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 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.

A lot of that is because airwaves are a finite and shared resource. Me abusing them means that you can’t legitimately use them.

It's also a generational thing. There's a lot of geriatric sad hams who's only enjoyment in life is playing radio police.

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.

Just look at the community around https://2600.com vs that of https://gbppr.net the contrast is stark.

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).

Also I doubt computer hackers would want to publicly post their name and address before being licensed to use a compiler

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.

One community operates in a heavily regulated space while the other doesn't.

> 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.

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.

The FCC made up rules for marketplaces and now ebay is forced to follow it.

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.

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.

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 know nothing about this stuff. Is it only chatting on bands that is considered problematic? Are you allowed to listen on any frequency?

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.

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.

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.

Radio didn't make the date cutoff to be a right in the US.

So we have decided as a society, it seems. No one ever said policy had to be coherent.

According to the title summary, but seemingly not the full details right?

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.

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.

It sounds like there's an exemption for used equipment which is what you would find on eBay.

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

UK laws are like one big comedy skit to us in rest of the world.

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.

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!

This sounds bad for me, a person who just purchased their first SDR yesterday. What unfortunate timing.

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.