A while ago I thought about getting a Ham Radio license for doing TCP/IP over the airwaves. I never got around to learning the details, but I know that it is possible, and that many Hams in big cities have detailed digital nets running over the airwaves, using TCP/IP, or other protocols. There are even some gateways onto the internet. When I was investigating getting a license, it came to my attention that FCC rules prohibit encrypting any digital data you send over the airwaves in this way. I don't know exactly how far this prohibition reaches, but I know you can lose your ham license for sending encrypted data over the digital ham network. I haven't actually seen any mention of this by the EFF and other groups like that, where I'd expect it. Or on cypherpunks, for that matter. Maybe it's because no one knows about it. So I'm telling you. I think that this is a pretty terrible state of affairs, because ham radio TCP/IP provides a low cost (if really low bandwith) permanent connection to the internet, and currently anyone who accesses the internet this way is _prohibited_ from using encryption. Bad. [Oh, they are also prohibited form broadcasting "bad" words in digital form. Which causes endless problems for people with usenet gateways onto these digital ham nets. They need automated software robots searching out all posts for Carlins 7 bad words, and deleting them.]