Sometimes you just need to 'sleep on the problem' in order for your
brain to work on it. I think that happened to me last night.
A number of years ago (5 to 10) I was invited to a meeting with county
officials responsible for local emergency preparedness. This was a
meeting held periodically to discuss the progress of the county's 'civil
crisis' procedures. This is to prepare for scenarios where society was
on brink of failure. Things like what is done with thousands of deceased
people if they died within a few days from conflict or disease, etc.
(The short answer to that question was to identify and tag the bodies
and inter them in temporary trench graves to await additional
'processing' after the crisis was over.)
Among the group of county officials (sheriff, medical examiner, council
members) was the IT manager who had invited me and the local ham radio
EC group. During the meeting, the status of countywide communications
came up for discussion. It was stated that *secured communication
channels would be necessary* and that the appropriate (scrambling)
equipment was not yet in place but was on order. There was additional
discussion regarding why a secured system was necessary during a civil
emergency.
The thought passed through my mind at that very moment "Well that pretty
much negates any use of amateur radio if secured communication links are
required. The FCC does not allow cyphered systems on the amateur bands."
I blew this off until just this morning, when I recalled that meeting I
attended some years ago.
Now I am wondering whether this "rail job" by the ARRL isn't being
driven by the "need" to provide that level of encrypted communication
when necessary. If the gumment can't / won't use open communication
links during a crisis, that effectively removes the amateur radio
community from the disaster relief picture.
73 de Bob - KØRC in MN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 11/23/2013 12:55 AM, Jeff Blaine wrote:
I guess this is the thing that has me curious - the end user. All the
years I've been a ham (40?), the rule was that communications could
not be encrypted. That communication was primarily point to point and
for the benefit of the hams. That the language could not be a code
type but was an international type. I guess mixed in there was a
war-time tradition of handling message traffic.
If the push for pactor/winlink is really about email (which despite
the alternative emcom use claims, email seems to be at the root), that
does not really fit in with the traditional ham use of the bands.
There are commercial services for email via radio. Opening up the
digital bands so guys could play around with that mode does make
sense, but only if it's an open sourced format. I don't use SSTV, for
example, but I respect the subgroup of hams who appreciate it and like
it.
The real issue that seems to make this approach fall into the "wrong"
category is that the mode seems to be focused on enabling the ham
bands to service unrelated parties to the communications. email is a
commercial venture and does not seem to be a logical extension of the
traditional ham use as 1) the volume of data in an email is HUGE HUGE
compared to the efficient com of even your rag-chewing guy and 2) the
station serving as the hub is simply a relay to another point.
73/jeff/ac0c
www.ac0c.com
alpha-charlie-zero-charlie
-----Original Message----- From: Kok Chen
Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2013 12:01 AM
To: Jeff Blaine
Cc: rtty@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [RTTY] ARRL attack on current RTTY users
On Nov 22, 2013, at 8:37 PM, Jeff Blaine wrote:
As I look back at this topic, the ARRL actions and the arguments seen
here are about the same ones as in 1995, but at that time, the
winlink/pactor intention was a bit more obvious. This time it's a
very low key operation...
Jeff,
It is low key, but either (1) they are naive, or (2) they think *we*
are naive.
I encourage everyone to take a *close* look at ARRL's petition, as filed.
http://www.arrl.org/files/media/News/Petition%20for%20Rule%20Making%20AS-FILED%2011%2015%202013.pdf
(As with reading patents, where you can skip all the prior-art and
stuff and jump directly to Claims. In the case of this petition, you
can jump past all the lawyer talk and go directly to see the proposed
changes. That is the part that will affect us in the future, not the
explanations and justifications.)
Specifically, go to near the end of the manuscript, where the proposed
change to 97.307 (f) (3) are listed. First...
(A) they removed the requirement that specific digital codes need to
be used, by adding a sentence that allows unpublished codes (see
97.309(b)) to be used on Amateur bands!
Currently (before petition), you have to adhere to 97.309(a), which
states that the code used in a digital transmission must be either
Baudot, ASCII, Amtor (which is a 7 bit extension of Baudot), or if it
is none of these, the code has to be *publicly documented* (emphasis
mine).
This makes PSK31 Varicode, DominoEX Varicode, etc also legit. While
keeps proprietary codes prohibited.
Modern proprietary codes are basically the same as encryption -- they
are usually weak encryption but nevertheless protected by the DMCA
(Digital Millennium Copyright Act, enacted by Congress in 1998). The
DMCA thus keeps you from being able to reverse engineer proprietary
modems in order to decode messages that passes through public Amateur
air space.
Notice that by allowing unpublished code, the ARRL modifications will
negate the protection we have currently from manufacturers who obscure
the protocols and codes that are use in the proprietary modems which
they sell.
When you get QRMed, you cannot tell who is QRMing you. Interference is
therefore unenforcible, since it cannot even be reported.
The petition then...
(B) removes the 300 baud restriction from 97.307 (f) (3).
That part at least follows the purported intent of the petition.
However, the petition goes on to ...
(C) allow bandwidths of up to 2.8 kHz.
Notice that of the changes that I listed above as (A), (B), and (C),
*only* item (B) has *anything* whatsoever to do with the purported
objective of the petition.
So, why did the ARRL include the changes (A) and (C) that I listed
above?!
For those who are curious... as written, the proposed changes to
97.307 (f) (3) allows Pactor 4, among probably some other modems to
become legal. Pactor 4 is not legal today.
Before today, I only had the 2004 version of Part 97 on my bookshelf,
and held back on commenting on what appeared to be a glaring problem
in the petition. The 2007 copy of Part 97 arrived at my doorstep late
this afternoon. I wanted to be sure that I was not imagining things
as related to the current 97.309.
73
Chen, W7AY
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