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LA Cops get Wi-Fi Drive By Access
An anonymous reader writes "
A PC World.com article: "the Los Angeles Police Department plans to install 27 wireless local area networks (WLANs) at police stations throughout the city in the next three months, according to Roger Ham, deputy chief for communications at the LAPD.
Ham says he plans to equip police cars with handheld computers from Symbol Technologies. The handheld devices will be equipped with 802.11b WLAN cards that communicate in the unlicensed 2.4-GHz band with access points installed in police stations at a raw data rate of 11 megabits per second-far faster than the 19.2-kilobits-per-second throughput in the department's 800-MHz wide area network (WAN) installed by Motorola two years ago and covering the city.
Will Strauss, an analyst at Forward Concepts, called Ham's plan "a cheap way to get bandwidth" that would allow LAPD units to periodically pick up high-bandwidth data as they pass by police stations equipped with WLAN systems."
Gah, don't put LA and Drive By in the same sentence!
Interesting. Will the use WiFi increase LAPD's capability for police brutality to new level?
LA and Drive By Two things that go together better than Michael Jackson and little boys.
I can't be the only one that instantly associated LAPD and Driveby am I?
Find out about my new childrens book: SS Death Camp Criminal Batallion Go To Monte Carlo For The Massacre
...to drive a police car and surf for pr0n at the same time. ;-)
Ham says he plans to equip police cars with handheld computers from Symbol Technologies.
Please ensure the handhelds are soldered to the car. If they're lost or stolen our state-of-the-art cops will have trouble saving face.
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
VPN tunnel, and 2-factor authentication (RSA secureID), to get connected. otherwise it would be very unsecure.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Ham said that he views WLANs as a stopgap measure and that police departments around the country need additional WAN spectrum ... large police departments would eventually need to buy wideband WAN service from commercial cellular carriers
... but the article focuses on 802.11b when 802.11g is supposed to offer a substantial boost in performance -- can't they just upgrade their equipment when 11g gets stable instead of having to use up other parts of the spectrum?
I think this guy's got the right idea, deploying wireless stuff around police stations
So does this make them Ham Radios?
I wonder... 802.11 has large security holes... It's only a matter of time before someone snorts the WEP key and gains access to the system.
It _would_ make it a lot easier to -say- make your speeding tickets "disappear" etc...
RickTheWizKid
..."you can NOT leave the magic!"
Either they would have to have high power transmitters or put the AP's close to the road. Another option would be to use a nice yagi....
"Hey Stan, it says here there is a new donut shop up ahead on Wilshire. We can even order over online! You game? I'll buy."
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Wasn't it the Department of Homeland Security that was concerned about the security of wireless networks that extend far beyond the property of the network owner? The article says nothing about how the LAPD plans to secure this network. WEP just doesn't cut it, as we learned years ago when a variety of people broke WEP keys using timing and other techniques. I suppose they're going to follow everyone else's lead and place a firewall between wireless and wired networks, providing VPN access. I astonished me this was not even mentioned in passing in the article.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
so now other cops will know right away that i have already receieved my warning.
chillax137
They need to put them in donut shops to reach the greatest number of cops.
Yo. @ Randy's catching a cruller. Where ya?
Wilshire. Gettin ready to go roll some whores for the night's take
Kewl. Be there in a minute.
sweet. well save sum pimp ass to kick
dam
?
just got pwdrd shug on my shirt
LOL better clean it up b4 sarge sees ya.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
LA will be a giant hot spot
I know there are security issues in using Wi-Fi but on a serious note, the police department would be transmitting sensetive stuff which I'm sure could be intercepted and somehow read eventually with the right key... I wonder if they are atleast thinking of a way to make it more secure... They could encrypt data sent from the central station and decrypt from the car, they could use a handshake process for authentication or they could just let things be sent and received raw and wonder why no one is seen doing anything wrong all of the sudden.
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
Now they'll have what, video of a suspect if they do a drive by?
Sounds good in theory, but in practice a few years down the road, people can hack an open system like that.
God spoke to me
"file transfer corrupted by high speed pursuit"
"rights violation while trying to access RodneyKing.doc"
And surely they'd be better off putting the access points in Dunkin' Donut franchises? Then they'd get 100% coverage more-or-less all the time as the cops seldom leave the vicinity of a DD!
-psy
I consulted on a deal to help NJSP patch the Win98 laptops installed in their cruisers. Apparently they too have a 19.2k link statewide, but have a higher bandwidth microwave link available when the cars are very close to the station houses. We built routines to pull down packages by ftp over the microwave link when they turned on the car and booted the laptop.
Intelligent Life on Earth
Cops are having phun while doing oldskool Wardriving! Cool!
Now cops can search Google ultra-quickly for their criminals...
