On Feb 8, 2008, at 9:15 AM, Trevor wrote:
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has announced changes to the Amateur licence.
Among the changes they now permit the Encoding, for the purpose of Obscuring the meaning, of control signals for Amateur Satellites or unattended stations.
All I have to say to this is FINALLY...
Now, signals encoded for the purpose of obscuring the meaning may be used for controlling a satellite or an unattended amateur stations or in emergency operations.
Another VERY important piece of this: Can also be used for emergency operations TRAINING. (Train like you're going to fight... so to speak.)
The rest is also fascinating, but I've most impressed by the encryption lead the Aussies have taken. I've been on the "reasonable encryption" bandwagon for digital modes for many MANY years now, saying so quite loudly in public.
Congratulations to the Aussies for doing it right... command and control of an unattended station has always been problematic and while the satellite folks got a dispensation from the FCC to do this long ago (for satellite control ops), us folks that run "community" systems terrestrially have often wished we could reasonably encrypt/obscure our command and control traffic.
Even if I have to store it, log it, whatever... I just hate playing the "security by obscurity" game with control frequencies, rolling control codes, and whatever.
It's just silly in the modern digital era where powerful encryption technologies have existed that are within reach for the average "Joe" (since the advent of Phil Zimmerman's PGP software) that control operations are still handled like some kind of back-alley speak-easy "secret code list" society.
Yay Aussies!
-- Nate Duehr, WY0X nate@natetech.com