- The company claiming something you said, even out of context, could be interpreted as coming from the company. If you choose to disclose you work for a company, you become a spokesperson for that company unless you disclaim those words (even then, there are other considerations to make regardless of whose opinion is being expressed, because you linked yourself to the company.).
By putting that, they decrease the likelihood of reprocussion in the workplace for things said outside of the workplace.
You can still get in hot water for anything you say that ties back to you or the company regardless if you disclose who your employer is.
This is the grey-area that corporations typically carve out in a social-media policy so that employees can engage in discussions around their employer without being on behalf of their employer.
It's still a perilous position to put yourself in as an employee. Innocent and innocuous things can always be misunderstood or misinterpreted.
What happens when you use that disclaimer and are self-employed though?
- This is the de facto playbook for one of the Mega-Evil Corp.'s CPE firmware (Gateways, IPTV receivers, etc...).
New firmware is pushed in phases 1%, 5%, 10%, 25%, 50% then full scale.
Each stage has some delay incorporated for acquisition/application and then for telemetry (including support contacts from affected accounts) to determine impact and allow for regression fixes.
The other reason they would phase launches is because of firmware builds being used across multiple CPE models and hardware revisions, where only a small subset of hardware could wind up being problematic, but not discovered until deployment.
When you have millions of devices deployed, even a fraction of devices having an issue can create a shit storm on the support side of things.
It all seems so obvious once you know to think about it.
- 433MHz is attractive because it's low frequency allows it to propogare farther with less energy input than higher freqs (900MHz; 2.4GHz) would need and does not suffer from nearly as much reflection off of obstacles thanks to that longer wave.
There are several frequency ranges in the US that are unlicensed for transmission. But don't confuse unlicensed with a lack of rules governing what you are allowed to transmit; how often you can transmit and for how long. Because you can plop a 433MHz transceiver into anything, you want to be careful that you're not clogging up the local airwaves by not knowing to know the rules. Also, most smart meters (near me anyway) operat in this band sending out pulses every so often. They mesh together to relay the data towards a central collector. Thanks to that low frequency, hundreds of meters can be visible at times showing up as tiny chirps all over this area of the spectrum. Unfortunately this also means that some cheap receivers (just looking for any signal on a very specific frequency in that range, can be randomly triggered by this 'noise'. But also, because it's used by utilities, to want to make sure they don't end up having an issue with meter readings because you began running a wifi link over 433MHz.
- It's not especially hard to modulate a signal on frequencies you shouldn't be. You don't even need to be doing it intentionally thanks to the lovely phenomenon of harmonics amongst other factors.
Software defined transceivers exist. Adjustable antennas exist. Poorly shielded electronics that can cause further noise propagation to broadcast out of the transmit side also exist.
You can also change the intended broadcast frequency of some cheap handheld radios using a USB cable and an off-the-shelf antenna.
There is very little in the way of the general public to do something illegal, wittingly or otherwise, in RF.
I'd argue that 'capability' is a naive limiter here as they'd be more likely to do this by accident than on purpose (or ignorance vs malice).
There are tons of illegal/unpermitted/unlicensed broadcasts happening all of the time. They only become an issue when regulators need to enforce rules, usually due to noticed interference.
Bad bonding/grounding is probably the most common cause. RF exists other places too. RF that was meant to be contained in a wire can use these same allocated OTA frequencies because they were never meant to escape that closed system... But do, mostly through poor bonding/grounding.
As you can probably see by now, there is little actually stopping anyone from broadcasting on any particular frequency. Regulators will catch them if they're causing destructive interference, eventually.
But you could potentially use 'illegal' RF for years and never be noticed. Your transmit power/range and your local environment (who else is using the spectrum locally) will dictate that for you more than any allocation rules alone.
The amateur radio scene is a special thing. They share knowledge, experience and more than anything, a culture of informed operation of RF.
I'd encourage anyone interested in operating any RF systems to acquire or at least study enough to acquire an amateur Technician license (US).
- Here[0] is some more info about amateur emergency services in the US
[0]: https://www.arrl.org/amateur-radio-emergency-communication
- This is such a common argument for everything NIMBY. Your point remains valid, but the argument you've presented comes across uninspired.
What if you had no way to stop or from happening; what do you think might be reasonable mitigation steps that regulators could take to minimize the risk to your BBQ?
If something becomes an inevitability, you probably should be prepared with an argument that is accepting of that inevitability while still addressing your worries/concerns.
Look at the discussion surrounding the typography on Pope Francis' tombstone to see how the typography conversation/debate easily transcended the religious background it originated from, which seems atypical to me.