I'm kind of on the fence with this issue. Local ARES wants it, while a lot of others do not. It could easily be abused, and that's the fear. Encryption should be available for certain operations in emergencies, but as was pointed out in the "whacker" thread on eham, the use of a commercial band, etc could be utilized for such matters, instead of bring ham bands into it. With the encryption mess, is also the mandatory background check that state level ARES tried to thrust upon us recently.