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Comment by charcircuit | Hacker News Reader

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charcircuit·

>This isn't a trunked system

Then make it one.

>encryption is illegal

It's not illegal and is a core part of modern radio protocols.

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> It's not illegal and is a core part of modern radio protocols.

LOL, yes it's for most practical purposes on hobby ham bands.

If you wanna be pedantic about it, the FCC rules for ham operations doesn't mention encryption, it mentions encoding instead [0]. So yes, if you encrypt or encode without obscuring the meaning (by publishing your encoding spec or encryption keys) then yes you can "encrypt". digital mode radio works that way.

[0] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D...

Is that how packet radio works ?

packet radio is never encrypted, and always uses a public protocol, yes

Yes pretty much. There are a lot of digital modes for different use cases. Usually packet radio is referring to APRS. You can encode all you want as long as you make the encoding/decoding spec public and as long as the decoded information still comply with the rest of the rules like no commercial use, no profanity, call sign announcement, etc.

most equipment doesn't use trunked protocols like DMR, because it's vastly more expensive, and more difficult to use that honest-to-goodness analogue radio.

Plus, the hypothetical we're discussing here is that some non-ham asshole left a spurious transmitter running. Do you think that a trunked magically protects people from interference? No.

Finally, yes, encryption is illegal to use on ham radio.

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