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A one-clause extract from the
The Radiocommunications Act 1989
and amendments
Quoting verbatim from the New Zealand Radiocommunication Regulations (General User Radio Licence for Amateur Radio Operators) Notice 2013 Clause 5 (4) Communications must not be encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning, except for control signals by the operators of remotely controlled amateur stations. The word encoded appears in the context of interest, which by the accepted definition refers to the act of converting a string of letters, numbers or symbols (presumably originating from plain text) into a data stream, most often in a digital or pseudo-digital format. The quoted clause lacks any other useful detail, is at best ambiguous and at worst obsolete. The word 'encryption', whereby plain text is converted into cypher text [with or without digital encoding] is conspicuous by its absence. Logically therefore, encryption is permitted because it is not excluded. But because nothing what-so-ever is stated about such encypherment, one is left to guess whether cypher text needs to be decypherable at all, by anyone other than the intended recipient. It seems to depend upon whether the author of the legislation understood the definitions of the two very different uses and functions of those notionally secretive methodologies at the time of writing the Bill for (presumably) consideration by a Select Committee before being enacted by Parliament into Law. Enigma encryption and the recovery of plain text is relatively simple compared to (say) SSTV, where not only are frequency-shifted tones used to convey data, but even fit-for-purpose data capture and display hardware is required. The ease with which Enigma encyphered messages may be decyphered is proven by the fact that all the necessary decryption resources are provided provided in freely-available software, as well as the keys being readily accessible from a clearly specified website. These resources are provided despite there being no Law prohibiting encryption and nothing to indicate the requirement for decryption resources, either in hardware or software, should encryption be used. A further critical ambiguity exists in the wording of the regulation surrounding the use of control signals which are specifically permitted for remotely controlling amateur radio stations. But there is no mention of the identical genre of signals used for controlling IRLP nodes via amateur radio and repeaters. Since such tones are not directly controlling remote amateur stations, but instead control computers, are they therefore illegal? Documentation is publicly available detailing some, but certainly not all, DTMF tone-control functions used for IRLP computer control. Fortunately, most, but certainly not all, amateur operators identify themselves and state the purpose of their DTMF-tone encoded transmissions. Ergo, encoded transmissions without any possibility of being decoded to reveal their function, legitimate or otherwise, are regularly heard on the amateur bands without any known detrimental effect. It appears therefore that under present regulations, (since no encoding of text or symbols has taken place), neither 'decoding' nor decryption utilities need be provided for Enigma transmissions. Despite the above conclusion, this website, along with those either linked to or quoted, provide all the facilities needed to decrypt any Enigma-encrypted message which has been transmitted by this station and those corresponding, thereby stopping dead in its tracks any proposition that the purpose of the Enigma encryption was to intended to obscure the meaning of the plain text. Instead, it can easily be seen that its purpose was simply to arouse interest in an historical technique and increase the range of skills and disciplines employed by amateur radio operators with a penchant for communication in Vail, Morse or whatever other interrupted CW-type codes he wishes to deploy within the allocated bands. Because during any given exchange, both outgoing and incoming Enigma traffic will by default always use the key from the same dated row on the same key page, traffic may be decrypted as soon as any listener desires, in conjunction with the free utilities downloadable from the websites mentioned. Therefore uncoded amateur transmissions from this station remain compliant with the appropriate New Zealand Radiocommunication Regulations because they have neither (a) been encoded, or (b) been encrypted with any intent to obscure their meaning. Anyone wishing to read them is easily able to within a short space of time, and is quite entitled to do so. Only the mode of encryption is rare compared to any other mode of encryption or encoding in use on the amateur bands today. It is obviously INTENDED by this author that by providing the data necessary to perform decryption, contemporary Enigma-encrypted transmissions to and from this station may be decrypted quickly, without let or hindrance. In fact, even if the information (provided here) was either not provided at all or was intentionally suppressed, through use of today's ubiquitous computing power, the machine settings could be discovered within minutes, providing modern equipment and the ad hoc software is deployed. Thus it can be demonstrated that Enigma encryption, as a security or obscuring protocol, is well past its use-by date and can no longer be considered a secure cypher in any sense of the word. Except for the wiring, battery and incandescent lamps, the original Enigma machine processes were entirely mechanical and required a great deal of slow manual input, often employing three operators, each attending to a different function. Even with the Virtual Enigma Machine (thanks to the award winning freeware EnigmaSim program by Dirk Rijmenants) there is, not unexpectedly, considerable keyboard input required, retaining the mode's authenticity with its characteristic slowness and difficulty, compared to doing the same thing with other forms of digital/analogue coding, e.g. PSK31, SSTV, RTTY, or indeed any other 'modern' non-voice mode. While Enigma cannot be decrypted in real time, the most obvious similarity between it and all other such modes is that either special hardware, or the downloading and installation of ad hoc software is mandatory for decoding them, otherwise they all remain unreadable to the casual listener. Conforming to the expected standards of good amateur radio operator practice for transmissions, outgoing encrypted Enigma traffic from this station consists only of civil and so-called inconsequential comments (conforming entirely with the Regulations), in exactly the same way as amateur voice communications should. Obviously, no such guarantee can be given, or responsibility taken, for incoming traffic. The URL of this website, and therefore the de facto provision of all necessary tools for decrypting Enigma, is sent in clear, in the closing protocol of each Enigma message: 'DECRYPT ENIGMA QSL.NET/ZL3TK immediately preceding the standard handover protocol.
Should any further support be needed for the argument that Enigma encrypted transmissions on the amateur radio bands, when configured and provisioned appropriately, are not only legal but constitute absolutely no threat to national or international security, it is provided in truckloads by the amazing Enigma Reloaded organization based in Italy, which has been conducting annual international Enigma contests since 2014, without even a squeek from authorities. See their well-appointed website here.
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