Dear all:
We are at a pivotal time for our hobby, as new ARRL directors take their office on Jan. 1, and some odd things happened recently at the FCC's Wireless Telecom Bureau (in charge of ham radio). The FCC is moving towards allowing unlimited bandwidth data in the HF bands, without any ability for other hams to eavesdrop, and we must take action now to stop this. We need everyone to actively write their elected federal officials (congress/house/senate), the FCC leadership, law enforcement in Washington, and IRAC members, to ensure that the ARRL and FCC withdraw the ill-conceived rulemaking proposal NPRM 16-239 and RM-11708. Getting our views out in the public FCC ECFS system helps let ARRL officials and FCC officials know that their position on RM-11708 and NPRM 16-239 is flawed, and is "against" what the licensees of our hobby want and need. But we also must write our elected US congressional officials, and law enforcement at the federal level (in Washington: DOJ, FBI, NTIA, NSA, CIA, and other members of the IRAC in addition to the FCC). https://www.ntia.doc.gov/page/interdepartment-radio-advisory-committee-irac Introduce yourself as a licensed ham with years of operating experience, and express your concerns for our country and our hobby, about how the ARRL and the FCC is perpetuating data transmissions that violate Part 97 rules since they cannot be self-policed by other amateur operators, and are proposing to open the flood gates on wideband signaling that cannot be intercepted over the airways, thus defeating the purpose of ham radio and Part 97 rules. . you should alert them in writing of the ongoing obscured traffic by various ARQ modes of DATA at HF frequencies. I am sounding the alarm, since there a few hams inside the FCC who also are friendly with the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) who are working with the ARRL to try and open the floodgates on this type of secure/private traffic through the proposed rulemaking NPRM 16-239. This became apparent to me when a Nov. 7, 2018 letter from SCS mysteriously appeared at the FCC website and from my dialogue with the CTO of the FCC (its all public at the FCC ECFS 16-239 site, links below now in the media). It became clear to me that this is basically an attempt to turn the HF ham bands into a DHS emcomm service with Winlink and various data/email/internet-capable modes that others cannot intercept over the air. Yet their approach will only hurt our national security by allowing more signals on the bands that we cannot decode or intercept! We need to urge our elected officials in Congress to insist that the FCC withdraw NPRM 16-239 from consideration, and we need to let ARRL directors and vice directors know, loud and clear, that they need to pull back and urge the FCC to withdraw NPRM 16-239 and RM-11708, until we can fix the existing problems of non-open-source data transmissions at HF that have been ignored by ARRL and FCC for the past 15 years in the FCC Proceedings RM-11306, RM-11708, WT 16-239, and 17-344. The popular press is starting to catch wind about the perils that ARRL and a tiny minority of data operators (with help from a couple of insiders in the FCC) are trying to do with the amateur HF spectrum. See: https://www.rrmediagroup.com/News/NewsDetails/NewsID/17667 https://hackaday.com/2018/11/26/fcc-gets-complaint-proposed-ham-radio-rules- hurt-national-security/ https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/filings?limit=100 <https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/filings?limit=100&proceedings_name=16-239&s ort=date_disseminated,DESC> &proceedings_name=16-239&sort=date_disseminated,DESC This is our spectrum. Unless we take this seriously and write to Congress, the FCC leaders, and other IRAC members to withdraw NPRM 16-239, the ham HF spectrum will be consumed by unlimited bandwidth, unlimited baud rate data signals that cannot be intercepted for meaning. New ARRL directors were just elected, we need to reach them, too! It is worth taking some time to preserve our hobby and the HF spectrum we love to use. Japan and other Asian countries have prohibited Pactor and Winlink transmissions on HF. There is a reason - a national security reason - and we need to also. Write your elected government officials and ARRL officials, FCC officials, and law enforcement, urging that NPRM 16-239 and RM-11708 be withdrawn by the FCC, and that all transmissions be documented, open source, and decodable by 3rd parties over the air (Many currently are not when operated with Winlink and other software that has ARQ and proprietary compression, and the proposed rulemakings by ARRL and FCC will widen the bandwidth on those transmissions without solving the existing problems). PLEASE become involved and spread the word. This is our hobby, and our spectrum (for now). Don't let it become host to unintelligible wideband internet users and crime. Thanks for the bandwidth. Justification for posting: This impacts all ham radio operators who use HF, and those on this list use HF... Please cross-post to other reflectors, lists, FB, etc. 73 Allen R. Brier N5XZ 1515 Windloch Lane Richmond, TX 77406
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