Re: radio net (fwd)

Forwarded message:

> Date: Wed, 09 Sep 1998 00:51:49 -0700
> From: "William J. Hartwell" <billh@ibag.com>
> Subject: Re: radio net

> I think a radio network linked to the Amateur networks sending secure
> packets, 
> using tunneling or maybe just encrypted traffic (There may be some FCC
> rules regarding this.

The FCC prohibits the transmission of encrypted data via analog or digital
signals by amateurs.


    ____________________________________________________________________

                            The seeker is a finder.

                                     Ancient Persian Proverb

       The Armadillo Group       ,::////;::-.          James Choate
       Austin, Tx               /:'///// ``::>/|/      ravage@ssz.com
       www.ssz.com            .',  ||||    `/( e\      512-451-7087
                           -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-
    --------------------------------------------------------------------

On 10 Sep 1998 17:51:31 -0500, Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com> wrote:

>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".

Are we already seing this, with CAUCE and USENET II?  Good users are known
users (... and if it stops just one spammer...)

-- Phelix

Hey, guys,

Someone here already said it, but nobody else got it, so I'll repeat it:
SSB, or Single Sideband. It's commercial ham radio, if you will, and all
the ships use it. I expect that you can shove anything down an SSB set that
you want, including encrypted traffic.

Ham radio is a government nerd subsidy, and as such, doesn't do much but
make more government funded/sactioned/approved/whatever nerds. :-).

SSB would do just fine. It's an international standard, after all, and
probably not under the control of any one government, even.e

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'

At 6:21 AM -0400 on 9/11/98, Somebody wrote:


> Actually, SSB is a modulation/broadcast *technique*.  Used by commercial
> and ham operators.

Yeah, but there are SSB radios, with the same range as ham radios, which
are, or should be, completely legal to do encryption on, among other
commercial things.

That was my point.
-----------------
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'

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)

On Wed, 9 Sep 1998, Jim Choate wrote:

> > Date: Wed, 09 Sep 1998 00:51:49 -0700
> > From: "William J. Hartwell" <billh@ibag.com>
> > Subject: Re: radio net
> 
> > I think a radio network linked to the Amateur networks sending secure
> > packets, 
> > using tunneling or maybe just encrypted traffic (There may be some FCC
> > rules regarding this.
> 
> 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?

-- 
Brian Buchanan                                      brian@smarter.than.nu

Never believe that you know the whole story.

>>>>> Brian W Buchanan <brian@smarter.than.nu> writes:

  > I'd love to see them try to enforce that... Anyone have
  > the text of the actual rules concerning this?

This is enforced very strictly, with the diligent help of the amateur
radio community itself.

CFR47 says:

97.113 Prohibited transmissions. 

(a) No amateur station shall transmit:

  (1) Communications specifically prohibited elsewhere in this part;

  (2) Communications for hire or for material compensation, direct or
  indirect, paid or promised, except as otherwise provided in these
  rules;

  (3) Communications in which the station licensee or control operator
  has a pecuniary interest...

  (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;

  (5) Communications, on a regular basis, which could reasonably be
  furnished alternatively through other radio services.

(b) An amateur station shall not engage in any form of broadcasting...

[...]

97.117 International communications. Transmissions to a different
country, where permitted, shall be made in plain language and shall be
limited to messages of a technical nature relating to tests, and, to
remarks of a personal character for which, by reason of their
unimportance, recourse to the public telecommunications service is not
justified.

>> > 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?

Put it like this, it took the Feds a long time to be willing to accept
RTTY (Radio Teletype), because it used this 7(?)-bit ASCII CODE stuff.
On the other hand, they've relaxed a lot, as amateurs have largely become
computer hackers as well, equipment changed, Morse became less relevant....
As long as the ham user community doesn't get annoyed at you,
and you don't abuse the available bandwidth, you ought to be able to stego
a certain amount of traffic through the net, either using some sort of
PointyHairedBoss code, or low-order bits in GIFs, or whatever.


				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639