Ok, someone please explain to me-—totally clueless-—if the gubment can regulate everything else, why wouldn’t they also clamp down on ham licenses and/or usage? How can they control hams? Just asking the questions going in.
They _could_ prohibit ham radio activities.
They _can_ enforce it by triangulating the location of transmissions and doing raids, but it would have to be worth the effort and violators would be creative.
But...I don’t think that would work out well for anyone.
The contrast is that the Internet, while designed to route data around blockages, in practicality the bulk of data traffic runs thru a very few “backbone” wires & services. Shut those down, and the Internet will look like rush hour in a major city with the freeways closed: functional, but barely.
I’m thinking the same thing. What’s to stop them from refusing the license?
And to everyone who has a ham radio, isn’t a fairly tall antennae required? That would seem like a “target” to me. A CB is mobile and hard to catch if you’re on the move.
They could stop HAM communications if they put every electronic warfare plane we own in the air 24/7. It would also have a hugh and series impact on the cell phone network. Probably not something they would do. HAM communications can be burst transmitted - very hard to track and trap. I am in Reno listening to a $30 HAM handheld radio. There is two conversations going on on frequencies I monitor. One is between Australia and a guy two miles from me. The other is two guys with hand held radios talking between Reno and Salt Lake City using the repeater network and a mobile spot parked along I-80. The Mobile will be moving on shortly to his next scheduled stop. A few hundred of those and the feds have no chance of shutting it down.