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.
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.
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 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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
> 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".
> 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.
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.
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
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).
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.
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).
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?
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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).
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...
I think it's mostly fear that bad actors will make government take that little bit of freedom that they are enjoying
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 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”
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.
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
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.
yep, we can just throw a cloudflare turnstile on everything instead.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
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.
Also I doubt computer hackers would want to publicly post their name and address before being licensed to use a compiler
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).
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.
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).
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.
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?
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
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.
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
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.
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 ;)” ?
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.
For people that didn't read the article, listings will need to include the FCC ID. So most consumer goods will still be available.
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.
Many of the devices also exceed FCC specified power output on those frequences which is an even larger problem.
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.
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?
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.
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)
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.
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.
unfortunately the US decided a century ago that electronics should be regulated federally
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.
If you outlaw radios, only outlaws will have radios.
73
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.
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.
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.
Ahh an anti-boafeng rule
Amazon UK now requires ID for "bladed items".
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/amazon-uk-now-requires-p...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nothing wrong with that.