I always found the difference between ham radio operators and computer hacker community interesting.
There is obvious large overlap. Both are nerdy and techy and attract similar base groups. But the ham space is dominated by people who want to be "good citizens" through collective action, while computer hacker is more about cyberpunk "if I could do it, then it's allowed".
Perhaps it's the clearest example of "The medium is the message" concept.
When it does, it often leads to prosecution, or at least reputational damage. But I can go nuts on my own LAN without affecting yours in any way. It's not possible for me to conduct wild RF experiments in my own house and not affect my neighbors.
It would be hard for me to physically interfere with an airport without having armed guards descend upon me. It would not be hard for me to build a radio that could strongly interfere with airplanes on final approach. The FCC rules that make it illegal and also bring the wrath of the feds down upon you are the sorts of regulations I actually support, along with air and water pollution controls, weight limits on trucks using taxpayer-owned highways, banning of mining in public parks, and other things that keep our shared spaces safe and usable.
To be fair, HAMs are typically empowered by actual telecommunications agencies with legislative authority to enter premises and what have you to resolve issues, whereas script kiddies just make up their own shit.
> To be fair, HAMs are typically empowered by actual telecommunications agencies with legislative authority to enter premises and what have you to resolve issues
Citation, please?
I'd really like to see a documented example of some HAM entering somebody else's premises on, what, a self-appointed search warrant to hunt down a transmitter they deem illegitimate? In the USA that seems like a good way to get shot by a homeowner.
> HAMs are typically empowered [in their rule-following] by actual telecommunications agencies [who have] legislative authority to enter premises and what have you to resolve issues
That is, hams (not "HAMs") feel empowered to advise others to obey the law, because they have to work with government agencies who can make life unpleasant for those who don't. It's not "hams [have] legislative authority".
The Radiotelecommunications Act in Canada (1), section 8, describes the powers of ISEC inspectors. They can request warrants to enter private dwellings, and if accompanied by peace officers and if permitted by the warrant, use force.
This was something that was highlighted during my amateur radio course almost 20 years ago.
I think it might be because ham radio is still barely legal and the community wants to keep the few freedoms they have so they try not to piss off any groups of interest. Whereas pretty much everything hacking-related is already a felony thanks to DMCA and other similar laws, so they don't have much to lose.
> Whereas pretty much everything hacking-related is already a felony thanks to DMCA and other similar laws, so they don't have much to lose.
Hackers were much more rebellious in former days before such laws were past. My opinion the reason why hackers got more "civilized" is that you could earn quite a lot of money by getting (and staying in) a job in big tech.
Hacking was mostly about gaining access before AOL and there was absolutely a "let's give this kid a summer job" attitude floating around after War Games came out.
The chain of resource acquisition and information gathering necessary to arrive at a point where you need to make a long-distance phone call you could never afford was impressive in itself. Calling card fraud by a bright minor for educational purposes against a corporate entity absolutely loathed by every adult at the time just wasn't that big of a deal.
From my perspective the point of being a hacker is individual but follows observable desire paths. A lot of those have been filled in now.
It is very strange that when you come across anything radio related, people seemingly come out of the woodwork to tell you not that you are necessarily, actively doing something against regulation, but that there is always potential to be breaking the law.
The subject is mostly academic, but in 18 comments no less than 3 different people are warning about doing something against the rules. It's weird. I don't know of any other subject that provokes responses about "the rules" like this.
I could understand if the article title was "How to Aim Laser Pointers at Airplanes", but attach a long enough wire to an oscillator and people start to get uppity.
On the other side of things, I don't know if you've turned on a shortwave radio recently, but the only thing I hear on mine is switch-mode power supply noise.
I see this in basically every interesting domain now, from construction to software development to 3D printing to starting a business. There’s a huge cohort that’s always ready to jump on other people for doing something interesting, offering “friendly” discouragement at the earliest moment, often while simultaneously defending bad behavior from incumbents or their half of the political class.
One bad transmitter in your neighborhood can cut you off from the hobby. Someone who's into linux and computers can follow an online tutorial to rig together an SDR. Look at a bunch of numbers or static, shrug and move on to a different project without disconnecting that anttena breaking an entire band for all of his neighbors. Then it's on those neighbors to go build a directional antenna and buy portable radio gear and then do their own "in the field investigation" to isolate which house is doing that, then go try to explain to the random person they are polluting a band and hope the person is friendly and cooperative.
In a perfect world the FCC would do that, but getting the FCC to act on small infractions like that is a slow and long process and often goes unanswered. Especially if you're not near a marina or a federal building or an airport. So one hackaday reader can take down ham operation in an entire area because they were just interested in a weekend DIY project.
People throw that "against the law" to limit the damage. But actually getting the FCC to prosecute these issues is a challenge in itself.
You have to really egregiously fuck up as an ordinary consumer/non professional to get the FCC to expend the resources to hunt you down and fine you. One example that comes to mind is a guy who continually operated a cellular jammer from his car on his daily commute on a freeway in Florida.
The FCC's enforcement bureau is not very large or well resourced and is primarily concerned with issuing enforcement actions on licensed broadcasters. You can look at their public documents/listings of "Notes of Appparent Liability" for examples. Everyone who gets fined by the FCC is public recod.
True. Local ham chapters hold celebration events when they finally get the FCC to take action on something.
The FCC used to be a lot more active in the 40s and 50s. Especially when there was a general hysteria and fear of soviet spies. The FCC still has various monitoring station everywhere, but they only use them for huge operations rather than policing hobby bands.
I listened to a net on a VHF repeater once- some guy's PTT button got stuck, which ties up the repeater, plus you hear the background sounds from his house. It was quite funny- FCC not needed, instead somebody called him (you heard his phone ring and him saying "What?!" over the repeater).
Hams take pride in being largely self-policing because this is one of the things that keeps the FCC interested in reserving sections of the spectrum for ham use.
Also, I love hackaday for their articles but the comment section there is among the worst on the Internet. You'll find more enlightening discussions on the wall of a truckstop bathroom stall.
The spectrum is fragile. A few people being assholes can mess it up for thousands or millions of people with a few hundred bucks of equipment.
While you or me may not cause a mess, there are millions and millions of people around and eventually you hit the random number generator where people fuck things up.
Short story: if you piss off other spectrum holders enough, amateur radio operators will lose the leeway they get with the service including the self policing aspect.
Also, when you break little rules early (like low power transmission out of band) it makes you desensitized to breaking dangerous rules later (like keeping people away from antennas being driven with high power).
RF usage is governed by the FCC. Amateur Radio exists at the mercy of the government, and if there is widespread abuse or careless operation by amateur radio operators then that will likely jeopardize the continued existence of amateur radio.
Amateur Radio predates the FCC- so I almost think it should be the reverse, none of this at the mercy of stuff. Of course government is the real coercive force- in Germany the Nazis revoked ham licenses, racially purified radio clubs and made the amateur radio operators work for them.
At the end of the day it doesn't matter what you think, it matters what "we" think.
Most people want their phone to work and other assorted things that use wireless signals. If amateur radio people piss off the general public these things will be stripped away rather quickly.
There is absolutely zero freedom of speech on using radio signals.
