A recent article in The Guardian describes the activities of a group called Telecomix, “a group engaged in ‘guerrilla informational warfare’ [that] is helping the embattled in Libya, Egypt and Syria.” One of the things they tried was amateur radio. It quotes Peter Fein, a spokesman for the group as saying:
“There’s a real attitude of throwing a lot of stuff against the wall and seeing what works,” pointing to Telecomix’s early attempt to create a ham (amateur) radio network with activists on the ground in the first few weeks of the Egyptian uprisings. “People that have access to ham radio were military guys and regime supporters – I’d be happy to talk to them to but … yeah …”
It goes on to talk about other ways of collecting and disseminating information, including the deployment of wireless networks. That’s not exactly ham radio, but ham radio skills would certainly be helpful for doing this.
k8gu says
I have mixed feelings about amateur radio being used in this way (or attempting to use it this way, as the case may be). It’s one thing to pass health-and-welfare traffic, medical advice, etc. It’s another to provide communication support to an uprising. Of course, using modified amateur gear or HF land-mobile equipment outside the amateur bands might be a different situation…