I've been pushing for encryption for years but just posting this well get a bunch of elmers posting upset replies.
It's frustrating constantly being under the thumb of a generation that will not yield to progress
Most people who complain about the encryption regulation just completely disregard the reason for encryption in the first place (ie, all other regulations become unenforceable if encryption is allowed).
I have no doubt it will be a huge mess and take a few tries to get right.
We should get started already -- if we don't, HAM will die, and it will deserve to die.
If everything is encrypted, how could you tell? How could you even tell that the users were licensed?
Also: progress has changed the landscape. HFDF used to be difficult for the military but now it's easy for hobbyists, and not just in last-mile form, but in coordinated always-on infrastructure form. The regulations were not written with this in mind. With an active community this fact alone might obviate the need for many a regulation.
In the case where someone is swearing with their friends over an encrypted channel, it's just not a problem, no child will hear the swears without a quantum supercomputer.
In the case where a business is illegally using ham bands to avoid paying license fees, they can already do this, nobody is actually checking. You can encrypt P25 on the bands all day long because nobody has radios that work with that digital mode and nobody will spend the time running signal analysis to figure out that A) it's P25, B) it's encrypted and C) where it's coming from. If it became rampant the FCC has the tools to very quickly figure out all of these things and if the broadcasts don't have a call sign and are coming from a business premises then it's obviously breaking the law anyway.
If it could be a problem, it already would be. All the Chinese digital business radios support encryption now. We're just not allowed to use it because people are scared of bogeymen
No, it isn't an instant 100% chance of retribution.
One call to a regulator, and it's done.
If everyone starts chatting with their friends on encrypted channels, we don't really have a community anymore. It was never meant to be a private chatbox.
I think it should be a bit less rigid in this day and age though. For example it should be allowed to use encryption for authentication purposes IMO. It's too easy now on digital modes to fake someone's callsign. Brandmeister has built some cool stuff with one time password but more complex authentication mechanisms aren't allowed. Apparently the FCC allows an exception for this but not every country does.
Fun fact: in parts of the world, you can transmit pretty much whatever you want on CB, nobody is stopping you from running encrypted digimodes there. And for slow transmissions, one can probably squeeze something through ISM bands, despite the limitations there.
And you probably could develop a good mode on ham bands that has the foundations and does signatures but not encryption, and can switch to encrypted on other bands.
The "no commercial use" rule ensures companies aren't using the limited ham radio spectrum as a workaround to getting their own dedicated license and frequency allocation.
If encryption were allowed, there'd be no way for other users to verify whether traffic is commercial or not.
No business wants their comms in the clear with no means of verifying the sender of the message - so ham radio would be useless to them.
The exact wording is in 97.113: "No amateur station shall transmit... messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning".
If you combine these things you end up with encrypted transmissions raising the noise floor for everyone in a band with no way to know if that noise is a transmission or actual noise. A lot of ham bands are already very noisy from natural sources, a bunch of encrypted transmissions increasing the noise floor just serves to make those bands inaccessible.
The propagation makes this problem even worse because encrypted transmissions can raise the noise floor for hams hundreds or even thousands of miles away. Even if an encrypted transmission uses a very narrow bandwidth (no worse than other digital modes) you're still monopolizing part of a very small band with a private conversation preventing others from using the shared resource.
To make matters worse encryption necessitates some form of error correction. Whether this is forward error correction, retransmission, or whatever it's necessary for a receiver to receive a correct ciphertext in order to decrypt a message. Error correction necessitates a higher duty cycle in order to send the error correcting overhead. So encrypted transmissions last longer than the equivalent unencrypted digital mode tying up limited bandwidth for a longer duration.
The difference, from an RF perspective, of an encrypted signal and a non encrypted signal is non-existent as the encryption takes place before the modulator. Therefore encrypted signals won't impact the noise flow for everyone in the band. This would only occur if the operator were using frequency hopping.
>you're still monopolizing part of a very small band with a private conversation preventing others from using the shared resource
Depending on the technology used in the receiver, this also isn't true. There are numerous techniques to allow for multiple carriers on the same band. CDMA for example would allow for this. It would take some coordination to make sure each carrier is using a different code but should be feasible for amateur radio operators. It all depends on how sophisticated their receiver is.
>Error correction necessitates a higher duty cycle
This is true and is why encrypted signals have lower data rates. So instead of having a longer transmission you lower the data rate to get the same effect.
While the encrypted transmission will look like a regular digital mode the fact it can't decrypt the decoded symbols means it's effectively noise. Ham bands are for all hams. There are innumerable other ways to have a private conversation with targeted recipients.
> Depending on the technology used in the receiver, this also isn't true. There are numerous techniques to allow for multiple carriers on the same band. CDMA for example would allow for this. It would take some coordination to make sure each carrier is using a different code but should be feasible for amateur radio operators. It all depends on how sophisticated their receiver is.
Ham bands already have de facto CSMA, you wait for open air to transmit.
I'm not so sure one could, legally. A number station would broadcast regularly a one-way communications, with no clear meaning. Here's an excerpt of the law from FCC part 97, which is actually surprisingly short and readable. It prohibits:
"messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning, except as otherwise provided herein; obscene or indecent words or language; or false or deceptive messages, signals or identification.
(5) Communications, on a regular basis, which could reasonably be furnished alternatively through other radio services.
(b) An amateur station shall not engage in any form of broadcasting, nor may an amateur station transmit one-way communications except as specifically provided in these rules..."
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D...