Important entities doing important things is why the earliest radio regulations were passed in the first place. When it was a brand new technology and unproven, sure, let the nerds build a sparkgap and spam everything with bullshit, who cares?
By the early 1900s, governments, militaries, and large business were using it for serious purposes. You can't have randos transmitting fake orders to a Naval base or fake distress calls to the Coast Guard. Imagine if some asshole in New York was screwing around on the airwaves in his shed and the land based telegraph stations couldn't hear the chatter from the Titanic and the relay stations sending the messages on. It was always going to end up regulated.
there are more kinds of governance than command-and-control only. I concede that some legal relationships are command-and-control. Physics itself and jurisdictions.. not sure but I think Nature bats last
almost, but not quite ... the difference between those is that the stereotypical ham radio enthusiast is obsessed with following regulations and laws to the T. while the stereotypical hacker is all about gray zones, loop holes and questioning rules.
> There is obvious large overlap. Both are nerdy and techy and attract similar base groups. But the ham space is dominated by people who want to be "good citizens" through collective action, while computer hacker is more about cyberpunk "if I could do it, then it's allowed".
I work professionally in point to point licensed microwave radio and there is very little overlap in our community of ISP/telco/network engineering people with analog ham radio enthusiasts. I don't know a single person who submits FCC coordinations and does high capacity PTP microwave who is also a "licensed" ham.
There is a bit of a disdain in serious radio work for things that operate in purely analog methods (we really only care about things that have native gigabit ethernet or better interfaces on them and can carry IP data), and the concept of not being able to use basic crypto either at the radio level or as a data payload is also anathema to professional use.
There are slightly more professional nerds doing things with meshtastic/meshcore and similar as a hobby, because messing about with small esp32 based things and similar (and specifically in the 900 MHz USA/Canada bands) in purely digital modes is closer to what we do for work. And has practical uses for low data rate SCADA/monitoring and text messaging uses.
There is also a perception that many ham radio enthusiasts who try to position themselves as some special and ultimate resource in disaster response scenarios are not really doing much useful. At a small local scale, maybe? But the people who operate county sized professional emergency communication radio networks (with real budgets from government money) serving sheriff/police/fire/ambulance response and similar also do not overlap a lot with ham radio enthusiasts. If you have the budget to build a $400,000 project of a hilltop radio tower site serving mission critical communications in your county and your main interactions are with the local sheriff's office and the local 911 PSAP, your perspective is going to be very different than the people who want to do all-analog in the clear ham radio for "disaster response".
In many modern emergency scenarios people expect to be able to communicate and share data using whatever they have on their phone or laptop as a wifi client, which means implementing portable two way satellite IP data over something like traditional VSAT, starlink, o3b, Oneweb, soon Amazon LEO, etc. It's also standard for serious disaster response vehicles operated by well funded government agencies to have something like a docked handheld Iridium phone.
I've been to several DefCon events over the years. Ham radio is essentially ubiquitous there, even with a dedicated frequency for the event for hams (and lots of 'look-the-other-way' use during the weekend).
NOC / BOFH is a good analogy. These people are highly technical guardians of their commons, who see each others as peers, and pull the plug / Halon drench anyone caught mucking up those commons. Hackers might build a spark gap to send Morse across campus just they might fire up nmap for a laugh to scan their buddy’s dorm connection, or run a fork bomb on the central Unix service. The Network Operstions / Operators / HAMs are the ones that find these hackers and drop one ton(ne) of bricks upon them.
The golden, underlying rule of Amateur Radio is to respect and protect the bands with which we have been trusted.
The thing is hams shenanigans tend to impact other hams and not the general public. Every dive bar, and friend group has one asshole, but typically not two.
The thing is, ham and hacker are defined in entirely different ways. Hackers can refer to people doing good, ill, or morally grey things. Think of how the term applies to certain software developers, people who breach networks to steal data, or circumvent security out of technical curiosity. In contrast, a ham is a licensed radio operator. While you certainly have lids, the vast majority have some sense of being a "good citizen" by the simple merit of being licensed. Unlicensed operators fit under other terms, like pirate.
Even the scope of the terms differ. Hackers have to make or break something. Hams may do anything from rag chew to build orbital satellites. If you're more inclined to do legal stuff and aren't inclined to build something, things involving community service are going to be more appealing.
When I first came into the tech space, I found myself with quad copters buzzing around my workspace. I had the intention of hacking the signals around me to dissuade folks from flying around my head while sitting at my desk. After walking into a radio shop, looking for a few key items, I chatted for a few minutes with the clerk. He immediately put me into his “you’re a jammer” box and was uninterested in any further conversation. He wasn’t wrong, but it’s ironic given that I was effectively counter-jamming to get work done… and maybe have a little fun hacking at the same time. Point being: some communities have such rigid rules around what a “good citizen” encompasses that they get lost in their own world.
I find myself more on the altruistic side, despite being far closer to a “computer hacker” than a ham.
Why is eBay acting as the FCC? I can still buy lasers that will rip through your retina in the blink of a eye from eBay (lol). The equipment is completely legal to own and operate, and transmit with the proper licensing (which is not required to purchase said equipment).
What statute gives authority to the FCC to "make up rules for marketplaces"? My understanding is that they only have authority over actual broadcasting.
the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019 (47 USC 154 1601 ff) is one place, among others, that Congress gave the FCC the authority to make rules about importing and selling electronics
>Such regulations shall be applicable to the manufacture, import, sale, *offer for sale*, or shipment of such devices and home electronic equipment and systems, and to the use of such devices.
Because these companies have large legal departments essentially in charge of minimizing regulatory and reputational risk. It's the same reason they've been progressively cracking down on firearm accessories, BB guns, knives, fireworks, laboratory chemicals, erotica, pill presses, and a bunch of other things over the past 20 years. All of that is generally legal in the US but makes lawyers and PR people queasy. It's not just marketplaces, Paypal has asinine rules on what you can and cannot pay for. So does Google Pay, Zelle, Venmo, and so on.
I don't think it's useful to point out inconsistencies; the bottom line is that lasers will be on the chopping block within our lifetime too.
You can't buy firearms parts or tooling on eBay in the UK because quite frankly if you're a gunsmith you're probably not buying stuff on eBay, and it's unlikely that anyone who isn't a qualified gunsmith is buying them for anything legit. Similarly, there are age restrictions on buying bladed items, just as there are on buying bladed items in shops. Turns out that all those 13-year-olds buying 14" butcher knives weren't actually filleting venison with them, who would have thought it?
Yer cheapy Chinese radios though? Baofengs are currently about £19 each on eBay, with a discount for quantity.
The amateur gunsmith scene in the UK is pretty small and if you're buying and selling parts and tools, you probably already know who you're buying from or selling to.
It's easier just to speak to someone, bank transfer some money over, and they'll stick it in the post.
If someone wants a 14" blade, one can fetch some steel from a junkyard and apply an angle grinder to it. Best results with leaf springs. Then wrap one end with electrical tape and it'll chop an arm or a head off no problem. A bit more effort with the grinder and you get yourself something like a gladius.
Now, what is the point of those bans? So people feel safer while not being safer?
