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HAM Radio Operators in Belarus Arrested, Face the Death Penalty
(www.404media.co)
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this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2026
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agree on uncensorable but keep in mind ham radio is antiprivate by design - every time you say your callsign you sign off
If you do that...
you're also a shining beacon every second you transmit and even states with moderate capabilities record their radio spectrum 24/7 even during peacetime
I've seen tests where a reasonably equipped military vehicle could not detect a drone in the air near them transfering video, because the data link was roving through a band of several gigahertz at a thousand hops per second.
If you stay close to the noise floor, especially if you use parts of spectrum that others are using (very impolite, but people who don't want to be caught are unexceptionally impolite)... good luck to the catchers. Especially if the signal occurs at a pre-agreed time and remains short (read: don't try sending video, send something SMS sized).
Or you could send an email.
Good luck sending an e-mail that can't be filtered and blocked or traffic analyzed, even if the content is encrypted.
As a minimum before trying, I would advise a peer to peer mix network (TOR, I2P). But repressive governments block those as well as they can, and may pay users a visit if they suspect something.
Pretty stupid when you are literally broadcasting a radio direction finder beacon directly from your home out to the entire world.
...broadcast it upwards with a reasonably directional antenna, reflecting off the ionosphere.
...broadcast it from a solar powered relay station which you access via optical link from distance.
(Not a ham radio operator, but an anarchist, but I can draw a Doppler radar in GnuRadio and have implemented a monopulse tracker... with lots of help from other people who know better. My assessement: it's easy to track powerful signals on an expected frequency, but very hard to track weak signals which do agile frequency hopping with a random key, or hide among other traffic.)
I feel sad for the Belarusian ham radio operators, however. In case of crisis, they would be the people who could help develop something interesting to help others. They were practising their hobby openly and became targets because of that. People who do clandestine business don't exchange contact information openly.
I guess KGB (they still have it) decided that nothing interesting is ever needed in their land. :(
No kidding.
Dude you can just encrypt a radio broadcast if you want to do private comms over radio
You don't seen to understand what the word "broadcast" means and you should probably stop pretending to understand how radio transmission works.
Your recommendation is essentially to not transmit in a way that anyone can receive and therefore you can't be caught. I can give you a simpler plan to achieve that: turn off your radio.
Yes, let's nitpick words. Broadcast implies that something is available to others. An ionosphere reflection definitely is. An unmanned pirate station also is. An agile frequency hopping signal conditionally is - if others know a key. Which would arguably make it unicast, a term I should have used in that part of my sentence.
Oh highness, thou areth much holier than me indeed, I am humbled by this mere sentence.
I made several recommendations.
Imaginary bullshit isn't actually useful to anyone.
Most hams do, its part of the culture, experience and fun.
I think HAMs are required to?
It's the law, every 10 minutes in conversation and at the end of every contact, at least in the US.
It's laughably easy for them to track you down if you don't.
ranked competitive version is called foxhunting and even kid can do it
Not with a handheld that you don't use at home. But correct me if I'm wrong.
You can still be tracked while broadcasting.
It's not laughably easy.
It is, though. Finding the source of a radio signal is a trivial task for a government. They currently do it all the time.
Heck, it's so easy that it's a legitimate competitive sport that some grade schools use in their PE program.