While I agree with your overall sentiment of privacy, I think Ham radio shouldn’t be encrypted.
When we talk about national security and Ham radio “secure” communication is not what we mean as a risk factor.
People now aren't enticed by being able to talk to anyone anywhere. There are substantially easier and cheaper methods to do this with the internet and will connect you to more groups with more relevant interests.
As a guy in his late 20's I don't really care much to talk to people on ham. But what got me in was a satellite project during my undergrad (everyone my age or under that I know with a licence has it for similar reasons). Being able to control systems is enticing though. I can't do that with the internet. But playing with iot devices, controlling robots, etc, THAT IS COOL! You aren't going to be about to do this with the internet and you can't get the range (I've never done this, but it is interesting, I just don't have time since I'm in grad school). There's also plenty of ideas I'd like to try that would require encryption (like making a server accessible over HAM frequencies).
I talk to older HAMs and they are confused why the younger generation isn't interested. Well frankly times have changed. Hackers/Makers still exist (this site is proof!), we just aren't enticed just by being able to speak to others around the world. We've been doing that trivially since a young age.
So I think it's silly to say that we don't need encryption. Without users HAM bands will go away. So let's start asking why the younger generation don't want to get in instead of saying "business as usual" when it is clear the business is dying (and dying fast).
Edit: I also disagree with the premise that encrypted == closed. We access tons of https websites and we don't consider those closed.
That's what the ISM bands are for.
With amateur RF it is different - it is a shared, finite resource (in a given area/radius).
Not allowing enciphered communications is a fairly easy way to be able to audit what is taking up the spectrum. If it all goes enciphered, you have no idea what is occurring, for what purposes.
I haven't done the math but my hunch is you could fit the entire ham allocation from VHF down in a single 10mbit pipe. VHF is usually 1200bps per channel and gets slower as you get lower in bandwidth.
Not an old ham and very much like hacking on digital things, I don't think the lack of encryption is hampering anything.
This is simply not true. There are more hams now than there ever has been, and it's growing every year. [1]
[1]http://www.arrl.org/news/us-amateur-radio-numbers-reach-an-a...
Leave encryption to the ISM bands, where it belongs.
Also you do transmit callsigns which anyone can look up and find out who you are + where you live. There's no expectation of privacy and never has been on the bands.
I'd argue that HN doesn't require encrypted data transfer at all, and encrypted data transfer is illegal on ham radio freqs anyway. The other three AAA words are what HN requires as a multi user BBS like service, and are legal under ham radio rules, or at most only need to be bent slightly into being legal.
I was motivated enough to look up the Apache webserver docs to force a https ciper; apparently "SSLCipherSuite" lets you force a specific openSSL cipher name; then I checked openSSL docs and for better or worse "cleartext" is not an allowable cipher for openSSL. Via some code changes in browser and server you could technically implement something like HTTPS that would work legally over ham radio.
Although this is a slight simplification, conceptually there's nothing wrong with the idea of accessing HN while using a cipher of cleartext. I really want to know that I'm not getting MITM'd when I read and post, and I want that CA proof that I'm talking to the genuine CA approved HN server. I really don't care if the general public can read the contents of this post so cleartext would be fine. Logging in by typing my password would be an obvious corner case to handle.
One of the reasons I think we should allow encryption over ham links is that you can't run normal internet protocols - you have to do significant code changes/hacking to make things work. The internet community has decided (for reasons of national security, even!) that it's just not worth having the option.
I guess you're okay with sending your passwords in plain, then.
Do you not see that you're literally arguing against privacy here? Why should amateur radio not get the same benefits? All I hear are arguments in defense of regulation and Kafkaesque government bureaucracy.
HN is a public board, viewable without logging in. There is no expectation of privacy in communications here.
There are privacy implications _outside_ of User communications to this website. Arguing that there is no expectation of privacy on HN is a complete non sequitur.
It's still a good default, because it sets up a social expectation of privacy, which is very important in this era of data mining.