Eh. I don't like these bans, but I think there are at least two good-faith arguments you can make:
1. People who decide to go on murder sprees are usually not high-functioning individuals, so even modest barriers can improve outcomes.
2. Fewer weapons in homes means fewer heat-of-the-moment acts involving these weapons. For example, there are very few firearm suicides in the EU, compared to the US.
Because the FCC is puppeting Ebay through regulation, the author is deliberately painting this as evil large corporation because I assume
that gets more clicks, the real title would be "FCC Enacts Rule Restricting Sale of Radio Equipment, Marketplaces Like Ebay Forced to Pull Listings."
> Protecting Against National Security Threats to the Communications Supply Chain…
Yeah… a foreign adversary is totally going to be thwarted by FCC certification. The Russian's are probably just kicking themselves for buying at Walmart.
The purpose of the restriction is to keep people from using hacked baofengs to chat on bands a) they're not allowed to use unlicensed b) could potentially already be in use by another service eg EMS/fire/police.
There are older UV-5R Baofengs that are in demand because they didn't have the software restriction that newer ones have. It's not that they're hacked, it's that they were not locked from the factory
Are newer baofengs locked down? I thought you can still just hold down 3 buttons while power cycling the radio to unlock TX from 400 to 520 MHz.
Regardless, the Quansheng UV-K5 is largely supplanting the Baofeng as the go-to entry level HT, the 3rd party firmware for that radio is pretty impressive.
Licensed US amateur operator here. In general the FCC regulations allow you to listen on whatever frequencies you like, EXCEPT the cellular frequencies (This dates back to the analog era, before cellular traffic was encrypted).
Some jurisdictions may also have restrictions on, for example, using a police scanner in a vehicle, that would restrict listening (even though most of that traffic is now also encrypted).
Don't quote me on this, but I believe there's some more nuance to the cellular band issue. What's restricted, AFAIK, isn't simply receiving traffic on those frequencies in and of itself, but:
1. Decrypting those communications if they are encrypted
and
2. Selling equipment designed to receive on those bands.
Of course there's not much purpose in sitting around listening to the digital chirping noises of encrypted traffic, but as I understand it, if that's your hobby, that part is actually legal.
(Also a licensed US ham, not not an expert in anything in particular and definitely not a lawyer)
Get ready to be surprised, because the 800Mhz band used for AMPS (1G / analog cellular) was explicitly carved off as a no-receive zone by Congress because AT&T was pissed[0] anyone could just listen in on any cellphone conversation. I'm told the law actually makes it really difficult to legally sell fully open software-defined radios (SDR), even though nobody uses analog cellular anymore, because you still have to design the SDR to be tamper-proof against attempts to receive 800Mhz.
[0] Wikipedia also mentions the existence of cloning tools that would let you copy any AMPS subscriber ID and program another phone with the same number, stealing the subscriber's account. I suspect AT&T was more angry about that.
Is that still the case though? Does anyone still use 1G/AMPS? Because I'm staring at my HackRF running Mayhem, showing me waterfall of 795 to 805Mhz and there is definitely activity getting picked up.
The big problem used to be that people would buy unlocked Baofengs and accidentally use them on licensed services thinking there were generic walkie talkies. The current locked down rules prevent that. They can still get amateur handhelds and use without ham license, but hams police that. It is also easier to get FRS/GMRS handhelds for pubic use, many the same models reprogrammed.
Unlocking handhelds is less of a problem because it requires deliberate action to break the rules. There are fewer people willing and able to do that.
“buy unlocked Baofengs and accidentally use them on licensed services thinking there were generic walkie talkies” - this has never happened. Also they are not exactly easy to operate (i have one)
Doesn't meshtastic operate in the unlicensed bands? Would that mean they're blocked? The article says they're only blocking devices that need FCC certification and since meshtastic is unlicensed it doesn't need FCC certification as far as I know.
The band it's operating in doesn't change whether or not it needs FCC certification. wifi operating on 2.4ghz is an unlicensed band, but it still needs certification for instance.
IIRC, Meshtastic has an is_licensed / “Ham Mode” setting that changes the software's regulatory assumptions and power limits so it can be used.
the FCC is controlled by trump, and this is his and his co-conspiritors attempt to control the public. If you look at who sits on the board, and where they came from, it's hard to argue this is done in any kind of good faith. This is corruption in action.
Pepsi at one point had one of the worlds largest navy's so it's not actually that surprising. People buy and sell used military equipment all the time.
Lots of interesting discussion here, but let's cut to the real question:
1. Since people are still going to find a way to buy items the FCC doesn't want them to have, what's that new outlet going to be? I saw somebody mention TikTok. OK... what else? Facebook groups? Craigslist? Private old-skool phpbb forums? Usenet? Mastodon? AliExpress? Something that hasn't been invented yet?
not trying to be controversial here; but isn't it weird that you can buy semi automatic guns and there's restrictions on radio equipments bc these equipments can mess with the bandwidth used by public services - but similar arguments hold for guns as well.
When the US constitution was written guns were a thing, but communication was done in person or on paper. The idea of radio waves didn't even exist therefore we did not get any protections on it.
Firearms are capable of being used for legal purposes, as they are in the overwhelming number of cases. A radio that transmits on a restricted frequency is illegal. The ruling doesn't say legal frequency transmitters can't be sold, just that the broker (ebay) is responsible for ensuring it's not facilitating the sale of illegal radio equipment. Ebay is the one choosing not to sell most radio equipment (even if legal), because they don't want to deal with it.
Firearms used to be widely available at big-box stores, as they were legal (and still are), provided the store prevented illegal purchases. Most box stores/locations no longer sell firearms, because they don't want to deal with it.
I see a lot of arguing over principles here in the comments, but few specifics. What kinds of items have actually disappeared from eBay since this went through? Baofengs? Meshtastic equipment? 10 meter "freeband" radios?
There's a smell about this so close to the US election.
It sounds like someone is worried about people buying personal radios for Meshtastic or LoRa to use in case cell phone service doesn't work at protests, or there is unrest if the election results are called into question by the current political establishment that doesn't want to cede power. So they got eBay to roll over and more companies could follow.
Ordinarily I wouldn't take a conspiracy theory like this seriously. But in these times, corruption is so rampant that the most convoluted answer tends to be the right one.
It might not even be that much depending on what it is. For example, Baofeng radios would have TX in bands they shouldn't have until the FCC cracked down on them coming in.
So they started selling them restricted to ham bands until the user pressed a key combo to factory reset them, which put them back to iirc 136-172.
I'm glad to see amateur radio get a carve out at ebay, but I think this restriction on transmitting equipment is pretty pointless in the days of software defined radio.
The upshot is there's been an incredible reduction in the amount of utter crap listed when searching for ham radio gear. Instead of countless pages of Baofengs and all manner of accessories, I can actually find some gear.
When I first saw this shared on the ham radio email reflectors, I went to eBay to have a look. I was actually enticed to buy a radio I hadn't seen or considered prior. That posting is only visible now that the noise floor has dropped dramatically.
That's the trivially easy part. The hard part is convincing potential buyers and sellers that most participants are legit and not trying to scam people.
