Hey, Before we get started, be sure to head over to ham Radio
two dot com forward slash email dash sign up to join my email list of
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of another HF radio sign up today and thank you for the support. Do
you have to give up your Fourth Amendment rights when you get a Ham radio
license inside of the USA? What does that mean? What does the Fourth
Amendment say? And what do we as ham radio operators have to give up
by getting license? Let's talk about it today. I think it's first important
to define what the Fourth Amendment says. I did this First Amendment video about
freedom of speech on the airwaves, and you can check that video out.
I'll put a link up here somewhere. But like that video, I think
it's first important to define what of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution says.
Once again, the first ten amendments to the US Constitution are called the
Bill of Rights. It was part of the original Constitution, but it wasn't
written at the same time as the Declaration of Independence. But nevertheless, this
is what the Fourth Amendment says. The right of the people to be secure
in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures
shall not be violated, And no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause,
supported by oath or affirmation in other words, by like a jury or judge
or something like that, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the
persons or things to be seized, particularly describing the place to be searched and
what to be seized. So it's important to understand what that says. That
Frank often argues that he thinks TSA searches violate the Fourth Amendment rights, and
I think he has he has a point to a certain degree. He has
a point. But it's not the same thing. Whether it is or isn't,
it is kind of not the point. It's not the same thing as
go as voluntarily buying a plane ticket, going to the airport and volunteering for
a TSAs or being forced into a TSA search. Although no one's forcing you
to buy a plane ticket and fly to wherever you're going. Maybe your job
but still I don't know. That's a gray area, okay, but it's
not the same thing as someone coming into your home. So this has been
talked about a lot. The main reason I'm doing this now is because I
had someone come by the channel and put up this comment on one of my
videos. It wasn't even the First Amendment video. Was on a totally different
video, and this is what he put up a comment saying. So,
this person made what I thought was a polite and respectful comment, and I
tried not to be rude back to him. I did not consider him to
be a control. In fact, his first sentence says, longtime subscriber to
him radio two point zero. Okay. Down here on the second line,
it says, just remember those with him radio life instances give up their constitutional
right to warrantless searches of their homes, unsure if the same goes for GMRS
licensed individuals, and if that doesn't extend to their entire family, as the
license covers them all. Meanwhile, non licensed people maintain their constitutional rights.
It is a complex problem for some that can be broken down into categories,
such as the plane's two pit idiots, virtue signaling, squealers, angry,
want to be cops, kids, uninformed or ignorant types that probably many more.
And my response to him, which was stern and direct and to the
point. But I didn't mean it to be rude. Okay, it is
a completely false idea that you give up your Fourth Amendment rights after you get
a HAM radio license. That lie has perpetrated the Internet and it is just
wrong. If you read the agreement that you automatically adhere to for Free band
Radio CBNFRS, it has the same verbiage that HAM licensing does, so does
GMRS. None of it makes you give up any of your constitutional rights.
End of story. And that's what I wrote back to him, and he
did reply, and he's like, well, you seem pretty sure about that.
He's like, maybe I'm wrong, and he again, he was very
respectful, don't I didn't mean it to be an argument session. I responded
back to his reply and that kind of thing. So I was poking around,
like, you know what, I need to make a video on that.
Other channels have made a video on that in the past, but I've
never made one, so I thought i'd make one. Poking around here.
I'm a member as you might know, Ham Radio Prep is one of my
sponsors. Okay, so you can always save a twenty percent discount on all
of the courses at hemradoprep dot com with the coupon code of Jason twenty.
Hamrado Prep put up this article last year in twenty twenty three, saying mythbusted.
You do not forfeit your fourth right Fourth Amendment rights when you get a
Ham radio license. Okay, and this is written by ham Radio Prep in
January of twenty twenty three, is still true today. I read through this
and I very much agree with what it says. This is not legal advice,
but let's start with the facts as as we know them. You do
not forfeit your Fourth Amendment rights doing reasonable search and seizure by getting Ham radio
license. Holding an fc C license does not allow federal or local law enforcement
the right to end your home at any time. Okay. It's very important.
Okay, you have to understand what the license actually says. And once
again, it is part of the technician license exam for Ham radio. It's
one of the test questions. But it's the same verbage that's on a CB
radio and it's the same verbage that's in that long document that you sign your
name to when you just purchase a GMRS license. FCC can come knock on
your door any time they want to, even if it's for a bad transformer
that might be on a telephone pole in your backyard. Okay, if the
electric company has put electric power lines in your backyard and one of them is
producing a bunch of RFI, they can come knocking on your door and ask
request to see the equipment that they believe to be faulty. They can't barge
in, they can't seize anything, they can't violate your Fourth Amendment rights,
but they can knock on your door and request whether you have a radio or
a license or not. You may wonder what the difference is between an unreasonable
search prohibited under the Fourth Mimdent and what's considered reasonable. If the FCC is
investigating interference complaints and your station is searched, it's considered reasonable as the agency
is attempting to resolve a complaint. So someone's complained. At this point in
time, Congress has legislated rules to allow the FCC Enforcement Bureau agents to inspect
radio equipment. So somebody has complained at this point in time, and generally
speaking, it's people in an hoa or a neighbor they say, oh,
that guy down the street, here's a Ham radio antenna, and my microwave
or my TV's not acting right. It's probably that guy with the Ham radio
license. I know a lot of you have come us well, sad Hams
have probably called the FCC. No, it's usually a neighbor that lives down
the street from a Ham radio operator that blames the Ham radio operator everything,
because we all have big as antennas in our backyard and usually it's the touch
lamp in their own home causing the interference. But leaving that aside for the
moment, Congress has legislated rules to allow FCC enforcement agents to inspect radio equipment.
