So… I found out a way to send encrypted messages using amateur radio.
There is an app called Rattlegram that lets you convert a string of text into soundwaves that plays though your phone’s speaker. If I just use an app like Secure Space Encryptor (SSE) to encrypt a text, then copy-paste it to the Rattlegram app, then transmit that over radio, then using the same app to record the sound and reverse the process on the other end. Voila! Encrypted long(ish) range communications without a centralized server!
But I looked it up and apparantly its illegal to encrypt communications over the amateur radio bands. What are the odds of actually getting in trouble? 🤔
(To the FCC agents reading this: this is just a hypothetical, a thought experiment, I’m totally not gonna do this 😉)
For those who are unfamiliar, encrypted or not radio signals can still be tracked down. Normal communication is like everyone in a room speaking English and we all understand each other. Encrypted communication is like speaking in gibberish that only a few can understand. BUT everyone in the room can still hear that a person is saying something.
Triangulation is a thing. If you become a pest licenced operators (see radio fox hunting) and maybe the FCC themselves will be able to direction find you easily if you aren’t careful. $7-10k is the base rate for fines for this stuff if it came to that. If you fuck around near aviation, police, fire, or other similarly important radio frequencies you will find out VERY quickly.
fun fact lora bands (the ones meshtastic uses) are mostly outside of amateur bands and have encryption enabled by default. They don’t transmit very far on their own though, they need other meshtastic devices to relay messages over longer distances. Business band licences allow encrypted radios too.
Maybe if you are in a rural area you can try it with basic FRS/GMRS walkie talkies where there isn’t a licencing requirement and by extension maybe a bit more leniance if you claimed you didn’t know it was against the rules.
Slight correction, Lora is shared with amateur bands, but the transmission power is low enough that it’s within unlicensed limits.
Also, they can actually transmit quite far, they just can’t penetrate well. A mountaintop node can communicate to the horizon, but inside a house at desk height it can struggle to reach a half mile.
True, thank you!
I’d listen to this gentleman right here. He said a bunch of shit I don’t understand
He’s just Some Amateur.
Oh, go bite your bike. ;p
Hell, Kevin Mitnick was caught via cellular tower triangulation all the way back in the 90’s.
It’s far from new technology too, so at this point you would think radio triangulation would be piss easy and cheap to do.
Agreed on the LoRa devices. I personally think the future of comms is in meshed low power high latency devices.
https://hackaday.com/2022/05/25/long-distance-text-communication-with-lora/
https://github.com/BigCorvus/LORA-QWERTY-Communicator
These take some knowledge to build, but I think they’re pretty slick.
Yep, Usually people dont care until you start blasting away legit services. Then a lot of people start showing up at your door. Theres triangulation devices on https://www.tindie.com/ for amateurs that are very cheap and the pros have MUCH better equipment.
Meshtastic ( !meshtastic@mander.xyz ) is in a small range/spectrum and consolidated in LoRa. Its very unlikely to cause issues so its tolerated. Its very much a legal way to get text to a friend or community…if your local community is big enough.
FRS and GMRS have similar restrictions on encoding, and also limits or prohibitions on digital/data modes.
Ignorance of the law is not an excuse, but compliance with the letter while violating the “spirit” is generally acceptable.