No need. Hams haven't been using eBay for quite some time. We have other gear-for-sale boards that provide at least some modicum of assurance of who you're dealing with (via callsigns and semi-reliable ways to confirm someone's email).
The feeling is, if you get scammed by someone and you have their callsign, you can call them out for it on some of these ham-public forums and put them on blast. Others will be less likely to deal with the ne'er-do-well.
The sites are not at all "cutting edge" or even aesthetically pleasing. Like most of ham radio, it's functional and that's about it. Aesthetics are almost non-existent in the hobby.
eBay serves (served?) a wide, public audience. Hams don't need that wide of an audience, just a targeted audience. I'd venture to guess QRZ.com probably has the most buy/sell traffic, then older, has-been sites like eham.net and swap.qth.com catering to the old timers that don't want to follow the traffic trends that left for other sites.
The thing with ham radio is the population is quite small to begin with. The sheer number of hams is like 1% of any population no matter how you slice it. Country, state, city... and that's just those that are licensed.
How many of THOSE are interested in buying gear online or shipping gear when selling online? Not really even the majority of the small community.
THEN you further cut that down because hams are a stodgy crowd that resist change. So anything new often has a long run up for adoption. Even longer to become a known entity in the community.
Surely something else could replace QRZ.com eventually, but no time soon that I can imagine.
Given that the underlying motivation here isn't merely bigcorp aggressively following regulation (in which alternative marketplaces can spring up), but rather some arbitrary diktat from the regime for which enforcement will be gradually cranked up (physical reality, logic, and Constitutional rights be damned), the real question is what the overall eventual scope is here, in other words what it makes sense for hobbyists/DIYers to stock up on before the destructionists are able to fully strangle it.
Definitely - LoRA/Meshtastic, SDR transmitters, cheap prepper radios that technically require a license to use, maybe even just cheap antennas that you could make yourself but would rather not have to?
Maybe - ESP32, nRF and other competitively-priced wifi/2.4Ghz microcontrollers/devboards if the China Bad marketing chant really ramps up here? Especially with the recent AI-facilitated reverse engineering to gain SDR-ish functionality. Might have to worry about receive-only SDRs too, since it's not like these people really know the difference.
That's what I can think of off the top of my head, but I've never been heavily into RF. Anything else?
RIP all those human person made wideband low noise amplifier boards that cost $5. Now I'll have to buy a $50 minicircuits or whatever alternative with an FCC ID. Despite the fact that I'd only use the LNA for receive, it still could generate and amplifies RF not in the ham bands. So they'll certainly be banned. :\
eBay simply does not have employees with the domain/technical knowledge to decide which things actually require an FCC ID to be displayed. As such they'll just ban anything and everything re: RF, like the example above.
The FCC document from page 97 on has these tables full of extremely inaccurate ass-covering data pretending that >80% of all electronics sellers that might be effected by these new FCC rules are large firms (>1000 people) and that's simply not true. If they counted ebay sellers there'd be more human sellers than firms by far.
Are you sure LNAs will be an issue? Cause then they'd better ban transistors too, because they can actually be used as a power amplifier for transmitting!
The problem is that eBay employees are the judge here. Do you think they are going to have enough expert domain knowledge to know the difference? Do you think they will error on the side of banning anything RF or allow things and expose themselves to financial and legal liability?
The end result will be a ban in practice even if the meaning and spirit of the FCC regs would not. Because now eBay is the judge.
Ah, yes, that pesky FCC for regulating a public shared frequency spectrum. Im sure everybody will just behave in a vacuum of rules and wouldnt possibly do anything bad.
I always found the difference between ham radio operators and computer hacker community interesting.
There is obvious large overlap. Both are nerdy and techy and attract similar base groups. But the ham space is dominated by people who want to be "good citizens" through collective action, while computer hacker is more about cyberpunk "if I could do it, then it's allowed".
Perhaps it's the clearest example of "The medium is the message" concept.
A lot of that is because airwaves are a finite and shared resource. Me abusing them means that you can’t legitimately use them.
Yes that would never happen to the internet
yep, we can just throw a cloudflare turnstile on everything instead.
When it does, it often leads to prosecution, or at least reputational damage. But I can go nuts on my own LAN without affecting yours in any way. It's not possible for me to conduct wild RF experiments in my own house and not affect my neighbors.
It would be hard for me to physically interfere with an airport without having armed guards descend upon me. It would not be hard for me to build a radio that could strongly interfere with airplanes on final approach. The FCC rules that make it illegal and also bring the wrath of the feds down upon you are the sorts of regulations I actually support, along with air and water pollution controls, weight limits on trucks using taxpayer-owned highways, banning of mining in public parks, and other things that keep our shared spaces safe and usable.
Just look at the community around https://2600.com vs that of https://gbppr.net the contrast is stark.
Two badly set up websites is what I notice.
2600.com took a whhile to load and gbppr does not have a valid certificate or whatever.
2600.com uses a payment processor that requires emails for crypto donations.
It's also a generational thing. There's a lot of geriatric sad hams who's only enjoyment in life is playing radio police.
To be fair, HAMs are typically empowered by actual telecommunications agencies with legislative authority to enter premises and what have you to resolve issues, whereas script kiddies just make up their own shit.
> To be fair, HAMs are typically empowered by actual telecommunications agencies with legislative authority to enter premises and what have you to resolve issues
Citation, please?
I'd really like to see a documented example of some HAM entering somebody else's premises on, what, a self-appointed search warrant to hunt down a transmitter they deem illegitimate? In the USA that seems like a good way to get shot by a homeowner.
...and arrested for breaking and entering.
In what country? I'm only familiar with rules in the US, and it isn't the case here.
I parsed that as:
> HAMs are typically empowered [in their rule-following] by actual telecommunications agencies [who have] legislative authority to enter premises and what have you to resolve issues
That is, hams (not "HAMs") feel empowered to advise others to obey the law, because they have to work with government agencies who can make life unpleasant for those who don't. It's not "hams [have] legislative authority".
Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how I read it.
The Radiotelecommunications Act in Canada (1), section 8, describes the powers of ISEC inspectors. They can request warrants to enter private dwellings, and if accompanied by peace officers and if permitted by the warrant, use force.
This was something that was highlighted during my amateur radio course almost 20 years ago.
(1) https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/r-2/page-3.html#doc...
Similar here in the states. I, as a ham, can't enter someone's house. The FCC gang who gave me a license are allowed to get a warrant to do that.
I think it might be because ham radio is still barely legal and the community wants to keep the few freedoms they have so they try not to piss off any groups of interest. Whereas pretty much everything hacking-related is already a felony thanks to DMCA and other similar laws, so they don't have much to lose.
> Whereas pretty much everything hacking-related is already a felony thanks to DMCA and other similar laws, so they don't have much to lose.
Hackers were much more rebellious in former days before such laws were past. My opinion the reason why hackers got more "civilized" is that you could earn quite a lot of money by getting (and staying in) a job in big tech.
If there were no such laws, then what were they rebellious against?
Social norms and “the man”
Cold war had a bunch of quiet, and likely extra-legal restrictions that could and would be applied if you stood too far out.
For example if you started broadcasting high powered signals it wouldn't be surprising if you got checked into for being a communist/soviet.
