[cynwoody]

There are plenty of pirate shortwave (using your term here..) operating right here in the good ol' USA. They're difficult to find because of the way propagation works and how different frequencies and wavelengths bounce off different levels of our atmosphere.

They can still triangulate a pirate's general location as long as he stays on the air long enough to have an audience. Then, when the black helicopters get within line of sight range, he will be found easily.

The real reason shortwave pirates don't get caught is that nobody cares, as long as the pirate isn't jamming something somebody important (such as DOD or VOA) cares about. And, with the rise of the internet and super high bandwidth undersea fiber optic cable connectivity, shortwave in general is of less and less importance.

I suspect, nobody much cared is also more or less why it took so long to bust TOUCH. But why now?

[usconservative]

The real reason shortwave pirates don't get caught is that nobody cares, as long as the pirate isn't jamming something somebody important (such as DOD or VOA) cares about. And, with the rise of the internet and super high bandwidth undersea fiber optic cable connectivity, shortwave in general is of less and less importance.

You may be right. 6.925 is in the 43 meter band which is heavily used by the Military, I'm somewhat curious as to the risk of a shortwave pirate being caught in that band is. Skywave is difficult to triangulate, especially so during scatter conditions when many shortwave pirates seem to target their transmissions. The Military likely has the capabilities to triangulate under those conditions, I'm not so sure the FCC does given how their budget has been stripped to next to nothing and their primary focus is now fraud under the Obamaphone program......