From: Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1998 17:00:36 +0800
To: "Brian W. Buchanan" <brian@smarter.than.nu>
Subject: Re: radio net (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199809091239.HAA15369@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <199809092202.PAA23854@ideath.parrhesia.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 07:57 AM 9/9/98 -0700, Brian W. Buchanan wrote:
>On Wed, 9 Sep 1998, Jim Choate wrote:
>> The FCC prohibits the transmission of encrypted data via analog or digital
>> signals by amateurs.
>
>I'd love to see them try to enforce that.  What about chaffing and
>winnowing?  Stego?  Transmission of random noise? ;)  Anyone have the text
>of the actual rules concerning this?

I don't know of a persistent web copy of the regs (only query-based ones,
where the queries are only good for a few hours), but the regulation you're
looking for is 47 CFR 97.113 -

"(a) No amateur station shall transmit: . . . . (4) Music using a phone
emission except as specifically provided elsewhere in this section;
communications intended to facilitate a criminal act; messages in codes or
ciphers intended to obscure the meaning thereof, except as otherwise
provided herein; obscene or indecent words or language; or false or
deceptive messages, signals, or identification"

As I understand things (and I don't follow communications law, so I don't
think my opinion is well-informed), the restrictions only apply to
transmissions within the amateur band(s); so that's not applicable to, say,
the FRS (family radio service, a band recently opened to non-licensed
communications - used, for example, by the small Motorola TalkAbout
radios), or cordless/cellphone frequencies. 

PDF copies of the FCC regs are online at
<http://www.fcc.gov/wtb/rules.html>; amateur ("ham") radio is at Part 97.

I'm working on a bigger rant about crypto and radio and guns and Y2K and
the net; the gist of it is that amateur radio people, who are generally
decent folks as individuals, have cozied up to the FCC to protect their
"radio privileges" and have been rewarded with a mountain of bureacratic
horseshit which outdoes even the idiotic regulations re crypto export and
firearms .. and it's enforceable because the people who got licenses from
the government to communicate with each other (but only in certain ways, on
certain frequencies, after identifying themselves) fall over themselves to
find people who *don't* think they need a license to communicate (or who
think that the First Amendment *is* their license), and they rat those
non-licensed folks out to the FCC. The FCC's got an army of unpaid
volunteer informers who watch their fellow subjects to ensure compliance
with these silly rules .. which leads to a situation where ham radios are
mostly useful for talking to other people about how the weather is in some
other part of the globe, and what kind of radio someone's got, and how big
their antenna is. The FCC (and parallel organizations in other countries)
are discussing liberalizing the regulations regarding amateur radio use,
and a significant fraction of the current radio people are opposed to the
liberalization, because it'll topple their little kingdoms and make their
hard-earned licenses and certifications uninteresting.

If you want to know what crypto regs and net use regs are going to look
like in 10-20 years, look at the amateur radio regs now - we'll have
citizens' committees (similar to the "block leaders" on GeoCities) who stay
up late at night, unpaid, watching their fellow subjects for signs of
pseudonym use, or the use of unlicensed/unapproved crypto, or "unlicensed
Internet broadcasting". The citizens' committees will explain that they're
dedicated volunteers devoted to keeping their communities "clean" and
"orderly", and that without their intervention the FIC would be unable to
ride herd on all of the wild people using programs nobody's inspected and
communicating with ciphers nobody can read, saying things that just
shouldn't be said because they'll make somebody upset or something.
Besides, children might be reading. Everyone wants to be polite, don't they? 


--
Greg Broiles        |History teaches that 'Trust us'
gbroiles@netbox.com |is no guarantee of due process.
                    |_Kasler v. Lundgren_, 98 CDOS 1581
                    |(March 4, 1998)