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Comment by pingec | Hacker News Reader

Exactly. For example using https (encryption) over such network would already be a breach of amateur radio rules.

That rule is there to prevent people from misusing the amateur radio frequencies for commercial reasons.

In practice, HTTPS and SSH are commonly used in the HAMNET for administrative purposes (many devices do not offer anything else, even).

Source: HAMNET operator. Ask me anything!

I was surprised to hear this -- my understanding was that encryption was illegal in all cases (at least in the US). A quick googling found this, which sheds a good bit of light on the matter: http://www.amateurradio.com/encryption-is-already-legal-its-...

Technically 97.113(a)(5) takes care of commercial use where if you can use another service (aircraft radio, maritime radio, broadcast, CB, land mobile, whatever) then you're required to use it, and not use ham radio. Its to maintain the hobby-ness of ham radio.

WRT to your "administrative purposes" 97.219(d)(1) not only permits HTTPS and SSH, but requires it, in order to authenticate, presumably so unidentified or unauthorized people can't reconfigure your transmitter on top of the local air traffic control or something. Under 97.309(b) as long as you don't obscure the meaning you're all good. Obviously accessing administrative URLs is not an obscure meaning. Likewise tunneling a VPN trying to mimic administrative traffic to do illegal file downloading or something would be obscuring meaning.

Some people like the tech more than the rules, but in HAM radio it seems that group is the minority.

I think the point is that with encryption it would be entirely impossible to enforce a number of the other rules, such as that one.

Agreed. It's infeasible to (legally) connect this type of system to the internet, at least in the US. FCC Part 97 also prohibits commercial transmissions, which would conceivably include advertisements, so you couldn't use this page to view any web page that contains ads. There goes most of the internet.

That said, I don't think this was ever intended to connect directly to the internet in this manner.

Part 97 prohibits communications in which the station licensee or control operator has a pecuniary interest.

As long as the control operator, or her employer are not making money on the advertisement displayed it would likely be A-OK.

It's perfectly legal or order pizza via autopatch over amateur radio, although impractical now that everyone owns a cell phone.

Interesting, using the autopatch to order food has been repeatedly cited to me as an example of barred commercial traffic.

Maybe I am getting some specific local or machine rules confused with the FCC's rules.

Here's what the ARRL has to say about it:

"...snip... Calls to place an order for a commercial product may be made such as the proverbial call to the pizza restaurant to order food, but not calls to one's office to receive or to leave business messages since communications on behalf of ones employer are not permitted..." http://www.arrl.org/phone-patch-guidelines

Then I might try it. If done at the right time, it might kick off a two hour ragchew about health problems associated with elderly people and unhealthy food.

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