Ola comrades. I posted this in the general chat, someone suggested I put it here:
On today’s episode of Street Fight there was a caller who got into ham radio and then found it was actually full of white supremacists meeting and being racist psychos.
According to her everybody on ham has to identify by their call sign or risk losing their ham radio license, but if you have someone’s call sign you can look up their name and address in a central database. She made it sound like fascists consider this a safe space and are not concerned with anybody IDing them. Sounds like if you could look up the name, address and phone number of any Chapo user by their username.
I don't know anything about this, but if you have a ham radio licence and are looking for some praxis in your life, maybe you could look into a new anti-fascist hobby of doxing ham radio fascists.
You only need to have a license to transmit. Anybody can listen in and get those call signs, just saying.
Let's lower it just a bit further. Here's some info on how to listen for free online:
https://www.hamradiosecrets.com/listen-to-ham-radio-online.html
There are broadly two types of ham radio: VHF/UHF and HF. VHF/UHF are relatively short range. Think walkie-talkies on steroids. On the order of miles, or maybe topping out at tens of miles if someone has stuck a repeater on a tower or mountain. The easiest license to get only gets you VHF/UHF. And that's almost certainly what these people are using.
To listen to people near you, you'd either need to find one of those web receivers near you, or get your own. The rtl-sdr sticks are cheap and there's plenty of information online on how to use them.
I wonder if you could automate the process with voice recognition looking out for certain keywords
I guess I'd ask: what's the desired outcome here?
If this becomes a problem for them, they will either stop IDing, or they'll start grabbing random callsigns from the database. Yeah, those are both things that could get them into trouble. However, the FCC doesn't care that much about enforcing ham radio rules, and so they rely on ham radio operators to enforce the rules. The most likely outcome of not IDing is some old guy with a direction-finding rig and too much time will show up and talk to them. It takes some real dedication to being an idiot to get the FCC to pay attention.
That said, if people do want to understand this stuff better, I'm happy to explain. I've been doing ham radio for years and hold the most privileged class of license.
I guess I’d ask: what’s the desired outcome here?
If this becomes a problem for them, they will either stop IDing
The desired outcome is to dox fascists. Put out their identities with some recordings, let them get fired, ostracized, etc. Antifascism isn't just about punching neo-nazis, a lot of the boring work is about uncovering and exposing fascists in an everyday fashion.
Honestly if we doxed enough fascists that word got out in their community and spread that they need to hide their identities, that would be a sizeable number. The idea that eventually things might get so bad for them that they respond isn't a reason not to make things bad for them where we can.
As an example, 14.313 MHz (you can find lots of recordings on YouTube) has been the shithole of the airwaves for as long as I've been doing ham radio. It's full of racists, white supremacists, idiots, and more. It's full of people not IDing. The FCC has gone after only a handful of people there in the past decade.
they will either stop IDing, or they’ll start grabbing random callsigns from the database
This sounds like it might disrupt their organizing, in addition to the doxing idea (which is great).
https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/searchLicense.jsp
Tiny hint, go on the 40 meter band, and use USB. There are a few fascist nets that try to run under the radar by not using the standard configuration. I don't have a radio right now, but everyone here can use http://www.websdr.org/ to search. It'll be difficult to find, but probably worth it.
