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Ham Radio Encryption

Posted on August 26, 2013September 15, 2014 by scott

Recently, someone filed a notice of proposed rule making with the FCC regarding encryption of ham radio transmissions. For those non-hams out there, encryption is strictly forbidden under FCC Part 97 (which governs amateur radio in the USA). No amateur radio transmission can be encoded or encrypted in any way that is intended to obfuscate or hide the content of the transmission. The notice has generated some debate in the community.

The basis of the idea is that HIPAA laws are very strict regarding identifiable medical information. I’ve been a volunteer with a number of medical teams (including for my employer), and personally identifiable medical information MUST be kept confidential (with some exceptions, some covered below). The individual who filed felt that the open nature of ham radio would thus render it less useful to served agencies during emergencies, and allowing encryption would allay that concern.

I’m firmly against this idea, however, for the following reasons:

  1. HIPAA simply does not apply to amateur radio traffic. Hospitals, physicians, nurses, insurance companies…these all have obligations under HIPAA. A ham operator passing traffic does not — the responsibility lies with the originator. In fact, this is an already-solved problem for them, as encrypted radio is not ubiquitous in the public sector. They’d apply the same techniques with amateur radio.
  2. HIPAA does have exceptions, which include provisions for disaster scenarios. The point of HIPAA is to curtail the misuse of information, not to hobble emergency efforts.
  3. Encryption of transmissions, even for good reasons, would utterly eliminate the ability to determine if the transmission was legal. Part 97 strictly forbids the use of amateur radio for any pecuniary reason. This is diligently enforced, both by the FCC and by hams themselves. With encryption, we’d never know, and the amateur radio service would doubtless be misused.
  4. I did some research, and I found no mention of situations where the filer’s concerns had actually come to pass. The ARRL agrees with this — it’s just never happened (in no small part due to points 1 and 2). This doesn’t guarantee that it won’t in the future, but it seems unlikely.

This seems like a solution in search of a problem.

 

 

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