Oh the legal system is pretty good at deciding intent
I wouldn’t say it’s good at determining actual intent, just good at deciding what intent is going to be assigned by the system.
If you send an encrypted email over Hamlink once, or say something like “Beefy Burrito this is Enchilada, the tamales are in the basket” on 33cm once, probably nobody’s gonna notice.
I’ve always wondered how much steganography is in practice - if it’s being practiced well, nobody knows. Setup a HAM station that snaps a photo at sunset and a couple of other random times per day. Transmit the photo in a standard, open digital mode, but hide your message in the noisy lower bits of the 3 color channels 0-255 R G and B, you can easily modify 6 bits per pixel without visually distorting the image, drop that to 1 bit per pixel and nobody who doesn’t know your scheme could ever find it. To the local hams, it’s three chirps a day, with a reliable pretty picture of the sunset and a couple of more varied times. As a utility channel, that’s three opportunities per day to secretly communicate something to a listener that nobody can identify. If the picture is just 2MP, that’s 250kBytes of bandwidth per image.
If you want to secretly communicate with people, use Reddit, or the Fediverse.
Absolutely, though the “listeners” there are more readily identified, even via Tor.
Well on some popular image board like one of the hundreds of cat subs on Reddit, how do you identify a “listener” who is looking for a particular user to upload a picture of an orange cat? Thousands of people will view that post perfectly innocently.
The point is: IP addresses that download the content are traceable (and spoofable, but that leaves trails too…) Yeah, you might be one of thousands, but every day you log in you increase your odds of being spotted.
Listening to longwave radio? Yeah, basically anybody anywhere on the planet with a receiver. Even local broadcasts it is nigh impossible to know who is listening where within the broadcast radius and the average person walks around with several radio receivers on them all the time now.
I wouldn’t say it’s good at determining actual intent, just good at deciding what intent is going to be assigned by the system.
I’ve always wondered how much steganography is in practice - if it’s being practiced well, nobody knows. Setup a HAM station that snaps a photo at sunset and a couple of other random times per day. Transmit the photo in a standard, open digital mode, but hide your message in the noisy lower bits of the 3 color channels 0-255 R G and B, you can easily modify 6 bits per pixel without visually distorting the image, drop that to 1 bit per pixel and nobody who doesn’t know your scheme could ever find it. To the local hams, it’s three chirps a day, with a reliable pretty picture of the sunset and a couple of more varied times. As a utility channel, that’s three opportunities per day to secretly communicate something to a listener that nobody can identify. If the picture is just 2MP, that’s 250kBytes of bandwidth per image.
Absolutely, though the “listeners” there are more readily identified, even via Tor.
Well on some popular image board like one of the hundreds of cat subs on Reddit, how do you identify a “listener” who is looking for a particular user to upload a picture of an orange cat? Thousands of people will view that post perfectly innocently.
The point is: IP addresses that download the content are traceable (and spoofable, but that leaves trails too…) Yeah, you might be one of thousands, but every day you log in you increase your odds of being spotted.
Listening to longwave radio? Yeah, basically anybody anywhere on the planet with a receiver. Even local broadcasts it is nigh impossible to know who is listening where within the broadcast radius and the average person walks around with several radio receivers on them all the time now.