When everything else fails, amateur radio will still be there—and thriving
Ham is now a full-fat fabric that can provide Internet access. Why aren't you using it?
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It’s a good time to be technical. Maker communities are thriving around the world, tools and materials to create and adapt are cheaper and more powerful now than ever, and open source hardware, software, and information mean that if you can think it, you can learn how to do it and then make it happen.
For one group of technological explorers, this is more than just a golden age of opportunity: it’s providing the means to save one of the oldest traditions in electronic invention and self-education, one that helped shape the modern world: amateur radio.
Radio amateurs get a sweet deal, with effectively free access to many gigahertz of the same radio spectrum that companies pay billions for. They’ve earned it. Throughout the history of electronics, they’ve been at the borders of the possible, trying out ideas that commerce or government deem impossible or pointless—and making them work. Here's one example of hundreds: Allied military comms in World War II needed a way to reliably control the radios used by front-line forces, replacing tuning knobs with channel switches. Hams had the answer ready and waiting—quartz crystal oscillators. (Those are part of computing history, too. You’re probably using about 10 of them right now.).
The trouble with making a success of frontier territory is that it doesn’t stay frontier for long. As radio hams colonised new frequencies and new methods, government and commercial interests wanted in (and they got in). What was useless yesterday can be very desirable today, and a lot of the ham bands in the once-fallow UHF and microwave spectrum now look very tempting for wireless data, satellite downlinks, and the constant chatter of the Internet of Things. Some attacks on amateur spectrum have been repelled, others have succeeded. More are on the way.
It has looked a losing battle at times, as the relevance of amateur radio seemingly faded with the advent of the Internet and cheap digital technology to play with. Radio hams looked like yesterday’s people, as relevant as steam engine enthusiasts in the age of spaceflight. Who cares if they lose their spectrum if the rest of us can stream more HD cat videos as a result?
There’s enough truth in that to make it dangerous. A large cohort of hams just want to play with radios and talk to their pals, but that attitude masks four things that amateur radio still does that can’t be easily replaced.
Then, there’s backup. Take the European HAMNET, for example. That’s a four-thousand-node high speed data network covering a large part of continental Europe and providing full IP connectivity at megabit speeds. It connects to the Internet—ham radio owns 16 million IPV4 addresses, believe it or not—but is independent of it, doing its own robust and flexible routing. If the Internet was to go away, HAMNET would still be running. The same’s true of nearly all ham radio infrastructure. When everything else fails (power, comms, roads), ham radio is still there. These days it can even be a full-fat digital medium.
This independence gives ham radio a further edge. It is vigorously non-commercial and non-governmental, and by law the format has to be open—encryption is almost completely forbidden. It’s open to all nations (and nearly all allow it). It has survived war, dictatorships, disaster, and CB radio. If you want to use the airwaves, then provided you can pass a simple technical test and pay a nominal admin fee, you don’t need any further permission. Increasingly, that means unique creations that can’t happen any other way, like global free-to-access digital voice radio networks and international automated satellite tracking and data systems.
This resurgence has helped amateur radio keep its place at the negotiating table with regulators and lawmakers. It’s kept the world full of active expertise in wireless, one of the major drivers of modern IT and also one of the guarantors that things like commercial cellular networks are constantly checked for abuse. Those radio hackers at the Def Con and Blackhat conferences who gleefully expose the flaws and backdoors in your mobile phone will usually be active ham radio geeks.
It’s also a lot of fun. Nobody has to be a radio amateur, but if you want to use radio inventively, understand how it works, or need to create a communications link that doesn’t conform to other people’s limits or require their permission, it’s there for you. Be there for it.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/when-everything-else-fails-amateur-radio-will-still-be-there-and-thriving/
If they will admit to these how many more?
Uncle Sam admits monitoring you for these 377 words:
May 31, 2012
New York City
One of breakout standup routines from the late, great George Carlin was his 1972 monologue “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” In the presence of polite company, I shall not repeat them… but rest assured, the routine is still hilarious to this day.
