New Zealand Internet Connected Ham Radio

The world as we know is shrinking. It may be a coincidence but someone in France gets a bee in his bonnet about D-Star and the whole New Zealand amateur community gets stung. The same goes for the Spies scandal in the US, all of a sudden anyone with people named Vlad, Boris, Ivan or Sasha on their Facebook friends list are immediately suspicious. Now if you also happen to be a radio ham with lots of transmitting equipment and antennas and a room full of computers there is nothing down for you. That's me screwed then ;0)

According to the New Zealand ART news page; The Ministry has raised some concerns with NZART about IRLP, D-Star, Echolink, APRS and similar modes as they do not appear to fit within our current licence (GURL) conditions.

Concerns raised include:

*the use of unattended transmitters and unlicensed digipeaters for APRS and

*Amateurs based overseas operating (via the Internet) a NZ amateur station.

The ALO, Don Wallace ZL2TLL is currently putting together a paper on this topic and would appreciate input from interested amateurs. Anyone interested in contributing please send an email to [email protected] with "Internet Connected Amateur Radio" in the subject line.

It would be great if it was just a case of 'we need to bring the licensing conditions in line with current technology', but when did any bureaucrat ever care about anything other than wielding power by restricting and regulating. The power of the press was always just about containable but those that do evil are running scared of the power of the people and the freedom that the Internet brings. We either fight tooth and nail for every little corner of our ability to communicate without interference or unreasonable restriction or we are sent back to the dark ages. Technology can either free us or enslave us, it is our choice. The next revolution will not start with guns or bombs but with a comment on Facebook or a blog post. That is the reason they don't want you to be able to connect to the Internet via radio, because they could not trace a rebel rouser via something as traceable as an IP address or a telephone number.

Sometimes when you are paranoid they are out to get you!

When the seagulls follow the tractor the farmer should cover his head and we should all watch out the crap does not spread.