This is actually tiny compared to their statutory authority of forfeiture, which is $22,001 per transmission. Instead:
> of a $10,000 forfeiture for each of the two days of apparent unlicensed operations30 and a $7,000 forfeiture for each of the two days of harmful interference),31 for which Frawley is apparently liable. We caution Frawley that future violations of this kind may result in significantly higher forfeitures or revocation of his amateur license.
He's free lawyer up, but the first round of litigation is before an administrative law judge and all that's required is the preponderance of the evidence, as they are not seeking a criminal conviction.
Sure, a piece of paper says they could penalize him much more. It doesn’t change the fact that they are trying to take an amount of money that could well be 25% or even 50% of his yearly income. It’s excessive in my eyes.
This kind of thing is why people are so reflexively against federal regulation of anything. You pressed talk on your radio during a disaster, give us half your income. Oh, you caught the wrong kind of lobster, just go ahead and declare bankruptcy.
> You pressed talk on your radio during a disaster
If you read TFA, you'd know that's not at all what happened. He is a licensed amateur radio operator and knew the rules, and kept breaking them during a critical firefighting operation even after being told to stop, multiple times.
This was no accident or harmless mistake. I think the fine is justified.
I did read it. It doesn’t provide any significant detail of his alleged transgressions OR whether they were responsible for any damages. I’m inclined to believe that were there any hard evidence of a negative outcome it would be described in great detail.
There WAS a negative outcome; reserved communications channels were disrupted, and people had to take time to go to the sender directly to tell him to stop (after two days of disruptions and being told on the radio to stop as well). That's the damage, that's the negative outcome, and it has been described in great detail. What more do you want?
Yup. 34k sounds like a power trip from someone to me. Since I can't reply to them, I'll just say it directly here, the linked document from the FCC just keeps repeating the same things over and over again, but contains no interesting new information compared to the original article.
This kind of thing is why people see federal regulation as important and necessary. We all know how dangerous and time sensitive fighting wild fires can be and a civilian inserting themselves into the communication channels used to coordinate field operations is totally unacceptable.
There a sizable number of libertarians/ancaps/minarchists on HN so I understand opposition to regulatory agencies in a general sense. What I do not understand is why anyone is carrying water for this guy. Sure he’s behaving irresponsibly but he’s also an ass engaging in willfully terrible behavior. It’s shameful and embarrassing.
It's called legislation, and it's there for a reason.
Likewise, some text on a website says you and your comments can be removed from this site if they break the rules; you agreed to said rules when you created an account. I mean I'm sure you can start a discussion about some of the finer points if you bring up good points, but in the end, you agreed to create your account and use the service under those conditions.
Likewise, this person decided to get a license for radio transmissions, accepting the consequences for misuse. If he didn't want to be at risk of those consequences, he shouldn't have a radio.
I'm seeing a lot of libertarians / anarchists in this comments thread, who seem to fail to grasp the basics of a functioning society. If there were no deterrents, rules, "pieces of paper", etc, it would be anarchy and the radio would be unusable.
> of a $10,000 forfeiture for each of the two days of apparent unlicensed operations30 and a $7,000 forfeiture for each of the two days of harmful interference),31 for which Frawley is apparently liable. We caution Frawley that future violations of this kind may result in significantly higher forfeitures or revocation of his amateur license.
He's free lawyer up, but the first round of litigation is before an administrative law judge and all that's required is the preponderance of the evidence, as they are not seeking a criminal conviction.