As a radio amateur may I say... ugh. Most amateur radio licenses prohibit encrypted communications. And for good reason: the ham bands are a shared resource, they are not there for private conversations.
Here's the relevant regulation in the UK license: "11(2) The Licensee shall only address Messages to other Amateurs or to the stations of
those Amateurs and shall not encrypt these Messages for the purpose of rendering the Message unintelligible to other radio spectrum users."
The idea, in the AirChat proposal, that institutions like the FCC, OFCOM, etc. are 'evil' because they regulate spectrum is ridiculous. The only reason we can communicate successfully on radio is because someone is regulating who gets to use what and how. The AirChat proposal mentions using the Yaesu FT-897D for test transmissions. That's a ham radio operating in the specific bands licensed for hams to use. So, these guys are (a) breaking the law (which they don't care about) and (b) messing things up for other radio users.
Amateur radio (I'm W6OCT) is for experimenting with technology ("advancing the radio art") and teaching people how to use the technology. I'd argue encryption is now a fundamental enough technology that banning it hinders advancements to the radio art, and fails to teach people key skills.
There was a practical reason to prevent coded transmissions during the cold war -- by doing so, it allowed cross-border communications which countries otherwise would have banned. Bilateral communications between individuals made war less likely and peace more possible. It wasn't to keep the radio spectrum safe from commercial use (since commercial users didn't use crypto, either, at the time).
There are other whole classes of amateur radio use which are precluded or seriously hindered by lack of encryption -- disaster work which communicates PII in a medical context, certain police or security backup use.
I'd like to see encryption permitted on certain bands; some where the keys are required to be exchanged in the clear (for protocol development), and some where people can use real keys but still tag the communications with their callsign and be aware of and responsive to any interference.
ISM is inadequate due to frequency bands; if the proposal is to open up dramatically larger parts of the spectrum to ISM-type use, then I could be fine with that too.
I'd like to see encryption permitted on certain bands; some where the keys are required to be exchanged in the clear (for protocol development), and some where people can use real keys but still tag the communications with their callsign and be aware of and responsive to any interference.
That would make sense if it was clearly on the band plan.
I don't understand this. Roads are a common resource but (so far) we're not forced to ride only in buses. Also, one can have a conversation in a 'cryptic' language, or is that prohibited as well ? :)
Yes, one can have a conversation using 'cryptic' language. For example, it's common to hear Q-codes used (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_code); they are cryptic unless you know what they are. They are not, however, secret.
I fail to understand your analogy about buses and cars.
Amateur radio is about amateurs learning about, improving and using radio. It is not about private conversations. If you allow encryption on the amateur bands then you are de facto excluding others. Part of the joy of amateur radio is picking a transmission out of the air, listening to it or 'decoding' (not in the cryptographic sense) the transmission scheme used.
I would suggest that Lulzlabs people look at not using an amateur radio band. There are unlicensed bands that they could use for this purpose. e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISM_band
Most major highways don't allow pedestrian or bicycle traffic (among other things). Most roadways don't allow unlicensed vehicles. You can't go start up a pickup hockey game in the middle of a major road. This is all regulated. You can't just go use a road for any old reason, just because it's perfectly capable of being used for that reason.
Completely unregulated spectrum would probably be intentionally filled with garbage and the remainder sold back at the highest possible prices. In other words, some ass(es) would DDOS the spectrum to create scarcity.
If encrypted comms were allowed on open bands, commercial users would probably use the free spectrum and it would be difficult/impossible to get them not to.
Here's the relevant regulation in the UK license: "11(2) The Licensee shall only address Messages to other Amateurs or to the stations of those Amateurs and shall not encrypt these Messages for the purpose of rendering the Message unintelligible to other radio spectrum users."
The idea, in the AirChat proposal, that institutions like the FCC, OFCOM, etc. are 'evil' because they regulate spectrum is ridiculous. The only reason we can communicate successfully on radio is because someone is regulating who gets to use what and how. The AirChat proposal mentions using the Yaesu FT-897D for test transmissions. That's a ham radio operating in the specific bands licensed for hams to use. So, these guys are (a) breaking the law (which they don't care about) and (b) messing things up for other radio users.