It's actually quite hard to get the FCC to fine you, you have to do something very clearly illegal for a very long period of time, and ignore the warnings given... Such as the WISP in UT some years back which continued to operate PtMP last mile 5 GHz stuff in the DFS radar bands, and got fined $25,000.
If you go through the notices of apparent liability issued by the FCC, which are all public, the individual persons getting fined are egregiously dumb, such as the guy who operated a multi band cellular jammer on his daily commute north/south on the interstate freeway in Florida. Or you have to do something like operate a pirate FM radio station for many months at a time always from the same fixed location.
The FCC's enforcement bureau does not have a great number of staff or resources to go chasing down everything.
Back after Trump cut the FCC budget, I heard the number of active staff patrolling the airwaves went down to < 11. Think of that... 11 people for all of the United States. I know they have listening stations in various areas, but still 11 people can't effectively police the whole United States.
The practical implication is “after we catch you, if we find that a radio as used, we will add that to the list of charges, perhaps making you more compliant come plea bargain time.”
By way of documentation, this refers to FCC Part 97 rules, specifically §97.113(4):
"Music using a phone emission except as specifically provided elsewhere in this section; communications intended to facilitate a criminal act; messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning, except as otherwise provided herein; obscene or indecent words or language; or false or deceptive messages, signals or identification."
I think they're saying if you use the radio to commit your crime they can and will pile on additional federal charges.
I'm sure they saw the paramilitary LARPers at the Capitol carrying radios capable of the frequencies in question. I'm sure some of them are on video using the radios and are about to be charged.
That sounds like what's being said, though I don't know how practical it will be to try and monitor/triangulate/whatever a bunch of short range, low-power FRS walkie-talkies. Maybe it just means if you get arrested and have one on your person, you get more charges.
