From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1998 07:15:39 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: radio net
In-Reply-To: <199809130024.UAA12462@mx02.together.net>
Message-ID: <v0401170db2215f84fec1@[139.167.130.247]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 8:24 PM -0400 on 9/12/98, Brian B. Riley wrote:



>  Bob, I am afraid you are showing your ignorance here.

I don't think so.

> SSB is just one of
> the many modes of emission standardized in radio communications, its used
> by the amateur radio service (ham) , the citizens radio service (cb), the
> military, etc ...

I know what Single Sideband means. As I've said before, and what you failed
to read later on in this thread, evidently, is that there are commercial
Single Sideband radios out there which have the range of ham sets. These
radios are used for commercial ship-to-shore traffic, and I expect that
encryption is legal on them. I expect that, because these frequencies are
subject to international convention rather than federal law, they have more
leeway (heh... nautical pun) on their use. Including, I bet, digital
packets and encryption.


>  The real problem is that to build any sort of network would require some
> fixed positions, which, if it were intended to be 'clandestine' would be
> compromised sooner or later ... either that or several poor shnooks would
> have full time jobs driving vans around and around to keep the RDF snoops
> guessing ...

My understanding is that Ryan's looking for some kind of post-infocalyptic
radio network for when it All Falls Down Sometime Soon (tm). I expect that
in that event, Ham would be fine, because there is no, as Mr. Gore likes to
say, controlling legal authority, to worry about. But, to put up and test a
network, commercial SSB would do just fine. And, of course, After The Big
One, what kind of long-distance shortwave radio you run it on will be
superfluous, ham, SSB or no.

>  In general there would be a better chance of pulling it off if you
> stayed away from the ham radio bands. 'self-policing' is not a character
> of another bands except the commercial broadcast bands.

Right, so (he says for the third time), why not just order a commerial
ship-to-shore SSB rig, something which costs within an order of magnitude,
plus or minus, of a Ham set, and go play?


>  Spread spectrum would have more promise as many stations could be on the
> air at once on the same frequency thus making life quite confusing for
> the T-hunters.

Right. If we had some, um, ham, we could have some ham and eggs. If we had
some eggs.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'