Hacking was mostly about gaining access before AOL and there was absolutely a "let's give this kid a summer job" attitude floating around after War Games came out.
The chain of resource acquisition and information gathering necessary to arrive at a point where you need to make a long-distance phone call you could never afford was impressive in itself. Calling card fraud by a bright minor for educational purposes against a corporate entity absolutely loathed by every adult at the time just wasn't that big of a deal.
From my perspective the point of being a hacker is individual but follows observable desire paths. A lot of those have been filled in now.
It is very strange that when you come across anything radio related, people seemingly come out of the woodwork to tell you not that you are necessarily, actively doing something against regulation, but that there is always potential to be breaking the law.
Take this Hackaday article from the other day:
https://hackaday.com/2026/10/15/so-you-want-to-make-your-sdr...
The subject is mostly academic, but in 18 comments no less than 3 different people are warning about doing something against the rules. It's weird. I don't know of any other subject that provokes responses about "the rules" like this. I could understand if the article title was "How to Aim Laser Pointers at Airplanes", but attach a long enough wire to an oscillator and people start to get uppity.
On the other side of things, I don't know if you've turned on a shortwave radio recently, but the only thing I hear on mine is switch-mode power supply noise.
I see this in basically every interesting domain now, from construction to software development to 3D printing to starting a business. There’s a huge cohort that’s always ready to jump on other people for doing something interesting, offering “friendly” discouragement at the earliest moment, often while simultaneously defending bad behavior from incumbents or their half of the political class.
Like I said, "The medium is the message"
One bad transmitter in your neighborhood can cut you off from the hobby. Someone who's into linux and computers can follow an online tutorial to rig together an SDR. Look at a bunch of numbers or static, shrug and move on to a different project without disconnecting that anttena breaking an entire band for all of his neighbors. Then it's on those neighbors to go build a directional antenna and buy portable radio gear and then do their own "in the field investigation" to isolate which house is doing that, then go try to explain to the random person they are polluting a band and hope the person is friendly and cooperative.
In a perfect world the FCC would do that, but getting the FCC to act on small infractions like that is a slow and long process and often goes unanswered. Especially if you're not near a marina or a federal building or an airport. So one hackaday reader can take down ham operation in an entire area because they were just interested in a weekend DIY project.
People throw that "against the law" to limit the damage. But actually getting the FCC to prosecute these issues is a challenge in itself.
You have to really egregiously fuck up as an ordinary consumer/non professional to get the FCC to expend the resources to hunt you down and fine you. One example that comes to mind is a guy who continually operated a cellular jammer from his car on his daily commute on a freeway in Florida.
The FCC's enforcement bureau is not very large or well resourced and is primarily concerned with issuing enforcement actions on licensed broadcasters. You can look at their public documents/listings of "Notes of Appparent Liability" for examples. Everyone who gets fined by the FCC is public recod.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=FCC+enfor...
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=FCC+NAL+n...
True. Local ham chapters hold celebration events when they finally get the FCC to take action on something.
The FCC used to be a lot more active in the 40s and 50s. Especially when there was a general hysteria and fear of soviet spies. The FCC still has various monitoring station everywhere, but they only use them for huge operations rather than policing hobby bands.
I listened to a net on a VHF repeater once- some guy's PTT button got stuck, which ties up the repeater, plus you hear the background sounds from his house. It was quite funny- FCC not needed, instead somebody called him (you heard his phone ring and him saying "What?!" over the repeater).
>without disconnecting that anttena breaking an entire band for all of his neighbors
Why can't those neighbors just broadcast on top of it? I'm sure an LLM could figure out a protocol that could survive.
Hams take pride in being largely self-policing because this is one of the things that keeps the FCC interested in reserving sections of the spectrum for ham use.
Also, I love hackaday for their articles but the comment section there is among the worst on the Internet. You'll find more enlightening discussions on the wall of a truckstop bathroom stall.
I don't think it's about enforcing the rules (on Hacker News), as much about sharing information that others may not know.
I think it's mostly fear that bad actors will make government take that little bit of freedom that they are enjoying
Eh, it1.'s not really fear.
The spectrum is fragile. A few people being assholes can mess it up for thousands or millions of people with a few hundred bucks of equipment.
While you or me may not cause a mess, there are millions and millions of people around and eventually you hit the random number generator where people fuck things up.
Short story: if you piss off other spectrum holders enough, amateur radio operators will lose the leeway they get with the service including the self policing aspect.
Also, when you break little rules early (like low power transmission out of band) it makes you desensitized to breaking dangerous rules later (like keeping people away from antennas being driven with high power).
RF usage is governed by the FCC. Amateur Radio exists at the mercy of the government, and if there is widespread abuse or careless operation by amateur radio operators then that will likely jeopardize the continued existence of amateur radio.
Amateur Radio predates the FCC- so I almost think it should be the reverse, none of this at the mercy of stuff. Of course government is the real coercive force- in Germany the Nazis revoked ham licenses, racially purified radio clubs and made the amateur radio operators work for them.
Ham radio licenses were revoked worldwide during WWII.
At the end of the day it doesn't matter what you think, it matters what "we" think.
Most people want their phone to work and other assorted things that use wireless signals. If amateur radio people piss off the general public these things will be stripped away rather quickly.
There is absolutely zero freedom of speech on using radio signals.
Important entities doing important things is why the earliest radio regulations were passed in the first place. When it was a brand new technology and unproven, sure, let the nerds build a sparkgap and spam everything with bullshit, who cares?
By the early 1900s, governments, militaries, and large business were using it for serious purposes. You can't have randos transmitting fake orders to a Naval base or fake distress calls to the Coast Guard. Imagine if some asshole in New York was screwing around on the airwaves in his shed and the land based telegraph stations couldn't hear the chatter from the Titanic and the relay stations sending the messages on. It was always going to end up regulated.
there are more kinds of governance than command-and-control only. I concede that some legal relationships are command-and-control. Physics itself and jurisdictions.. not sure but I think Nature bats last
One community operates in a heavily regulated space while the other doesn't.
almost, but not quite ... the difference between those is that the stereotypical ham radio enthusiast is obsessed with following regulations and laws to the T. while the stereotypical hacker is all about gray zones, loop holes and questioning rules.
Also I doubt computer hackers would want to publicly post their name and address before being licensed to use a compiler
> There is obvious large overlap. Both are nerdy and techy and attract similar base groups. But the ham space is dominated by people who want to be "good citizens" through collective action, while computer hacker is more about cyberpunk "if I could do it, then it's allowed".
I work professionally in point to point licensed microwave radio and there is very little overlap in our community of ISP/telco/network engineering people with analog ham radio enthusiasts. I don't know a single person who submits FCC coordinations and does high capacity PTP microwave who is also a "licensed" ham.
There is a bit of a disdain in serious radio work for things that operate in purely analog methods (we really only care about things that have native gigabit ethernet or better interfaces on them and can carry IP data), and the concept of not being able to use basic crypto either at the radio level or as a data payload is also anathema to professional use.
There are slightly more professional nerds doing things with meshtastic/meshcore and similar as a hobby, because messing about with small esp32 based things and similar (and specifically in the 900 MHz USA/Canada bands) in purely digital modes is closer to what we do for work. And has practical uses for low data rate SCADA/monitoring and text messaging uses.