This can be at any time they are working on interference issues if they
believe specific equipment is involved. This inspection rule applies across all radio services in
addition to Ham's. This means broadcast stations, cbgmors, and even public safety
stations are subject to inspection if necessary. Here's the fourth Amendment already read you
guys at fourth miment. This would leave it open to legislation on what is
a reasonable search? That's a statement in any of question mark that's a terrible
sentence, guys, Sorry, it just is. As part of the rulemaking
process, Congress has determined the FCC station inspection of the reasonable search because of
public safety issues at the FCC points out on their inspection sheet, the FCC
is inspecting the equipment, not your house. This is important to allow because
of the role that radio when broadcasting plays in everyday lives. Perhaps the interference
is keeping firefighters from responding to fire calls. A stuck MIC is pre inventing
your local ambulance service from knowing how to get to a heart attack victim on
off frequency device is blocking planes from landing. In all these cases, it's
prudent to have a group empowered to resolve these issues. The federal government has
made the FCC Enforcement Bureau the group to deal with the safety issues. Inspections
are one of their tools. Here's how the FCC explains the process in their
inspection sheet. Once you open the door, the agents show their FCC identification
card and badge, identify themselves by name an agency, and should state the
purpose of the visit. They should request permission to inspect your radio station.
The agents may also ask to see records such as licenses for the station operator
or station logs. A lot of time station logs. Agents, however,
should never This is from the FCC's website or FCC's inspection fact sheet. Okay,
Agents however, should never open private cabinets, drawers, or other private
items in the search for license documents. So what happens is if you say
no when the FCC knocks are on your door to inspect your equipment. It
is a condition of your hand radio license to allow the equipment inspections. Some
hams have told the FCC agent's note and separate consequences. They have been subject
to severe fines and loss of their hand radio license and even equipment for not
allowing inspection. I posted a video just a few weeks ago about a CB
operator that was fined for also not allowing inspection. Now, whether how strict
these fines are and how much they're enforced, I really don't know. Sometimes
they find you and then nobody ever pays it, and I don't know how
all that works on the back end. The FCC keeps a history of enforcement
actions on their website, including imateur radio enforcement actions. They also publish a
table called base Amounts for forfeitures, which lists failure to permit inspection as a
minimum fine of seven thousand dollars. One of our instructors looked at the FCC
enforcement actions and HAM radio finds over the last ten years and find that in
for BFR's Hamtechlibrary dot com blog. So, okay, that might be may
maybe I'll go into that on another video recapping. Congress has said an FCC
equipment inspection is a reasonable search. If you don't comply, it could cost
you at least seven thousand dollars and your hand radio license impossibly equipment. That
said, these are written by Congress, and Congress can change them. If
you think it should be changed, visit Congress dot gov and contact your local
representative and state your case. So I think it's important to acknowledge that sometimes
these inspections are necessary. We live in a free society for the most part.
I'm talking about people in the USA right now. We live in a
free society. But my rights end where yours begin, and your rights end
where mine begin. And both of our rights end where his or hers or
theirs begin. So I can go outside and swing my fist all day long,
but as soon as I knock someone else in the nose, I violated
their rights. So when you're driving down the road with a fifteen hundred watt
powered CB, that's got a really dirty signal because all those because cbs aren't
made to be that powerful, and amplifiers might be clean, but the CB
itself might be dirty, and you're blowing speakers out on TVs, on computer
speakers. That's a common one back in the day. Nobody has answering machines
anymore, but back in the day on my own CB, I used to
get complaints that I would drive down the road and I wouldn't be I would
not be running an amplifier, but I would not be running legally either.
But I would get complaints from my neighbors and my parents that I was coming
over their answering machine. We used to fool around with the drive through with
McDonald's and Wendy's and Taco Bell when we were in college, and we would
we would get in the drive through and we'd be behind or two or three
cars back in the drive through, and we would hear the person. We
would hear the loud speaker inside the McDonald's, and we'd key up our CBS,
which might have had too much power. Maybe maybe they did. I
don't remember right now, I don't remember if they had too much power or
not. We cay over our CVS and hear osls over the speaker and intercom
system inside the restaurant. The things you do when your mom's not looking right.
So, but these types of things, I mean, it's it's funny.
I shouldn't have done that. Okay, I shouldn't have done that.
But it's funny to a certain degree, Okay, but it's not funny when
it interfer interferes with someone's home. So once again, my rights to talk
on the CB or talk on the HAM radio end when it starts to interfering
with you and some piece of equipment in your area. If you live close
to an airport, you sure as heck don't want to interfere with the air
traffic control guys or the AM broadcast band or AM aircraft band. Okay,
if you live near a radio station, you probably don't want to interfere with
them too much because they've probably got more money than you do and can come
after you with some hefty lawyers and whatnot. So I think it's good to
have some sort of regulation in place. But I think it's very important to
understand that havingham radio license does not force you to forfeit any of your rights
first, second, third, four, fifth, six, tenth, twelve,
thirtieth, whatever amendment. It doesn't force you to give up any rights.
And if you use any radio service inside the USA, you are still
subject to those same sort of searches, request for searches, request for reasonable
searches if you are actually causing interference, either by design, either on purpose,
or if something's just faulty and you don't know about it, and they're
trying to track down a bad transformer or transmitter somewhere in your property. That
might be in your property, it might be in your neighbor's property. They
might knock on your door by mistake. Who knows that is what that is.
I would like to know what you guys think about that fact. I've
done the First Amendment and I've done the Fourth Amendment. If you want to
see those videos, check out over here the First Amendment video and the CBE
radio operator who was fined for refusing a search. Check out those videos over
here and put a comment below, because I'd really like to know what you
think about this story and about these statistics of Fourth Amendment rights inside of Ham
Radio seventy three