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Comment by bigallen | Hacker News Reader

Are you in USA? I'm seeing words like "private" and "cryptographic" in the github. What's the interaction with ham radio rules about no encryption?

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Lora and wifi are not ham radio networks. I imagine that kind of multi-channel use is just fine.

I believe the question you are replying to is directly in response to:

>I threw together a quick proof of concept of it working over HF radio

Which I assume was amateur band rather than commercial (in the 3-30MHz range). I don't believe LoRa and WiFi operate in that band.

Correct: I misread the thread. Thanks!

would you be able to transmit under the noisefloor and integrate on the other side? i imagine it would still break the law, but you wouldn't be likely to get caught?

Physics aside, I think the FCC is very, very slowly considering removing the "no encryption" aspect of ham radio. The arguments against encryption seem to be weak, and revolve around "if we don't know what people are saying, we won't know if they're trying to use it for commercial purposes" which is just simply not true. Oh well, here's to hoping the FCC will move into this century!

Under the noise floor at what distance? If you don't want to be a bright beacon at a mile, then you're not going to have a lot of signal at a hundred miles.

yeah occurred to me a while after posting :-D

You can still use ham packet radio protocols over ISM bands not held back by those stupid historical limitations and stay within the law.

Parent is responding to this:

> I threw together a quick proof of concept of it working over HF radio.

I'm not aware of any HF bands you can use in the US without a license. And it is prohibited to use any kind of secret encryption on amateur bands.

11 meters is in a different part than ham and is usable unlicensed.

Doesn't mean you can send encrypted traffic and there are FCC rules about duty cycle, etc.

In Part 95, Section D, encryption is not mentioned.

But the Emission Types are limited, digital emissions are not allowed. (AM and SSB) are specified.)

In theory, you could have a transmission header / trailer in Esperanto that would route the message, and then the message traffic. But that sounds like a hill that wouldn't be worth the climb.

Indeed, only plain language voice communications are allowed.

§ 95.931 Permissible CBRS uses.

The operator of a CBRS station may use that station to transmit two-way plain language voice communications to other CBRS stations and to other stations that are authorized to transmit on CBRS frequencies.

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