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Comment by asdff | Hacker News Reader

How does the FCC enforce this sort of thing? Are they listening in to certain frequencies nationally with the ability to triangulate a handheld down to actually identifying someone?

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They mostly don't. They send scary letters and maybe eventually fine someone. They have a handful of triangulation vans for the entire US. The barely respond to complaints that are revenue impacting and generally don't respond to complaints from hams that a non ham is using their equipment. Once a quarter they make an example of someone so that it appears they enforce things. The people they make examples of are usually trying really hard to troll them or doing something highly disruptive and these will end up on a few websites and magazines.

People tinkering and staying away from ham bands will generally be fine and for the cheap ham gear that made easy by design usually by doing a factory reset or worst case having to clip a diode to widen their frequency ranges. Most ham gear is designed to be highly hackable.

You only really get attention from the FCC if you interfere with some other service, especially broadcast or emergency communications frequencies. Grumpy Hams will also hunt you down sometimes, but only if you're persistent. Otherwise yeah, the FCC can't practically enforce every rule everywhere and doesn't really try. Still, get a license and be a good citizen if you want to play with this kind of thing, it's not very difficult.

Agreed. One youtuber [1] calls them Sad Hams. That has stuck with me. Linked video is the FCC's recent enforcement actions. I personally find some ham gear to be slightly less sloppy 11 meter rigs and a number of others agree.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeMjMlHpus8

Most of the time they get a complaint, and they investigate.

https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/guides/fcc-enforcement-...

Wow, you mail them the complaint? No reason to worry about accidentally hitting the talk button I guess. Probably nothing happening unless you spam the frequency for weeks I'd guess.

Yes, weeks if its cell or GPS. Months or never otherwise.

Someone complained, they send someone to check and triangulate, verify that the operator doesn't have the license, then issue a warning or fine.

I wonder how close they can triangulate? I'd guess they are SOL if I am in an apartment building with 200 other units.

I mean, if you're deliberately being a dick about it, they will ask for a warrant and have the LEO accompanying them while triangulating, they can easily figure out which unit and even room you're in by walking around in the building with directional receiver.

But in general, yeah, unless you do it regularly, living near sensitive facilities (airport, military base, hospital, factories, research labs etc) or deliberately transmitting at/near emergency frequencies (police, paramedic etc) at most you'll get yelled by a pissed off operator (at that point, stop, they could be already coordinating with someone else to triangulate you)

Unless you're going out of your way to force them to react, they do not.

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