The software was classed as munitions and one needed an arms dealer's license to publish it, including online. The creator of PGP published the full source code as a book, as these are covered under first amendment rights.

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[–] 85 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Fun fact: They made encryption on Ham/GMRS radios illegal because they didn't want the average citizenry to have access to secure off-grid comms without government spyware on networks that they control.

Reject Smarphones, Return to Amateur Radios. Just modify some radios, add a raspberry pi to do enccyption on the voice before it gets transmitted.

THEY CANT ARREST US ALL! (seriously tho, I haven't heard of the FCC actually doing anything, unless you were jamming the airport radios or something crazy)

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  • [–] 26 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It's illegal on licensed HAM channels, but legal on unlicensed channels like the 2.4 and 5Ghz ranges

    Don't ask me why the distinction still remains

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    I think FCC still takes it pretty seriously.

    just use Meshtastic/LoRa. you can use encryption and you don't need a Ham license. your output power is limited but I've heard of people getting 50+ miles of range for reception.

    specifically, for ham you're not allowed to obscure the meaning of your transmissions. this means no:

    • symmetric cryptography
    • numbers stations (one-time pad ciphers)
    • communicating in codewords ("the Falcon has left the nest, over!"

    but you can use:

    • compression
    • commercial telegraph codes (e.g. 22415 = "Partly cloudy with a chance of showers"), as long as you're using a public codebook
    • message authentication codes (to prevent forging messages)
    • (arguably) asymmetric cryptography for signatures, identity challenge/response
    • encrypted control messages for hobbyist satellites (special exemption)

    so authentication is possible, just not privacy.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Encryption using IP over HAM is still illegal - you can't access Lemmy because it's an HTTPS site, because we live in the 21st century.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Nothing stops anyone from running a webserver without ssl, there might be an instance that does it

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago*

    I know, the point is that you're broadcasting over the radio that you're encrypting the data over the one medium were it's illegal to encrypt the data because the FCC thinks it's still 1989 or whatever when it comes to amateur radio. So it's not just that you're doing something illegal, you're using a registered call sign and a really loud, easily triangulatable signal to do it. It's like putting a movie poster-sized sign on your fence that says "Rattlesnake venom for sale, inquire within." It's not a sustainable practice.

    Ultimately, the amateur radio crowd needs to get this law 47 CFR 97.113 changed to allow an exception for encrypted internet over radio and allow for modern communications standards. Personally, I expect that it would only take one House Rep willing to score any sort of win with rural voters for this to work right now.

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