It's possible but also difficult to jam radio. That's part of why programs like Radio Free Asia[0,1] exist. Even if you can't broadcast from inside a territory you can broadcast from outside. It can be jammed but it is a tough cat and mouse game and jamming isn't precise. So when you jam there are causalities. Not to mention that jamming can be quite expensive.
I'm not saying that makes the problem easy, but I'll say that jamming isn't a very strong defense.
Though the bigger issue here is probably bandwith. It's hard to be both long range and data dense. There's probably easier ways to distribute this. Hell, both Koreas are known to transport different things via balloons.
[1] It is also why projects like Tor and Signal get funding from RFA. Maybe the US doesn't want encrypted services here, but if anything, it's for the same reason they do want encrypted services in other countries.
I’m not sure that’s super feasible any longer with the advent of cheap SDRs. Over-the-horizon HF broadcast can be heard with a simple speaker wire antenna inside your house. If anyone is interested in trying to deploy such an idea, I’d love to participate as an avid ham.
Could I ask for a source on that and how common it is?
Seems like it was used way back in the cold war (and even then not blocked/jammed) and I'd guess that current authoritarian regimes would perhaps not bother considering how few could use it.
If you are in Europe you can easily listen Dengle Welat (1) or other Kurdish radios jammed by Turkey government with the anthem or other patriotic songs. Or the Buzzer, the Russian military UVB-76 transmission (2), jammed frequently by Ukrainian ham radio operators
The UK used to get around this with very powerful medium-wave signals, the site at Orfordness could put out the BBC World Service at 2 MW towards the USSR and the Eastern Bloc. This site was built on the remains of a 1960s UK/US over-the-horizon radar installation that never worked properly.
These broadcasts were shut down in the early '10s but ironically one of the masts is still in use by Radio Caroline, the former pirate who broke the BBC's radio monopoly by putting their station just outside of UK territorial waters. Their 4 kW goes pretty far given the site's previous role, heard them as far away as the Lake District.
It's possible but also difficult to jam radio. That's part of why programs like Radio Free Asia[0,1] exist. Even if you can't broadcast from inside a territory you can broadcast from outside. It can be jammed but it is a tough cat and mouse game and jamming isn't precise. So when you jam there are causalities. Not to mention that jamming can be quite expensive.
I'm not saying that makes the problem easy, but I'll say that jamming isn't a very strong defense.
Though the bigger issue here is probably bandwith. It's hard to be both long range and data dense. There's probably easier ways to distribute this. Hell, both Koreas are known to transport different things via balloons.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia
[1] It is also why projects like Tor and Signal get funding from RFA. Maybe the US doesn't want encrypted services here, but if anything, it's for the same reason they do want encrypted services in other countries.
I’m not sure that’s super feasible any longer with the advent of cheap SDRs. Over-the-horizon HF broadcast can be heard with a simple speaker wire antenna inside your house. If anyone is interested in trying to deploy such an idea, I’d love to participate as an avid ham.
Could I ask for a source on that and how common it is?
Seems like it was used way back in the cold war (and even then not blocked/jammed) and I'd guess that current authoritarian regimes would perhaps not bother considering how few could use it.
If you are in Europe you can easily listen Dengle Welat (1) or other Kurdish radios jammed by Turkey government with the anthem or other patriotic songs. Or the Buzzer, the Russian military UVB-76 transmission (2), jammed frequently by Ukrainian ham radio operators
(1) It's usually around 11500Khz
(2) 4625 Khz
Source: trust me bro, but you can find HF jamming pretty easily on Internet connected SDRs, especially near "sensitive" countries.
The USSR had an extensive shortwave radio jamming program!
The UK used to get around this with very powerful medium-wave signals, the site at Orfordness could put out the BBC World Service at 2 MW towards the USSR and the Eastern Bloc. This site was built on the remains of a 1960s UK/US over-the-horizon radar installation that never worked properly.
These broadcasts were shut down in the early '10s but ironically one of the masts is still in use by Radio Caroline, the former pirate who broke the BBC's radio monopoly by putting their station just outside of UK territorial waters. Their 4 kW goes pretty far given the site's previous role, heard them as far away as the Lake District.
... to block BBC and Voice of America, RFE and RL.
But they recently switched to a much cheaper and more effective jamming program: Trump [1].
[1] https://apnews.com/article/voa-radio-trump-media-cuts-5f87df...
if it became a widespread practice, wouldnt even the countries that yet dont do it probably start doing it?