There is a proviso that goes with that. If you're doing a metro-area mesh network (some of the WiFi overlap with the 2.4GHz amateur band!) you can use WEP or WPA as long as the password for joining the network is "publicly available." Putting the current password on the website for the club/group running the project is sufficient to demonstrate, for FCC purposes, that the communications are open.
What happens if I use SSL over the top of such a network? Is that allowed? If the answer is yes, it seems more like a loophole in the rules than anything.
Probably not. These rules were put in place to prevent spies from using HAM to exfil data during the Cold War. Really I think it should be something that should be revisited but I don't know how the 3 letter agency's would like a method of communication that they can't access.
I remember last time it was talked about on HN a bunch of people argued with me that there was no reason for encryption. When I started talking about mesh networks and control systems I got answers about how I could do that without encryption so what was I complaining about... The other thing I wanted is to be able to fly things outside of line of site (I mean why else would I use HAM to fly it?). Though it looks like you can apply to do that now.
As to the Russian Spies, tech has changed so much that anyone who would still argue this is fooling themselves.
I see that raised a lot as a concern but I can’t imagine it has any legs nowadays.
Previously, in the 1980’s, yes I could see a Taxi/Plumber/etc using amateur radio equipment as a cheaper workaround for their business, but now it’s so much cheaper (and better) to use cellular or, if you really needed business radios they aren’t crazy expensive as they once were.
The reason for the rules against commercial activity on the ham bands was originally to keep hams from competing with commercial services, not the other way around.
However, as an ham radio license holder, I would still not want to see our amateur radio frequencies, which are purposefully set aside by the FCC for hobby and experimental use, used for any commercial purposes at all.
Commercial radio has its own spectrum and rules, and the cost to use it is not insignificant. Many businesses in my area still use radio because it is more reliable and controllable than the services provided by mobile operators. A lot of these would absolutely jump at the chance to use the ham bands and ditch their expensive commercial equipment, regulation, and fees if it were legal to do so.
For non-local communications, HFT companies have been looking at the HF bands for years to shave a few milliseconds off their micro-arbitrage transactions (compared to wired networks) and ham radio has the largest chunk of spectrum after the military.
There's a ton of people using BaoFeng radios without a license. Every once in a while, some ignorant middle manager at a larger company buys a bunch and the FCC cites them.
I’ve actually seen baofengs with little stubby antennas used by various government employees without licenses, for instance workers at the DEQ near me. I’m not a dick so I’m not gonna call the fcc on them, but it’d be funny to see that.
As I understand it, the idea is that it's a "sandbox" or "test" network. Confidentiality implies a "production" use case, and HAM doesn't want to be the venue for those. You can play around with encryption if the keys are public but you can't actually keep secrets. Even if the secrets are non-commercial. It's a place to play with radios, not a personal communications network.
