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Comment by bitxbitxbitcoin | Hacker News Reader

Just a note that listening in - even to police scanner frequencies - counts as legal use.

Except in Kentucky (in a motor vehicle), unless you're a ham:

https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id...

When I chatted with a SRO about this when programming the schools radios a few years ago, I was told that he didn't know anyone other than the State Police to issue citations for that law, and it would only be a 'secondary' offense (if you were pulled over for speeding, and they saw the scanner, then you'd likely get a citation, but, they wouldn't pull you over if you had an antenna on your car).

It's the same next door in Indiana (my home state) as well, although there are a few other exceptions, not just licensed radio amateurs (law enforcement, emergency services, journalists, etc.)

Not only that, but you actually are prohibited from encrypting ham radio transmissions. This means, practically speaking, no ham Internet, as everything mandates encryption online nowadays.

My understanding is that you're allowed to have encrypted communications, but only if the key is public.

Whether or not that counts as encryption, I don't know.

Well, the whole purpose and ethos of ham radio is for everything to be public, and anyone can listen in to a conversation, so I think that's a good thing.

Except for the various proprietary voice codecs out there.

Is this a sideways slight against AREDN? Because I still think AREDN is pretty cool.

I wonder where the borders lie between encryption and deliberate obfuscation - say, by native speakers of a little-known language (which was done for some WWII radio transmissions by the US [1]) and also to a far lesser extent by old-time London gangs using Cockney rhyming slang and variants thereof. [2]

[1] https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/american-indi...

[2] https://romanroadlondon.com/cockney-rhyming-slang-history/

Does it even if it helps you commit a crime? Would it not be "facilitating" a crime? I am not from the US so honest question.

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