https://www.rac.ca/encryption/ RAC has a new page laying out how to experiment with encryption in amateur radio in Canada while complying with ITU and ISED regulations. (Please find link above). Excerpt from the page below indicating their objective: RAC’s and ISED’s objective is to make it possible for Canadian Amateurs to experiment with these techniques while being compliant with the regulations. We want to do this by providing a single, widely- recognized place to share this information. This is the one-stop shop for information on encryption in Canada. The encryption webpages are available to anyone, whether they are members of RAC or not. A clear path and an open door. Exciting times.
Interesting. They have confused encrypted code (cypher), with digital compression encoding for the purpose of sending a message digitally. Perhaps they opened the door too wide. I like the idea of sharing encoding methods on a website so that others may create alternative software and not lockup encoding/decoding to one individual or company. But... This was much discussed between the FCC and the ARRL when computers became a thing. The FCC at the time argued that ASCII was a code, and the ARRL shot back...well what about RTTY, SSTV, and Amateur Fax. The FCC said OK on Encoding, but NO on Cyphers. Here, they are accepting cyphers on voice/morse transmissions as long as you register your cypher with them. This flies against a widely accepted practice in the Amateur Radio Community that transmissions that are not digital in nature should be in plain language without the need of having to look up the Cypher's key on a website to set the dials on your enigma machine.
@WB9YZU, this might be true in the USA. Apparently, it is not in Canada, according to their thinking of compliance with ITU and ISED regulations. Generally, I disagree with registering cyphers, hash algorithms, and other methods of obscurity, because we're back to obscured non-amateur uses of the spectrum-- no one can detect whether it's amateur or commercial. Almost no one's going to look up all the possible algorithms/cipher dictionaries to decrypt an obscured mode. There is a Pandora's Box of shenanigans in the making. Other places disagree; I don't know where it ends, except not well. 73 Tom W9YW
I can't see where any type of cypher(cipher?) would make a transmission any more efficient or easier to send. Whether it's "hello" or "12345" , you still have to send the info.
You would have to read local law, but after reading the law in The Netherlands, my conclusion is that here you can use encryption in ham radio for experimental purposes, as long as you transmit the decryption key or whatever is needed to decrypt in the open along along with the encrypted transmission. That defeats the purpose of the encryption and makes it legal, you could still use it to learn and create new transmission modes that would support encryption.
