Ham Operator Must Pay in First-Responder Interference Case
Ham Operator Must Pay in First-Responder Interference Case
A ham radio operator in Idaho must pay a record $34,000 penalty for causing interference with communications during a fire suppression effort.
A ham radio operator in Idaho must pay a record $34,000 penalty for causing interference with communications during a fire suppression effort.
"... put fire suppression and public safety itself at risk.”
Just a side note - I wish people would rediscover the term "in danger" instead of saying "at risk" all the time. Doesn't "endangered public safety" sound worse than putting it at risk? Risk is a bland, sterile word, like you're deciding what to do about your mutual funds. Danger has so much more flavor - it's looming and immediate. At risk sounds like you're reading a menu. You can "take" a risk or not. But when you're in danger you better get off your ass and get OUT of danger right now, or you could be toast. Danger comes after you. It knows where you live. Danger has teeth. Let's get danger back in play!
The notion of risk rely on probability of the danger to occur. Think about a massive meteor crossing Earth's path. It might be the end of life on Earth, so it's a overwhelming danger. But it's very unlikely, so the risk is very low. On the other side, the risk of getting a cold in winter is pretty high, but the danger is very low.
Yes, danger exists whether you know about it or not, and risk is the chance of it happening to you, a decision to take that chance. You can risk going out in a tornado, but when you you're in danger.
I can't help but feel that the punishment is overly harsh. Yes he absolutely shouldn't have done it. But they haven't said that it actually caused any harm, and he was doing it in good faith (although, again shouldn't have). They also admit that his financial situation could justify a reduced penalty, so it feels ridiculous that they don't reduce the penalty to something he can actually afford.
Everyone in the Amateur Radio community knows that the FCC is fed up with people using frequencies that they don't have legal access to and as a result they've been issuing increasingly harsh penalties over the past few years.
As for whether he was "doing it in good faith", well, I question that. The guy was trying to get firefighters to protect his radio repeater site and one of the repeaters located there was for his own business. He had a personal financial interest in getting a fire team over there.
I'm an Amateur Radio operator myself and I have limited sympathy for the situation this guy put himself in. The proper course of action was to leave the wildfire area and come back when it was over, not keep making illegal radio transmissions until a fire chief drives over there and tells you to shut the fuck up.
Yeah, outside of say, him radioing that there was a fire team/people trapped in a life-threatening situation in X location, I don't think there's almost any situation where abusing the bands is justified.