Hi Charles, I suspect you're correct that your request was probably kicked around a fair deal with no one really taking that much time to read and understand it, but in the end I agree with the response your were given. I think you're suffering from the problem that many hams who are particularly interested in EMCOMM tend to face -- while ham radio holds itself out and very much does provide many emergency services in times of disaster, it's only one part of why the amateur radio service was created, and when you start getting "really serious" about EMCOMM you find that what you're trying to do is overlapping with what the various public service agency frequencies/services were intended to do... and on those frequenciese people can and do use encryption routinely. Of course, I realize the frustration here is that in some areas hams have considerably better infrastructure set up for emergencies than public service agencies do, so just being told, "if you need to transmit some sensitive personal information, go grab an agency radio" can be a step down in the level of service you can provide.
Some random thoughts: 1) I suspect that in a true emergency, if there's some "life or death" reason that you need to transmit a bunch of (what's generally considered to be) confidential information about, say, a patient enroute to a hospital, you would find plenty of legal protection if someone later tried to sue you for violating HIPAA or some other rules (similar to "good samaritan" laws provide protection if you attempt to provide medical service to someone). Then again, you probably don't want to personally be the test case for this... :-) 2) It would be nice if the FCC authorized the type acceptance of radios that worked both on amateur frequencies and public service agency frequencies. (While many amateur radios can be readily modified to do this, the FCC authorizing it would definitely help out ARES and similar groups.) 3) Since there are already those narrowly defined allowances for the use encryption on the books, coming up with some software to perform it on D*Star radios and popularizing it as a standard might put you in a better position with the FCC in the future, if you can point to some software used for, e.g., repeater control and demonstrate that the use of encryption hasn't been abused and you've received no complaints about its usage. That might open the door to the FCC allowing the use of encryption during, e.g., an agency-declared emergency, although I still don't think the FCC is going to allow routine, daily use of encryption as it would be going against the charter of the amateur radio service. ---Joel