There is also a perception that many ham radio enthusiasts who try to position themselves as some special and ultimate resource in disaster response scenarios are not really doing much useful. At a small local scale, maybe? But the people who operate county sized professional emergency communication radio networks (with real budgets from government money) serving sheriff/police/fire/ambulance response and similar also do not overlap a lot with ham radio enthusiasts. If you have the budget to build a $400,000 project of a hilltop radio tower site serving mission critical communications in your county and your main interactions are with the local sheriff's office and the local 911 PSAP, your perspective is going to be very different than the people who want to do all-analog in the clear ham radio for "disaster response".
In many modern emergency scenarios people expect to be able to communicate and share data using whatever they have on their phone or laptop as a wifi client, which means implementing portable two way satellite IP data over something like traditional VSAT, starlink, o3b, Oneweb, soon Amazon LEO, etc. It's also standard for serious disaster response vehicles operated by well funded government agencies to have something like a docked handheld Iridium phone.
I've been to several DefCon events over the years. Ham radio is essentially ubiquitous there, even with a dedicated frequency for the event for hams (and lots of 'look-the-other-way' use during the weekend).
Radio is heavily regulated and policed.
If you do something naughty on the internet, there's a reasonable chance you won't get caught.
If you do something naughty on the radio, you will get a large fine if not prison time.
NOC / BOFH is a good analogy. These people are highly technical guardians of their commons, who see each others as peers, and pull the plug / Halon drench anyone caught mucking up those commons. Hackers might build a spark gap to send Morse across campus just they might fire up nmap for a laugh to scan their buddy’s dorm connection, or run a fork bomb on the central Unix service. The Network Operstions / Operators / HAMs are the ones that find these hackers and drop one ton(ne) of bricks upon them.
The golden, underlying rule of Amateur Radio is to respect and protect the bands with which we have been trusted.
I want to note that "pirate radios" have and do still exist
> "if I could do it, then it's allowed".
This is in my back yard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZjInmHsWdM
The thing is hams shenanigans tend to impact other hams and not the general public. Every dive bar, and friend group has one asshole, but typically not two.
The thing is, ham and hacker are defined in entirely different ways. Hackers can refer to people doing good, ill, or morally grey things. Think of how the term applies to certain software developers, people who breach networks to steal data, or circumvent security out of technical curiosity. In contrast, a ham is a licensed radio operator. While you certainly have lids, the vast majority have some sense of being a "good citizen" by the simple merit of being licensed. Unlicensed operators fit under other terms, like pirate.
Even the scope of the terms differ. Hackers have to make or break something. Hams may do anything from rag chew to build orbital satellites. If you're more inclined to do legal stuff and aren't inclined to build something, things involving community service are going to be more appealing.
Sort of.
When I first came into the tech space, I found myself with quad copters buzzing around my workspace. I had the intention of hacking the signals around me to dissuade folks from flying around my head while sitting at my desk. After walking into a radio shop, looking for a few key items, I chatted for a few minutes with the clerk. He immediately put me into his “you’re a jammer” box and was uninterested in any further conversation. He wasn’t wrong, but it’s ironic given that I was effectively counter-jamming to get work done… and maybe have a little fun hacking at the same time. Point being: some communities have such rigid rules around what a “good citizen” encompasses that they get lost in their own world.
I find myself more on the altruistic side, despite being far closer to a “computer hacker” than a ham.
Why is eBay acting as the FCC? I can still buy lasers that will rip through your retina in the blink of a eye from eBay (lol). The equipment is completely legal to own and operate, and transmit with the proper licensing (which is not required to purchase said equipment).
The FCC made up rules for marketplaces and now ebay is forced to follow it.
What statute gives authority to the FCC to "make up rules for marketplaces"? My understanding is that they only have authority over actual broadcasting.
the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019 (47 USC 154 1601 ff) is one place, among others, that Congress gave the FCC the authority to make rules about importing and selling electronics
>Such regulations shall be applicable to the manufacture, import, sale, *offer for sale*, or shipment of such devices and home electronic equipment and systems, and to the use of such devices.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/302a
Because these companies have large legal departments essentially in charge of minimizing regulatory and reputational risk. It's the same reason they've been progressively cracking down on firearm accessories, BB guns, knives, fireworks, laboratory chemicals, erotica, pill presses, and a bunch of other things over the past 20 years. All of that is generally legal in the US but makes lawyers and PR people queasy. It's not just marketplaces, Paypal has asinine rules on what you can and cannot pay for. So does Google Pay, Zelle, Venmo, and so on.
I don't think it's useful to point out inconsistencies; the bottom line is that lasers will be on the chopping block within our lifetime too.
You can't buy firearms parts or tooling on eBay in the UK because quite frankly if you're a gunsmith you're probably not buying stuff on eBay, and it's unlikely that anyone who isn't a qualified gunsmith is buying them for anything legit. Similarly, there are age restrictions on buying bladed items, just as there are on buying bladed items in shops. Turns out that all those 13-year-olds buying 14" butcher knives weren't actually filleting venison with them, who would have thought it?
Yer cheapy Chinese radios though? Baofengs are currently about £19 each on eBay, with a discount for quantity.
Why wouldn't a gunsmith buy stuff on eBay?
We buy lots of stuff for our dairy/cheese plant business from eBay.
When I worked in a mechanic shop there were always parts on the way from eBay too.
The amateur gunsmith scene in the UK is pretty small and if you're buying and selling parts and tools, you probably already know who you're buying from or selling to.
It's easier just to speak to someone, bank transfer some money over, and they'll stick it in the post.
You can buy gun parts on ebay in the US. Here's one example, a trigger for a 9mm Browning Hi-Power:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/287616828521
$30.00
If someone wants a 14" blade, one can fetch some steel from a junkyard and apply an angle grinder to it. Best results with leaf springs. Then wrap one end with electrical tape and it'll chop an arm or a head off no problem. A bit more effort with the grinder and you get yourself something like a gladius.
Now, what is the point of those bans? So people feel safer while not being safer?
Eh. I don't like these bans, but I think there are at least two good-faith arguments you can make:
1. People who decide to go on murder sprees are usually not high-functioning individuals, so even modest barriers can improve outcomes.
2. Fewer weapons in homes means fewer heat-of-the-moment acts involving these weapons. For example, there are very few firearm suicides in the EU, compared to the US.
Because the FDA doesn't give a shit about regulating lasers. Yes, The Food and Drug Administration.
Because the FCC is puppeting Ebay through regulation, the author is deliberately painting this as evil large corporation because I assume that gets more clicks, the real title would be "FCC Enacts Rule Restricting Sale of Radio Equipment, Marketplaces Like Ebay Forced to Pull Listings."
https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adopts-rules-strengthen-rul...
> Protecting Against National Security Threats to the Communications Supply Chain…
Yeah… a foreign adversary is totally going to be thwarted by FCC certification. The Russian's are probably just kicking themselves for buying at Walmart.
Puppeting?
If they’re pushing eBay not to allow the sale of devices which allow transmitting on illegal bands, is that really puppeting?
Or is that just saying “stop helping people do illegal shit or we’re going to have to start investigating you”?
