Re:The Backbone of VHF Amateur Radio May Be Under Threat
by tlrobinson on Tuesday July 02, 2019 @06:34PM
(#20340003)
A few points:
Encryption isn't typically part of the physical or data link layers, which are the bread and butter of amateur radio. What you send on top of those isn't really the interesting part of amateur radio, from a technical perspective.
The actual rule prohibits "messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning" which I think most people interpret to mean digital signatures for authentication and integrity are permitted, just not encrypted payloads.
Many protocols have the ability to switch ciphers, including disabling encryption entirely while still performing authentication and integrity checking.
Encryption isn't typically part of the physical or data link layers, which are the bread and butter of amateur radio. What you send on top of those isn't really the interesting part of amateur radio, from a technical perspective.
The actual rule prohibits "messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning" which I think most people interpret to mean digital signatures for authentication and integrity are permitted, just not encrypted payloads.
Many protocols have the ability to switch ciphers, including disabling encryption entirely while still performing authentication and integrity checking.