"Hey Frank! That the guy?"
"Hang on Burt, lemme do an Images search..."
The coolest voice ever.
Poster shows creativity and a lot more imagination than those "Score: 5" posts...
19.2 kbps is pretty slow. I had Ricochet before that, and it sometimes hit 256 kbps, never below 64. I wonder if there's something more, or if this is typical government stupidity.
funny munging
I guess SCMODS (as featured in the Blues Brothers Movie) is one step closer to reality.
Now when you get pulled over in LA, you can use your war-driving setup to check the police records on the cops before they get of their car. You will be able to greet them by name and know if they are the type to give you the rodney king treatment for doing so.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
... be a problem? Judicious use of jamming technology in areas of importance (to the criminals e.g. gang turf) and suddenly all the functions ported to online are unusable. This may be a niche market here for the less scrupulous.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Seriously. WEP isn't even real security.. if you need security, you use it at another layer.....
Just because they are using 802.11b doesn't mean they aren't using anything else. They also haven't said what network protocol, or what mode 802.11b will be in, or what software they will use to do it... do you want all that too?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
..will there be drive by DOS attacks?
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Laissez-moi vous donner un autre non-sequitur sur lequel vous pouvez examiner vos grandes puissances intellectuelles! D'ailleurs, j'ai un pénis, je l'ai employé sur votre mère la nuit passée!
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Assuming the newly-equipped cars occasionally send out probe frames looking for those APs, then forget radar detectors! Just run Kismet and if one of these guys pops up, you know there's a patrol car around.
This is going to show up more and more. A Sears repair van paid a visit to my area recently, and two new ad-hoc nodes showed up on channel 6. When he left, they did too. If I ever happen to go past that van again, it'll be quite obvious, since the MAC addresses will be the same. The same technique applies here with the police cars.
(from Tampa Tribune cached on google)
Seriously though, have they actually said -what- they are going to do with this? This is like politicians who show labs full of shiny new computers.
"We replaced all those old and useless computers! Vote for me!"
"But, uh, you still don't have a curriculum, and the kids were doing just fine on the old ones..."
how does limited range faster wireless access available within limited range, help them 'serve and protect', especially when they've GOT a wireless network that works over the entire city and is decent enough to browse the web, certainly low-text internal department websites w/databases? Plaintext with the occasional well-compressed photo will fly over 19.2kbit.
Sounds like someone from Symbol said "this is all the rage, do this!"...and Ham bought it hook line and sinker. Brought to you by the same company that thought it would be really Clever to roll out wireless cash registers, with no encryption.
Let's face it, the #1 usage of police networks is looking up license plate numbers every time they see a car they can stop for the slightest violation(like, say, a missing license plate bulb or something hanging from the rear mirror.)
I drove from CO to KS and back yesterday. The main thought on my mind was - what if even car on the road had a WAP configured to talk to every other car on the road, and to look for WAN access to the net - creating a HUGE mobile network. I'd be a LOT less upset by a traffic snarl if I could read /. AND the kids would of been a lot less roudy if they could surf cartoon network on the trip. Heck, could be a neat way to meet that hot blond in the BMW next to you.
/.
I seem to remember hearing this idea before... maybe it was on
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
So they are spending xxxxx.xx dollar on wireless networks, really cool and all.... but is it still cool to ask questions like "what will it be used for" or is that unpatriotic in the current economy and should they just spend money like crazy?
Robert X. Cringley suggested that a while back. Seems like a good idea...but I'm just a little apprehensive about cars with more distractions in them. I'm already seeing an increasing number of cars with LCD TV screens on dashboards. I've even seen a few (ok, 2) people driving around watching pornos on them (I assUme they weren't driving stickshifts - but I didn't try to get a look in to verify that.)
I can just see those "Hang up and drive" bumper stickers being replaced with "Quit surfing and drive" stickers.
that this will be implemented correctly -- that
someone who knows what they're doing will set it
up securely and then keep it secure?
And what are the chances that it will be thrown
together with default security settings/passwords,
quickly compromised (maliciously or not) leading
to a flurry of ingnorant inflamatory statements
by police spokespeople?
You wouldn't be bothered to read the write-up? It replaces a slower city-wide system in the hot-spot areas around police stations.
In some of the cities I've been in with my laptop in the Southeast US, I've seen police departments running (secured, and sadly, insecure) 802.11b. Infact, seeing the cop's network probe packets before my radar detector has gone off has saved me from most likely getting several tickets. I've picked up the cops 802.11b before they gunned me/other cars.
So, can we get kismet to speak "Slow Down, Probe Detected" when it picks up a probe packet?
2) You replied that Iraq couldn't make nuclear weapons.
Why?
