EMERGENCY ‐ AMATEUR RADIO NEEDS YOUR HELP NOW!

[A. Maitland Bottoms]

K6BP writes:

Please forward this message to other hams. The most current version of
this message is at http://hams.com/encryption/ Please use that
version.

FCC is currently processing a request for rule-making, RM-11699, that
would allow the use of Amateur frequencies in the U.S. for private,
digitally-encrypted messages.

Encryption is a potential disaster for us because it defeats the
self-policing nature of ham radio. If hams can't decode messages, we
can't identify if the communication is appropriate for ham radio or
not. A potentially worse problem is that encryption destroys the
harmless nature of Amateur radio. For governments around the world to
continue to allow Amateur Radio, it must be percieved as
harmless. There's no reason for anyone to believe that encrypted
communications are harmless. Foreign governments, and maybe even our
own, will start to see hams as more of a threat. This is likely to
have a chilling effect upon DXpeditions, which are already often
viewed suspiciously by the host nations, and perhaps will even lead
some countries to take Amateur Radio off of the air or limit our
privileges in some way.

The last day for you to submit a comment opposing this is JULY 7, so
it's important for you to act now! Please make a short comment in
opposition to the proposal at this link, or use this link to upload
longer documents.

We have no way of telling if the content of encrypted messages are
appropriate for ham radio. While their senders will identify them as
emergency communications drills, they could be used for crime,
operating a business, downloading pornography, etc. WiFi-like cards
are already available for Amateur frequencies, and while hams can
build legitimate networks with them, none of their vendors check for a
license before selling them to anyone. Legalizing encryption on the
air will make abuse of Amateur frequencies provable only after
difficult and potentially illegal code-breaking.

A small group has almost succeeded in sneaking this change past the
entire ham community. As I write this, they are almost unopposed, with
only one comment against their proposal submitted to FCC. We have less
than two weeks to turn that around!

Unfortunately, ARRL isn't helping. On March 9, the ARRL board of
directors moved to explore whether they should ask for rule-changes
authorizing encryption, see their meeting minutes at paragraph
4.1.3. Before ARRL was scheduled to consider a report on the issue, an
individual ham filed a request for rule-making with FCC. ARRL
obviously tracks FCC rule-making and the notices of it in the Federal
Register, and yet waited until two weeks before the end of the
commenting period to announce on their web site that this was going
on.

What could be a plausible excuse for using encryption on the Amateur
bands? It's HIPAA, a 1996 law that requires that doctors, hospitals
and other medical services providers keep patient data secret. And
thus, hospitals have become reluctant to use ham communications in
emergencies. We effectively broadcast all of the information we
communicate, and they're afraid that we'll get them sued by doing so.

Emergency communications are a critical component of the mission of
Amateur Radio, and are one of only four purposes that FCC uses to
justify the existence of the Amateur Service. It may be that
encryption does become critical to support Amateur emergency
services. But that time has not yet come. If we are to allow
encryption on the air, that should come only after the entire ham
community has discussed it throughly and explored all of the
options. And yet, nobody's brought this issue before you, before
attempting to change the rules behind your back.

The folks who support the encryption proposal are, as far as I can
tell, well-meaning. Many of them are involved in emergency
communications. But their methods are inappropriate. If they want this
change, they must discuss the issue throughly at ham conferences and
in our publications. They must allow hams to become educated about the
alternatives before we decide as a community if a rule change is
necessary.

What are the alternatives? One is changing HIPAA to remove liability
from the doctors and hospitals for disclosure of information in an
amateur emergency transmission. Changing laws is not impossible for
Amateurs. Through lobbying congress, we have recently been able to
cause changes in ITAR 121, a Department of Defense restriction that
made it difficult for us to collaborate with other nations in building
microsats. That's changing now as a result of lobbying by ham
organizations. If hams can get that done, we can reform HIPAA as well.

Another alternative is to leave the rules as they are today. Many
emergency organizations have been able to operate without encryption
despite any reservations by the served organizations regarding HIPAA,
which has existed since 1996. And many services other than Amateur
Radio, including MARS, Land Mobile, and Part 15 can provide encryption
without a rule-change, and might be more appropriate venues for this
traffic.

If we end up deciding to have encryption on the Amateur bands, we must
do so only after developing a system of controls that prevent its
abuse. There is no anti-abuse method sugested in the current request
for rule making, but I propose this one: Encryption would only be
allowed in tests and drills that would be authorized and publicly
announced by accredited ARES or RACES organizations, and or actual
emergency communications for a served agency that is subject to
patient privacy regulations such as HIPAA. Logging of encrypted
transmissions, including the encryption key, would be
mandatory. Stations would be required to disclose their keys to
amateur volunteers who would check recorded transmissions for
rule-violation, but those volunteers would be required to keep any
HIPAA-protected patient data within the transmission private. Stations
that repeatedly failed to cooperate in allowing their messages to be
decrypted and checked by third parties would be subject to penalties.

But we haven't decided any of this yet. And we shouldn't without your
participation. Thus, please comment now in opposition of the proposal.

Again, the last day for you to submit a comment opposing this is JULY
7, so it's important for you to act now! Please make a short comment
in opposition to the proposal at this link, or use this link to upload
longer documents.

About the Author: Bruce Perens K6BP is one of the founders of the Open
Source movement in software. He is also the founder of No-Code
International, the organization that successfully lobbied for the
global elimination of code testing. More recently, Perens has been a
pioneer of digital communications over Ham Radio. He started and
evangelized the Codec2 (http://codec2.org/) project, which has
developed a fully open and patent-free digital voice codec for Radio
Amateurs. That codec is now in use in FreeDV (http://freedv.org/),
which provides clear digital voice communications on HF in half the
bandwidth of SSB. You can reach Bruce Perens K6BP at +1 510-4PERENS
(US Pacific time), or email to bruce at perens dot com.

Please forward this message to other hams. The most current version is
at http://hams.com/encryption/ Please use that version.