You have no expectation of privacy in a public place, nor do you have an expectation of privacy when engaged in a privileged activity while driving. By signing your name on your license you are agreeing to abide by the State's conditions, which may include placing a license plate with personally identifiable information on the outside of your vehicle.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

It is not the petitioner's responsibility to consider all possible use cases for a new policy and to resolve problems that arise from such. If that were where the bar was set for petitioning government, nobody except well-trained attorneys would be able to do it, and they would still fail 100% of the time because it is impossible to write a perfect law that addresses a problem while at the same time is perfectly immune to abuse.

In any case, to address your proposed abuse case, there would be no need to encrypt communications during an exercise or drill under his proposition because no PHI would need to be communicated during those drills. With no real emergency and no real PHI, the exception to the prohibition on encrypted communications would not apply.

The error in this petition does not lie with potential abuse cases. The error lies in the fact that it is moot on its face because it does not address a problem that actually exists.

Darn. I was hoping my gmail account would make me the next .com billionaire.

Bruce,

After reading all of the available materials, I think you have mischaracterized the petition and have missed the mark as to why this petition should not be accepted. The petitioner is not asking for encryption to be allowed for all traffic on all ham bands, as you have suggested at your site:

"FCC is currently processing a request for rule-making, RM-11699, that would allow the use of Amateur frequencies in the U.S. for private, digitally-encrypted messages."

This is a grossly misleading statement, as it overbroadens the actual scope of the petition. When boiled down, the petition is really only asking for one new thing:

"(c) intercommunications when participating in emergency services operations or related training exercises which may involve information covered by HIPAA or other sensitive data such as logistical information concerning medical supplies, personnel movement, other relief supplies or any other data designated by Federal authorities managing relief or training efforts "

For (c) to be valid, there must be emergency services operations happening. No encrypted operations would be authorized at any other time, and certainly there would be no general authorization to send encrypted traffic over Amateur Radio except under these narrowly-defined circumstances.

That said, this is still a bad idea, except for other reasons. The potential for abuse here is not in the use of Amateur Band by unauthorized persons. The potential for abuse here lies in the misuse of the Amateur Bands as a Law Enforcement or Emergency Services medium, which is completely contrary to the mission and purpose of Amateur Radio. Indeed, all emergency services are already granted their own spectrum, upon which encryption is allowed. Anyone acting in a medical emergency service who could possibly be the authorized recipient of PHI is going to also be equipped with a radio operable in these bands.

In essence, this proposal would serve to "militarize" Amateur Radio in times of emergency, and possibly be abused by the State to quash the voices of Amateur Radio operators during a declared emergency, and even prevent them being able to lend assistance.

Furthermore, it would appear that the petition is moot, since HIPAA already has provisions for the "incidental disclosure" of PHI during the treatment of patients. These provisions were included to address the specific problem this petition seeks to address, which is the use of unencrypted radio systems to communicate between emergency services personnel to facilitate the treatment of patients in the field. So, there is no need to allow encryption to "protect" those who are authorized to transmit and hear PHI under HIPAA. They are already protected.

Amateur Radio operators have no business participating either directly or indirectly in the treatment of patients outside of rendering first aid or other Good Samaritan works that are already completely protected from liability by Law.

In conclusion, the laws as they are written today provide for the communication and indirect disclosure of PHI by emergency services personnel over unencrypted radio systems, and Amateur Radio rules allow non-Amateurs to use the Amateur Bands under the supervision of a licensed operator. There is nothing that needs to be done, and the petition should be dismissed as moot.

In an emergency or disaster, you are specifically authorized to use whatever means necessary to get your message across, so whatever you do will not be in violation of the rules. However I cannot envision a scenario where the use of encryption would be necessary to facilitate communication, but if such a scenario exists, you could easily argue the point and it is likely you would not get a green slip for it, let alone a NAL.

In any case, I agree with you that this is a bad idea.

Encryption IS allowed on Amateur Radio as a means of "access control," so most of the petitioner's points are moot, and his complete lack of understanding of how HIPAA works makes his privacy point irrelevant.

Besides, this is just a petition that will be hopefully swept right into the garbage bin. As I said in another post, the fact the petition has been filed does not, I repeat, does NOT mean the "FCC is considered allowing encryption for ham radio." It means "someone filed one of many many petitions received by the commission that day."

This is not a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM). This is simply a petition by a Citizen.

If the FCC decides to consider the petition, it will issue a NPRM and open a comment period. It will THEN consider the petition with the collection of public comments.

There are already HIPAA exceptions that allow sharing PHI without consent, and a medical emergency falls under the first one below (if it does not have its own already, and I'm fairly certain it must):

Here are three more:

Patient Treatment: A patient's health information can be shared and viewed by different healthcare providers if it is for the purpose of treatment for a patient. An example would be when a patient is referred to a specialist by their primary doctor and the primary doctor gives the specialist a patient's health information to facilitate treatment of the patient.

Payment for Services: The healthcare information of a patient can also be shared with another healthcare organization without complying to the privacy rules of HIPAA if it is for the purpose of payment of services. An example would be when a doctor needs to file information with a patient's health insurance provider for payment of services.

Healthcare Operations: A patient's healthcare information can also be used without consent of the patient for healthcare operations. Various healthcare operations include internal improvement, review of healthcare professionals, healthcare provider and doctor evaluations, training programs and business development. An example of the healthcare operations exemption would be if the doctor's office were doing an internal review of how they handle patients in order to treat patients better and more quickly. The doctor's office would not need to get the consent of a patient to do this type of internal review even if some of the internal review uses the patient's healthcare information for the process.

"Government has no reason to believe you aren't committing a crime, therefore you are under arrest."

Being encrypted in and of itself is not a reason to believe that a message is harmful.

It is also illegal to use Ham Radio for commercial purposes. That makes almost any kind of web browsing pretty much impossible.

Since Einstein hasn't been proven right, it's not up to anyone to prove him wrong.

Last I checked they were still the "theories" of Relativity.

I get my water from a well on my property, which is not treated with Sodium Fluoride. Therefore, your first statement is false, because I am a member of the set "Everyone."

What he did is in no way equivalent to burning down a brothel with everyone inside.

What he did was stand up in a crowded theater and bring everyone's attention to the fact that some guy was mercilessly raping the girl in the second row.

Report a crime, go to jail.