Wait a minute... wireless internet is notoriously insecure (i know this because my neighbors do online banking)... I don't want my information to be available to any bum that happens to have a laptop... What security measures do they plan to implement, does anyone know? Hey, maybe this'll save paper and thus the rainforests... more natural resources to spread around, yipee!
Why not every Krispy Kreme and Dunkin Donuts location in L.A.?
No TiVo and no caffeine make me something something...
To fuck with an anonymous coward. The longer I keep you doing this, the less time you will have to go out and kill all of the people you hate. Game is over. Must go back to loving America!
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I suspect that this will lead to increased penalties for having or using software that does any ether sniffing on 802.11b. They can claim you're trying to intercept police transmissions.
It will also lead to "prowl car detectors" for the crooks - little boxes that detect the low-level network protocols that WiFi cards occasionally mumble or can be provoked to emit. Even if they're firmware-hacked to shut up unless they hear an AP's broadcast you can still fake it and get them to respond.
There are ways around this. But we're starting to get into major security mods.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Cops find access to mobile broadband data useful, begin building out APs to more hotspots throughout City. Citizens note how much of the bandwidth goes unused and could be made useful by citizens whose tax $ put it there. City learns how to provide secure infrastructure traffic (cops, fire dept., public works, etc.) while making excess bandwidth available to citizens. Before too many years, City is pretty well provisioned with free (tax-funded) wireless.
This makes too much sense - it'll never happen.
I don't know what's funnier...the fact that his last name is Ham and he's the deputy of communications (Ham Radio) or the fact that his last name is Ham and he's a cop. (Pig!)
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I 0wn the p0l1c3!!!
:)
Well there goes my karma
Ah, I see you have no real reply. You didn't understand what I originally wrote but you're too pig-headed and arrogant to admit that. That's very sad. I feel sorry for you that your life revolves so closely around being right on Slashdot that you can't even admit that when you replied to me, you didn't understand what I wrote. So, I hope you turn over a new leaf in your life today. You have my pity and my support.
makes me wonder whether you guys are all in it for the shits and giggles.
I dont believe im the only one thinking this will be a holy grail for hackers.
I put on my robe and wizard hat.
They could totally play CS over this network. Imagine being busted and forced to watch two dumbass cops pretend to be Terrorists sneaking their explosive into de_dust.bsp! The cops would prolly buy AWPs and camp all over that shit - the gimps.
What would the ramifications be? Could you get off on a technicality - police brutality via electronic gaming device?
Man you are a fucking complete and utter moron. Get a life and leave the guy alone.
raw data rate of 11 megabits per second
Last time I did a transfer test of "raw data" w/ 802.11b, I saw around 3Mbits/sec...
With wireless overhead, half duplex and other factors... noone see's 11Mbits/sec with 802.11b.
--------
Don't Get Caught
Let's take a few nuggets from the article and ponder.....
(1) "Ham said he eventually wants to develop an interface between the WLAN radio in the Symbol handheld and the Motorola radio in the police car."
Wants to develop? And he made a purchase decision PRIOR to getting this straight?
There are rugged devices on the market today that fully support integrated WAN (CDMA/1xRTT, GPRS), WLAN, and BT in one device. Motorola private radio networks (Astro) usually have serial DB9 output. Again, there are other rugged device manufacturers that provide rugged vehicle docks with integrated serial DB9. A step further, there are BT enabled GPS units. Did the LAPD put any effort into this decision or are they just dumping budget dollars prior to their fiscal end of year?
(2) "Though the range of WLANs is limited--approximately 300 feet--"
"Will Strauss, an analyst at Forward Concepts, called Ham's plan "a cheap way to get bandwidth" that would allow LAPD units to periodically pick up high-bandwidth data as they pass by police stations equipped with WLAN systems."
Let me see if I understand - with a range of 300 ft best case would be 600 ft while "passing by." (I'll ignore the introduction of directional since I doubt anyone related to the original article can even spell yagi...)
Assuming the car/motorcycle is traveling 20 mph (or about 30ft/sec), each handheld will have about 20 secs to recognize coverage, authenticate, and download.
Yeah, great idea.... Better to put UAPs in doughnut shops if you ask me.
Amazing what those SBL pushers will sell - regardless of fit/use - to their customers.
10 MD
This is nothing new, LA is behind the times. Post Falls, Idaho has been doing this and more for quite a while now.
1 7. html
http://www.mitretek.org/publications/ccjt/vol6-
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
The mugshots are useful if the suspect has a previous arrest record. Or it could be used to send out composite sketches.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Organized crime must be chomping at the bit for this to happen. Hackers are employed and are a hot commodity on both sides of the law (see: Las Vegas' recent trouble with Mob 0wn3d phone lines).
