrictive over time.
That said, commercial licenses are not per-operator like amateur licenses, so you would potentially only need one to cover the entire network. Some of this is ultimately negotiated.
Correct. Encryption (or more specifically, obscuring the meaning of a message) is generally not allowed for amateur radio stations except in very narrow circumstances. So any hams using this would have to turn the encryption off.
However, it looks like this stack has encryption available as an option for stations who are transmitting sensitive data and are NOT operating under an amateur license. (Probably government-sanctioned communications or emergency humanitarian efforts.)
what would happen if you were to break that law? like im talking enforcement here not whats on the books.. for example torrenting and uploding copyrighted files is illegal but most people dont give a shit as enforecement is almost non existant. i know radio is taken more seriously then torrenting but this must also be very low on priority for the government unless you are jamming people or somehow stand out enough for anyone to care or notice....
You're right that most amateur radio regulations are self-policed by other amateur radio operators, and true enforcement is probably rarer than folks like to imagine.
But depending on the environment (and noting that this project is specifically targeted towards communities seeking last-resort communication), there's definitely still risk, even if there isn't a spectrum authority with any real policing powers.
For example (and I say this speculatively), if you're broadcasting encrypted radio traffic in a conflict zone, it could be hard to differentiate between civilian traffic and military traffic happening on civilian bands, so you might be wrongly targeted by a drone strike.
If you already have a target on your back, radio laws can still be arbitrarily applied upon oneself, as in the case of Aung San Suu Kyi, who was once detained on the pretense of illegally importing handheld radios. [1]
[1]: https://apnews.com/article/aung-san-suu-kyi-myanmar-asia-ap-...
In the US, FCC investigations are complaint-driven. Meaning, if you interfere with someone else's frequency, and they complain about it hard enough, the FCC will take an interest in you. Especially if you interfere with public safety. (But they will still go after the more flagrant and persistent abusers on the ham bands.)
In practice very little. The FCC tends to focus on long-lived stationary stations ("pirate" radio) with their few enforcement actions. That said it's important to remember that radio transmissions can easily be tracked to their source (doubly so with drones) and you should plan for that eventuality.
My sense is that at most you will be yelled at by HAMs - unless you are actually disrupting emergency communications. Ensuring radios can be used in emergencies is why licensing exists at all and people take ensuring it can be used for that pretty seriously (for good reason).
> what would happen if you were to break that law? like im talking enforcement here not whats on the books.
In the UK, nothing. There are far more important laws to enforce.
You will get some fat whiny old guy bitching about it to anyone who will listen, but you literally could not pay Ofcom to take an interest, and there are only about two people in the whole of the UK who have the skill to do anything about it.
> except in very narrow circumstances
Usually it is for the uplink control for satellites. That you'd like to keep encrypted, so that someone does not hack your bird.
You really only need authentication for that, not encryption. MACs and such are okay on ham bands as I understand it. You just can't obscure the message. If you want a private channel to the exclusion of other people, license a frequency and pay for it. Spectrum is a scarce resource.
Going to be super pedantic here - in ham radio you don't broadcast, you transmit.
What is the difference between the two?
A ham operator might put out 20W of ERP while a radio station operates at 100W though international broadcasters use upto 500 kW.
In the US with an amateur radio license you can have one to one communication (transmit) but not one to many (broadcast).
Yes! Broadcasting is prohibited!
(and this all reminded I need to renew my license which I haven't used in about 8 years! Looks like I also need a refresher!)
https://n5dux.com/ham/files/pdf/Data%20Encryption%20is%20Leg...