1st We need to get back on track D-Star....
I looked into getting a commercial License for a local hospital group to provide astro digital w/ encryption for inter hospital communications. In my research I kept hitting brick walls it seems there is no legal way to use encryption on any commercial freq. There is no license for it, it is forbidden except for police and military. Or at least that was what The Motorola sales person(direct I might add) informed me of. Maybe they ment DES, DES-XL, DES-OFB, AES...etc but it was not allowed. You sure can't do it legally on any ham freqs. Using any encryption, whether or not you post the encryption key is still obscuring the meaning. Everyone that picks up the signal is supposed to be able to listen to it. Not they can listen to it if they happen to know the code. The exception is if your experimenting with a new digital mode. I think that is where they are getting you must post the code, referring to the then "experimental digital modes" modes like Spread spectrum or when they were developing olivia, psk31...etc they posted the codes by making beta decode programs, and making the specs public. When you are using spread spectrum your supposed to have posted in a public place the spreading algorithm. Check out the rules for spread spectrum its totally different in several ways from general UHF repeater work. 200W pep max. automatic power control....all kinds of things. There is no way around it. Encryption + Ham Radio = Squeal like a piggy in jail. Not my cup of tea. Your lying to your self, if your convinced you can do it. Yeah hams do it all the time. I hear a huge repeater system in Chicago "trashing securenet" as they say every once in a while. still doesn't make it legal. Hams get on 80M and curse, use all kinds of foul obscene language, don't ID or They ID at speeds so fast no one can copy and understand them. Does that all the sudden make it legal? nope... not in a millions years. I sure as hell would not admit to using encryption it in a public forum. That just like stating "Hey, I am a criminal come get me if you can!" I don't think it wise to taunt the authorities. Some of them can read..... LOL Now to play advocate. Having the capability: In my opinion, having the capability to do encryption, or transmit out of the amateur band is not a bad thing. During a real declared emergency all the rules (FCC related) are thrown out the window (that includes part 97). That is the point to keep in mind. We CAN do anything radio wise if there is a true emergency. That has been done time after time, without any issue, see: Katrina, 9/11, local emergencys...etc If it is life safety involved. do it. You will most likely not get in trouble, but it better be really serious. Now if it saves a life, and you really get in trouble over it, #1 for me its worth it anyway, #2 there will be hell to pay for whoever prosecutes you for doing something that saves a life w/ a radio communication. Using DES, or WEP, WPA or whatever is not justifiable under normal circumstances. Same thing applies to MARS/CAP mods. The rules are really clear on that one. that tree has been barked up way too many times and I am not even going to address that one. Some hams have this compulsion to try and get away with as many things as they can. Some come up with these lame justifications because of an urban legend that some friend of a friend heard and start doing something illegal. Others hear it and copy. the FCC is so understaffed they really don't do anything about, further making it seem that it is ok. Personally my license is more important to me, than to risk it with shenanigans like encryption or freebanding. There is no traffic hams should ever have to pass, even in the worst case scenario that should require encryption. If your city, county, state, country infrastructure is so hard up, that they can't tell cop a that cop b has been shot and is dying and that his wife needs to come to the hospital, or that person d has the black plague and its spreading, then there is something more wrong with the world then I can even find words to describe. I don't want to hear Katrina, 9/11, or anything like that. In reality that was handled pretty well considering the scope of that nature. the true emergency applies there. yeah hams passed all kinds of traffic outside the nomal realms of reality. I think back to what my elmer taught me about ambulance chasers with scanners. If you heard on the local uhf ARES tac, that your wife/brother/significant whatever close relationship "X bad thing happens" don't tell me you will not freak out and drive like a madman on crack over there. Its human nature. Unless your in the medical/fire/police fields you will not understand how hard it is to keep your composure. It can be trained out of you. Hams rarely receive the counseling and training to deal with it. I can testify to dealing with that stress personally. Try dealing with the attempted( quite well attempted) suicide of your fire captain. Or trying to do CPR on your best friends 13 mo. daughter... I did. it sucked. it took a lot of time to get over.. but you deal with it after.. The average ARES volunteer has no training to deal with things of that nature. yeah some of us ares guys are all NIMS/ICS blah blah out the wazoo. That doesn't mean anything in the real world. The firefighters, cops, real emergency people train and work that stuff out constantly. We have no business as hams even trying. Its totally different passing health/welfare messages to tell mom/dad jimmy is at shelter 7 and is fine... that's what we do and do well. let the professionals handle the professional and let us hams to what we do best communicate. Think NTS not NSA!!! As far as wifi goes, forget 2.4.. we hams have licensed channels on 3.5 ghz the equipment to transvert 2.4 to 3.5 ghz exists and native 3.5 gear is not that expensive. the only users on 3.5 ghz are licensed and coordinated. the noise floor is significantly lower on the higer freqs and there is no "public access" so why putz with the equivalent of CB for doing anything serious like EMCOMM or ARES work with it? Sorry for the vent guys. None of it is personal so PLEASE don't take it that way! It is not targeted for anyone on this list other than just HAMS in General. I have seen this thread over and over and people STILL don't get it. It has been argured out till we are blue and it will be as divided then as it is now. Thanks, now lets get back to D-Star!!!! I just bought my first ID-800H and it will be here Saturday. Now to figure out what to do with it! Wish me luck. Don W9DRR _________________________________________________________________ Get more out of the Web. Learn 10 hidden secrets of Windows Live. http://windowslive.com/connect/post/jamiethomson.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!550F681DAD532637!5295.entry?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_domore_092008 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
