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Comment by tapvt | Hacker News Reader

A case where I feel amateur (ham) radio would be a potential lifeline to the outside world.

By international treaty, hams cannot discuss politics (like chaos following dubious elections) over the air. In fact, in many countries it is the custom for hams to avoid any topics that might be seen as "serious", instead they limit their remarks to general technical matters or the weather.

I'm not really sure where you've gotten that from. Can you post an actual citation?

Here in the US, communications just need to be "of a personal nature." Part 97 prohibits (with some exceptions) commercial communications, encrypted communications, music, and things which are otherwise illegal. It's also not the licensing test.

It's not unusual for the US to ignore a treaty, of course, but I can't find anything about this online either.

I've always heard "don't discuss politics" as a sort of unspoken agreement.

(KG7TUJ)

Yes, this would be a case of (IMO fully justified) pirate radio.

http://www.dxsummit.fi/#/?dx_countries=Belarus

Plenty of contacts on the spotter. I don't imagine they're about politics, though.

If a tyrannical government is willing to cut off internet access, what makes you think they won't also ban ham radio transmissions (enforcing via violent means) as well?

That's completely impractical. Internet has a central switch you can flip, they have bigger problems now than driving around a fairly large country looking for antennas.

If I installed a raduo antenna on top of an apartment block, the average cop wont distinguish it from a 4G antenna or whatever else installed nearby. Plus you have to climb the rooftip and inspect it, imagine the amount of time an manpower that would take. Meanwhile they have nassive protests on the streets, etc.

Can't they just jam the frequencies instead?

Ham is harder. Internet comes (mostly) through cables; those cables at some points are subject to the control of the government, and can be either technologically filtered or physically disrupted. (Satellite internet is clearly the exception.)

But ham radio is like satellite internet - it's hard to cut off. You can ban it, as you say, but then you have to actually enforce the ban - either by jamming, or by finding sites that are transmitting and cutting them off.

But even worse, I don't think the point of cutting off the internet is to keep news from Belarus from leaking out. I think the point is to keep outside ideas (like the idea that elections should be fair, and outrage when one isn't) from coming into Belarus. Well, a ham can sit and listen and broadcast nothing. It's hard to track that down to be able to enforce the ban on the listening station.

Why do you think a hostile state won't just send cops to drive around until they see a 50' aerial antenna and then shoot everyone in the house it's attached to? It'll only take a few before all the antennas come down.

Most hostile states aren't so powerful that they can openly do that kind of thing. Even in this case, Belarus doesn't say they shut down the Internet; they're pretending that it's a foreign cyberattack.

So they'll pretend that the people they shoot are drug dealers. Works in the US.

It was hard to jam radio transmissions in the past, but these days it's common. Russia did that to Ukrainian channels in Crimea and Donbass and Belarus has access to the same Russian technology.

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