The purpose of the restriction is to keep people from using hacked baofengs to chat on bands a) they're not allowed to use unlicensed b) could potentially already be in use by another service eg EMS/fire/police.
There are older UV-5R Baofengs that are in demand because they didn't have the software restriction that newer ones have. It's not that they're hacked, it's that they were not locked from the factory
I haven’t bought a UV-5R since 2024. That one is as unlockable with a trivial sequence of inputs.
Are modern varieties truly locked or just “locked ;)” ?
Are newer baofengs locked down? I thought you can still just hold down 3 buttons while power cycling the radio to unlock TX from 400 to 520 MHz.
Regardless, the Quansheng UV-K5 is largely supplanting the Baofeng as the go-to entry level HT, the 3rd party firmware for that radio is pretty impressive.
Almost all "real" ham radios can be unlocked anyway, and have much better RF performance.
I know nothing about this stuff. Is it only chatting on bands that is considered problematic? Are you allowed to listen on any frequency?
Licensed US amateur operator here. In general the FCC regulations allow you to listen on whatever frequencies you like, EXCEPT the cellular frequencies (This dates back to the analog era, before cellular traffic was encrypted). Some jurisdictions may also have restrictions on, for example, using a police scanner in a vehicle, that would restrict listening (even though most of that traffic is now also encrypted).
Don't quote me on this, but I believe there's some more nuance to the cellular band issue. What's restricted, AFAIK, isn't simply receiving traffic on those frequencies in and of itself, but:
1. Decrypting those communications if they are encrypted
and
2. Selling equipment designed to receive on those bands.
Of course there's not much purpose in sitting around listening to the digital chirping noises of encrypted traffic, but as I understand it, if that's your hobby, that part is actually legal.
(Also a licensed US ham, not not an expert in anything in particular and definitely not a lawyer)
I would be surprised if it were illegal to tune into something being broadcast in public over the air. Decryption is a different story.
Get ready to be surprised, because the 800Mhz band used for AMPS (1G / analog cellular) was explicitly carved off as a no-receive zone by Congress because AT&T was pissed[0] anyone could just listen in on any cellphone conversation. I'm told the law actually makes it really difficult to legally sell fully open software-defined radios (SDR), even though nobody uses analog cellular anymore, because you still have to design the SDR to be tamper-proof against attempts to receive 800Mhz.
[0] Wikipedia also mentions the existence of cloning tools that would let you copy any AMPS subscriber ID and program another phone with the same number, stealing the subscriber's account. I suspect AT&T was more angry about that.
Is that still the case though? Does anyone still use 1G/AMPS? Because I'm staring at my HackRF running Mayhem, showing me waterfall of 795 to 805Mhz and there is definitely activity getting picked up.
The big problem used to be that people would buy unlocked Baofengs and accidentally use them on licensed services thinking there were generic walkie talkies. The current locked down rules prevent that. They can still get amateur handhelds and use without ham license, but hams police that. It is also easier to get FRS/GMRS handhelds for pubic use, many the same models reprogrammed.
Unlocking handhelds is less of a problem because it requires deliberate action to break the rules. There are fewer people willing and able to do that.
“buy unlocked Baofengs and accidentally use them on licensed services thinking there were generic walkie talkies” - this has never happened. Also they are not exactly easy to operate (i have one)
For people that didn't read the article, listings will need to include the FCC ID. So most consumer goods will still be available.
And it's only for new items.
It appears to be part of the "we can't trust anything from China" project. There do appear to be exceptions for low volume sellers.
I can see that Meshtastic devices could also be blocked. Also, many don't operate with the FCC rules on the frequencies used.
https://meshtastic.org/docs/legal/
Doesn't meshtastic operate in the unlicensed bands? Would that mean they're blocked? The article says they're only blocking devices that need FCC certification and since meshtastic is unlicensed it doesn't need FCC certification as far as I know.
The band it's operating in doesn't change whether or not it needs FCC certification. wifi operating on 2.4ghz is an unlicensed band, but it still needs certification for instance.
IIRC, Meshtastic has an is_licensed / “Ham Mode” setting that changes the software's regulatory assumptions and power limits so it can be used.
Many of the devices also exceed FCC specified power output on those frequences which is an even larger problem.
Don't a lot of these integrate off-the-shelf pre-certified LoRa modules?
the FCC is controlled by trump, and this is his and his co-conspiritors attempt to control the public. If you look at who sits on the board, and where they came from, it's hard to argue this is done in any kind of good faith. This is corruption in action.
To be fair to eBay, their banned items policy is quite extensive.
And also for some reason explicitly lists „military aircraft and ships“. Which surely should be allowed just for the comedic value.
I kind of remember MiG’s on Ebay was part of the news cycle after the Soviet collapse.
But my memory is hazy from time and limited direct interest.
Pepsi at one point had one of the worlds largest navy's so it's not actually that surprising. People buy and sell used military equipment all the time.
Lots of interesting discussion here, but let's cut to the real question:
1. Since people are still going to find a way to buy items the FCC doesn't want them to have, what's that new outlet going to be? I saw somebody mention TikTok. OK... what else? Facebook groups? Craigslist? Private old-skool phpbb forums? Usenet? Mastodon? AliExpress? Something that hasn't been invented yet?
Aliexpress / Temu most likely. People already buy cheap Chinese radios from those places now, since they can be cheaper than ebay.
Ouch,
> new policy will not apply to gear that operates exclusively on amateur radio frequencies
So almost everything is getting banned, at least the existing hardware.
If I read this right, it's only banning stuff without an FCC ID stamped on it. If you want to list, you have to provide the FCC ID.
I believe the FCC ban doesn't apply to used gear but seems like eBay is taking a harder stance.
Thanks, I read it as that regardless of the FCC ID _any_ transceiver capable of operating beyond specific ham slices of the spectrum will be banned.
Thanks!
(English is not my first language)
not trying to be controversial here; but isn't it weird that you can buy semi automatic guns and there's restrictions on radio equipments bc these equipments can mess with the bandwidth used by public services - but similar arguments hold for guns as well.
So we have decided as a society, it seems. No one ever said policy had to be coherent.
Radio didn't make the date cutoff to be a right in the US.
unfortunately the US decided a century ago that electronics should be regulated federally
When the US constitution was written guns were a thing, but communication was done in person or on paper. The idea of radio waves didn't even exist therefore we did not get any protections on it.
What are the similar arguments?
Firearms are capable of being used for legal purposes, as they are in the overwhelming number of cases. A radio that transmits on a restricted frequency is illegal. The ruling doesn't say legal frequency transmitters can't be sold, just that the broker (ebay) is responsible for ensuring it's not facilitating the sale of illegal radio equipment. Ebay is the one choosing not to sell most radio equipment (even if legal), because they don't want to deal with it.
Firearms used to be widely available at big-box stores, as they were legal (and still are), provided the store prevented illegal purchases. Most box stores/locations no longer sell firearms, because they don't want to deal with it.
I see a lot of arguing over principles here in the comments, but few specifics. What kinds of items have actually disappeared from eBay since this went through? Baofengs? Meshtastic equipment? 10 meter "freeband" radios?
