Tim Gorman wrote: > No, we are not free do use encryption on amateur radio. That is for a good > reason. It is called "self-policing".
<remainder of posting snipped - this section was included to keep a point of reference> As has already been pointed out, the subject is moot anyway, since the information was quoted out of context. In general, though, it seems that there are a lot of folks out there who think it's best to penalize the entirety of society because a small segment *MIGHT* do something wrong. As individuals and as societies, we take risks when the potential benefit indicates the level of risk is appropriate for the benefit obtained. If not, we'd not be allowed to have potentially dangerous things around: gasoline, electricity, and even water. Unfortunately, we do have incidents where people die due to gasoline explosions, electrocution, and drowning. But is the risk enough to prohibit use by the general public? Carte blanche approval of encryption probably isn't a good idea. But is a total ban (other than for authentication and telecommand) the correct alternative? That's a question that probably should be moved to the digital politics group (and no, I'm not signed up on it). But moving the thread to a group where it could be more fully discussed doesn't mean that members of this group should do ostrich imitations and bury our heads in the sand ignoring things we don't want to deal with. We also need to keep in mind the international nature of this particular forum, and note that these kinds of subjects will be seen differently by hams from different areas (even, to some extent, different areas of the USA.) Because of the differing political views, it's likely to be not much different than discussing the death penalty, ownership of firearms, or in some areas the consumption of alcohol. While the ARRL (and note - I'm using the CORRECT abbreviation for the organization, rather than resorting to name-calling) doesn't necessarily make the right decisions all the time, at least they recognize that there are some areas where the regulations can be relaxed to benefit ham radio. And allowing hams the opportunity to make decisions for themselves rather than by regulatory mandate sounds to me like an essential part of self-policing. 73, Paul Schmidt / K9PS Life Member ARRL Life Member QCWA Need a Digital mode QSO? Connect to Telnet://cluster.dynalias.org Other areas of interest: The MixW Reflector : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup/ DigiPol: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Digipol (band plan policy discussion) Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