I wish I could say the same about the Department of Homeland Security… I wish I could say this is all a big joke… that the government’s “377 words you can never use online” is just some stupid comedy routine.
But it’s not. And you just can’t make this stuff.
After vigorous resistance, the Department of Homeland Security was finally forced into releasing it’s 2011 Analyst’s Desktop Binder. It’s a manual of sorts, teaching all the storm troopers who monitor our Internet activity all day which key words to look for.
Facebook, a.k.a. the US government’s domestic intelligence center, is the primary target for this monitoring… though it’s become clear so many times before that various departments, including the NSA and FBI, are monitoring online activity ranging from search terms to emails.
Domestic spying is typically denied in public and swept under the rug. After all, it’s legality has always been questionable… if not entirely Unconstitutional.
Yet month after month it seems, there is new legislation introduced to deprive Internet users of their privacy and make the open collection of data a natural part of the online landscape.
Homeland Security’s key word ‘hotlist’ is really no surprise… they’re just the ones to get caught.
So now we know, at least, what these goons are looking for. Sort of.
According to the manual, DHS breaks down its monitoring into a whopping 14 categories ranging from Health to Fire to Terrorism. It’s a testament to how bloated the department’s scope has become.
Afterwards there is a list of 377 of key terms to monitor, most of which are completely innocuous. Exercise. Cloud. Leak. Sick. Organization. Pork. Bridge. Smart. Tucson. Target. China. Social media.
Curiously, in its ‘Critical Information Requirements’, the manual decrees that analysts should also catalog items which may “reflect adversely on DHS and response activities.”
Absolutely unreal. Big Brother is not just watching. He’s digging, searching, reading, monitoring, archiving, and judging too.
Have you hit your breaking point yet?
= Complete list of DHS monitoring keywords =
Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Coast Guard (USCG)
Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
Border Patrol
Secret Service (USSS)
National Operations Center (NOC)
Homeland Defense
Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE)
Agent
Task Force
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Fusion Center
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
Secure Border Initiative (SBI)
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS)
Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS)
Transportation Security Administration (TSA)
Air Marshal
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
National Guard
Red Cross
United Nations (UN)
Assassination
Attack
Domestic security
Drill
Exercise
Cops
Law enforcement
Authorities
Disaster assistance
Disaster management
DNDO (Domestic Nuclear Detection Office)
National preparedness
Mitigation
Prevention
Response
Recovery
Dirty bomb
Domestic nuclear detection
Emergency management
Emergency response
First responder
Homeland security
Maritime domain awareness (MDA)
National preparedness initiative
Militia Shooting
Shots fired
Evacuation
Deaths
Hostage
Explosion (explosive)
Police
Disaster medical assistance team (DMAT)
Organized crime
Gangs
National security
State of emergency
Security
Breach
Threat
Standoff
SWAT
Screening
Lockdown
Bomb (squad or threat)
Crash
Looting
Riot
Emergency
Landing
Pipe bomb
Incident
Facility
Hazmat
Nuclear
Chemical spill
Suspicious package/device
Toxic
National laboratory
Nuclear facility
Nuclear threat
Cloud
Plume
Radiation
Radioactive
Leak
Biological infection (or event)