The UV-5R is still available on eBay, as is the UV-K5 (which has an illegal scrambler feature). As is 50W (and 350W) FM transmitters for "churches"
There's a smell about this so close to the US election.
It sounds like someone is worried about people buying personal radios for Meshtastic or LoRa to use in case cell phone service doesn't work at protests, or there is unrest if the election results are called into question by the current political establishment that doesn't want to cede power. So they got eBay to roll over and more companies could follow.
Ordinarily I wouldn't take a conspiracy theory like this seriously. But in these times, corruption is so rampant that the most convoluted answer tends to be the right one.
I wonder how long the same gear will be sold with ham band only and a lil software patch to go back to normal.
Also frankly the effort is kinda wasted, "breaching" on other bands was never hard and with availability of cheap SDRs, easier than ever.
It might not even be that much depending on what it is. For example, Baofeng radios would have TX in bands they shouldn't have until the FCC cracked down on them coming in.
So they started selling them restricted to ham bands until the user pressed a key combo to factory reset them, which put them back to iirc 136-172.
That's already how it works today. A lot of Chinese radios can either be switched by a key press combo or flashed with alternative firmware.
If you outlaw radios, only outlaws will have radios.
73
So that's... kind of all consumer electronics, at this point. (Because of Bluetooth and whatnot.)
According to the title summary, but seemingly not the full details right?
Does this now restrict ESP32s since some creative people have figured out how to use them as (limited) SDRs?
Edit: as another commenter pointed out devices with an FCC ID will be fine (for now) which I assume covers these. And you can always DIY a frequency converter: https://hackaday.com/2026/10/15/so-you-want-to-make-your-sdr...
How does this even work with test gear? There's a millions tools that would violate this
It sounds like there's an exemption for used equipment which is what you would find on eBay.
Amazon UK now requires ID for "bladed items".
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/amazon-uk-now-requires-p...
UK laws are like one big comedy skit to us in rest of the world.
They demanded my fate of birth to hand over a bladed article my wife bought. It was a plastic Halloween prop of a bloody axe
I'm glad to see amateur radio get a carve out at ebay, but I think this restriction on transmitting equipment is pretty pointless in the days of software defined radio.
Ahh an anti-boafeng rule
The upshot is there's been an incredible reduction in the amount of utter crap listed when searching for ham radio gear. Instead of countless pages of Baofengs and all manner of accessories, I can actually find some gear.
When I first saw this shared on the ham radio email reflectors, I went to eBay to have a look. I was actually enticed to buy a radio I hadn't seen or considered prior. That posting is only visible now that the noise floor has dropped dramatically.
Who's going to be the first to vibe code an eBay alternative for radio gear?
That's the trivially easy part. The hard part is convincing potential buyers and sellers that most participants are legit and not trying to scam people.
Software is worth nothing anymore in many cases.
No need. Hams haven't been using eBay for quite some time. We have other gear-for-sale boards that provide at least some modicum of assurance of who you're dealing with (via callsigns and semi-reliable ways to confirm someone's email). The feeling is, if you get scammed by someone and you have their callsign, you can call them out for it on some of these ham-public forums and put them on blast. Others will be less likely to deal with the ne'er-do-well.
The sites are not at all "cutting edge" or even aesthetically pleasing. Like most of ham radio, it's functional and that's about it. Aesthetics are almost non-existent in the hobby.
eBay serves (served?) a wide, public audience. Hams don't need that wide of an audience, just a targeted audience. I'd venture to guess QRZ.com probably has the most buy/sell traffic, then older, has-been sites like eham.net and swap.qth.com catering to the old timers that don't want to follow the traffic trends that left for other sites.
The thing with ham radio is the population is quite small to begin with. The sheer number of hams is like 1% of any population no matter how you slice it. Country, state, city... and that's just those that are licensed. How many of THOSE are interested in buying gear online or shipping gear when selling online? Not really even the majority of the small community. THEN you further cut that down because hams are a stodgy crowd that resist change. So anything new often has a long run up for adoption. Even longer to become a known entity in the community.
Surely something else could replace QRZ.com eventually, but no time soon that I can imagine.
Sickening. No more Ebay for me.
That's fine. I'll just stick to TikTok shop for my radio equipment purchases.
Given that the underlying motivation here isn't merely bigcorp aggressively following regulation (in which alternative marketplaces can spring up), but rather some arbitrary diktat from the regime for which enforcement will be gradually cranked up (physical reality, logic, and Constitutional rights be damned), the real question is what the overall eventual scope is here, in other words what it makes sense for hobbyists/DIYers to stock up on before the destructionists are able to fully strangle it.
Definitely - LoRA/Meshtastic, SDR transmitters, cheap prepper radios that technically require a license to use, maybe even just cheap antennas that you could make yourself but would rather not have to?
Maybe - ESP32, nRF and other competitively-priced wifi/2.4Ghz microcontrollers/devboards if the China Bad marketing chant really ramps up here? Especially with the recent AI-facilitated reverse engineering to gain SDR-ish functionality. Might have to worry about receive-only SDRs too, since it's not like these people really know the difference.
That's what I can think of off the top of my head, but I've never been heavily into RF. Anything else?
RIP all those human person made wideband low noise amplifier boards that cost $5. Now I'll have to buy a $50 minicircuits or whatever alternative with an FCC ID. Despite the fact that I'd only use the LNA for receive, it still could generate and amplifies RF not in the ham bands. So they'll certainly be banned. :\
eBay simply does not have employees with the domain/technical knowledge to decide which things actually require an FCC ID to be displayed. As such they'll just ban anything and everything re: RF, like the example above.
The FCC document from page 97 on has these tables full of extremely inaccurate ass-covering data pretending that >80% of all electronics sellers that might be effected by these new FCC rules are large firms (>1000 people) and that's simply not true. If they counted ebay sellers there'd be more human sellers than firms by far.
This sounds bad for me, a person who just purchased their first SDR yesterday. What unfortunate timing.
Are you sure LNAs will be an issue? Cause then they'd better ban transistors too, because they can actually be used as a power amplifier for transmitting!
the FCC excludes regulating equipment that doesn't have a a clock above 9kHz but ebay doesn't know what that means
The problem is that eBay employees are the judge here. Do you think they are going to have enough expert domain knowledge to know the difference? Do you think they will error on the side of banning anything RF or allow things and expose themselves to financial and legal liability?
The end result will be a ban in practice even if the meaning and spirit of the FCC regs would not. Because now eBay is the judge.
More regulation. If it's not regulation it's more taxation.
Ah, yes, that pesky FCC for regulating a public shared frequency spectrum. Im sure everybody will just behave in a vacuum of rules and wouldnt possibly do anything bad.
> Im sure everybody will just behave in a vacuum of rules and wouldnt possibly do anything bad.
It seems to work okay over here in the UK.
Ofcom is the UK equivalent of FCC. You've got regulations too.
Haha, no.
*Maaaaybe* if you start keying up and talking over VHF channel 16, you'd get someone from Ofcom out.
Someone buying a couple of cheap Baofengs and accidentally stepping all over the local shopping centre's security guard radios? Not a chance.
How about jist enforcing the laws we already have.
Nothing wrong with that.