Chemical
Chemical burn
Biological
Epidemic
Hazardous
Hazardous material incident
Industrial spill
Infection
Powder (white)
Gas
Spillover
Anthrax
Blister agent
Chemical agent
Exposure
Burn
Nerve agent
Ricin
Sarin
North Korea
Outbreak
Contamination
Exposure
Virus
Evacuation
Bacteria
Recall
Ebola
Food Poisoning
Foot and Mouth (FMD)
H5N1
Avian
Flu
Salmonella
Small Pox
Plague
Human to human
Human to Animal
Influenza
Center for Disease Control (CDC)
Drug Administration (FDA)
Public Health
Toxic Agro
Terror Tuberculosis (TB)
Agriculture
Listeria
Symptoms
Mutation
Resistant
Antiviral
Wave
Pandemic
Infection
Water/air borne
Sick
Swine
Pork
Strain
Quarantine
H1N1
Vaccine
Tamiflu
Norvo Virus
Epidemic
World Health Organization (WHO) (and components)
Viral Hemorrhagic Fever
E. Coli
Infrastructure security
Airport
CIKR (Critical Infrastructure & Key Resources)
AMTRAK
Collapse
Computer infrastructure
Communications infrastructure
Telecommunications
Critical infrastructure
National infrastructure
Metro
WMATA
Airplane (and derivatives)
Chemical fire
Subway
BART
MARTA
Port Authority
NBIC (National Biosurveillance Integration Center)
Transportation security
Grid
Power
Smart
Body scanner
Electric
Failure or outage
Black out
Brown out
Port
Dock
Bridge
Cancelled
Delays
Service disruption
Power lines
Drug cartel
Violence
Gang
Drug
Narcotics
Cocaine
Marijuana
Heroin
Border
Mexico
Cartel
Southwest
Juarez
Sinaloa
Tijuana
Torreon
Yuma
Tucson
Decapitated
U.S. Consulate
Consular
El Paso
Fort Hancock
San Diego
Ciudad Juarez
Nogales
Sonora
Colombia
Mara salvatrucha
MS13 or MS-13
Drug war
Mexican army
Methamphetamine
Cartel de Golfo
Gulf Cartel
La Familia
Reynosa
Nuevo Leon
Narcos
Narco banners (Spanish equivalents)
Los Zetas
Shootout
Execution
Gunfight
Trafficking
Kidnap
Calderon
Reyosa
Bust
Tamaulipas
Meth Lab
Drug trade
Illegal immigrants
Smuggling (smugglers)
Matamoros
Michoacana
Guzman
Arellano-Felix
Beltran-Leyva
Barrio Azteca
Artistic Assassins
Mexicles
New Federation
Terrorism
Al Qaeda (all spellings)
Terror
Attack
Iraq
Afghanistan
Iran
Pakistan
Agro
Environmental terrorist
Eco terrorism
Conventional weapon
Target
Weapons grade
Dirty bomb
Enriched
Nuclear
Chemical weapon
Biological weapon
Ammonium nitrate
Improvised explosive device
IED (Improvised Explosive Device)
Abu Sayyaf
Hamas
FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces Colombia)
IRA (Irish Republican Army)
ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna)
Basque Separatists
Hezbollah
Tamil Tigers
PLF (Palestine Liberation Front)
PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization
Car bomb
Jihad
Taliban
Weapons cache
Suicide bomber
Suicide attack
Suspicious substance
AQAP (AL Qaeda Arabian Peninsula)
AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb)
TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan)
Yemen
Pirates
Extremism
Somalia
Nigeria
Radicals
Al-Shabaab
Home grown
Plot
Nationalist
Recruitment
Fundamentalism
Islamist
Emergency
Hurricane
Tornado
Twister
Tsunami
Earthquake
Tremor
Flood
Storm
Crest
Temblor
Extreme weather
Forest fire
Brush fire
Ice
Stranded/Stuck
Help
Hail
Wildfire
Tsunami Warning Center
Magnitude
Avalanche
Typhoon
Shelter-in-place
Disaster
Snow
Blizzard
Sleet
Mud slide or Mudslide
Erosion
Power outage
Brown out
Warning
Watch
Lightening
Aid
Relief
Closure
Interstate
Burst
Emergency Broadcast System
Cyber security
Botnet
DDOS (dedicated denial of service)
Denial of service
Malware
Virus
Trojan
Keylogger
Cyber Command
2600
Spammer
Phishing
Rootkit
Phreaking
Cain and abel
Brute forcing
Mysql injection
Cyber attack
Cyber terror
Hacker
China
Conficker
Worm
Scammers
Social media
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