Expect this to create a number of "Security Professional" openings, some on monster.com, some on IRC.....
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
Hey, homey, sorry but I think the lyric is "me and Lorenzo rollin in a Benzo" not "chilling".
Your boo,
Malia-dawg, 53, reppin the 808
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
Here are a few suggested ways for you to use your new uplinks:
http://www.dunkindonuts.com/find_a_store/frames
http://clients.mapquest.com/krispy/mqinterconne
http://www.laokay.com/Donuts.htm
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
Because everyone knows that cops spend most of their time at either Starbuck's or Dunkin Donuts.
What about everyone else? The people who have theirown WAPs setup? If the police WAPs cause interferance with them, are they going to be forced by the police to remove them?
(Score:0, Interesting)
How many people thought they were going after wardrivers? Bet is scared a person or two...
And you are the same guy trying to pretend that other people support your stupidity - congrats on being a filthy kike.
This is an amazing kludge! They might as well have runners with CD-R's of the data, jogging up to the car as it passes by the station. Ugh. Cellular data is too slow, and wireless LANs are just too short-range. These folks would do better with a real wireless WAN system.
That's exactly the niche where Ricochet fit: High speed data, anywhere in a metropolitan area. While stationary, Ricochet speeds routinely exceeded 128kbps, and while moving at up to 60mph, the acquisition of new nodes pushed the throughput down, though not much. It would pick back up as soon as you stayed within range of one microcell for more than just a moment. (Software tweaks could improve mobile performance too.)
Imagine the applications of an ISDN-speed link in a moving patrol car: Realtime video from the dashboard camera. Instant images from headquarters displayed in the cruiser.
It's unfortunate that the present owners don't seem interested in reactivating the network in most of the old service areas (only Denver and San Fran are up so far), and they're certainly not planning to deploy equipment in any new cities. The LAPD would've loved Ricochet.
it's operational information - if the crims know that the cops are looking for larry, they can tell larry to stay low.
if all the cops get a map marked with "this where we're gonna raid", then, well, that's not stuff you want out in the general community.
anyone with any experience in Wireless nows that WEP is an insecure method of communication that is brute force breakable.
It is therefore easier to assume that all WEP protected comms are effectively plain text.
It is from this position that one should build the network.
Personally I would be using Inferno
from http://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/papers/bltj.html
Security in Inferno
Inferno provides security of communication, resource control, and system integrity.
Each external communication channel may be transmitted in the clear, accompanied by message digests to prevent corruption, or encrypted to prevent corruption and interception. Once communication is set up, the encryption is transparent to the application. Key exchange is provided through standard public-key mechanisms; after key exchange, message digesting and line encryption likewise use standard symmetric mechanisms.
Inferno is secure against erroneous or malicious applications, and encourages safe collaboration between mutually suspicious service providers and clients. The resources available to applications appear exclusively in the name space of the application, and standard protection modes are available. This applies to data, to communication resources, and to the executable modules that constitute the applications. Security-sensitive resources of the system are accessible only by calling the modules that provide them; in particular, adding new files and servers to the name space is controlled and is an authenticated operation. For example, if the network resources are removed from an application's name space, then it is impossible for it to establish new network connections.
Security mechanisms
Authentication and digital signatures are performed using public key cryptography. Public keys are certified by Inferno-based or other certifying authorities that sign the public keys with their own private key.
Inferno uses encryption for:
*
mutual authentication of communicating parties;
*
authentication of messages between these parties; and
*
encryption of messages between these parties.
The encryption algorithms provided by Inferno include the SHA, MD4, and MD5 secure hashes; Elgamal public key signatures and signature verification [4]; RC4 encryption; DES encryption; and public key exchange based on the Diffie-Hellman scheme. The public key signatures use keys with moduli up to 4096 bits, 512 bits by default.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
As it stands it would take me less than two days to crack your network with moderate use.
So why don't you do it?
They also haven't said what network protocol, or what mode 802.11b will be in, or what software they will use to do it... do you want all that too?
Absolutely. I want to know exactly what technological solutions my police department is spending my tax money on.
They said the same thing when the idea of installing radio's in cars came along.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Completely OT (like the thread...), but anyone remember Godwin's Law?
"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
When I read that years ago, it really got me thinking. Here's something that was born on Usenet but indeed it does seem to hold true to real life as a natural law. Though this particular discussion is not a Usenet example, it is a discussion. Anyone notice consistant examples of this being demonstrated IRL?
Fascinating.
http://www.netgroupinc.com/adventures.html
Exactly how does this improve anything? 802.11 is short range technology, and they're using radio to do data to the cars right now.
So let's lay out the scenarios in which this could possibly be useful:
1. An old lady gets mugged directly in front of the police station. The LA cops outside who watch it and laugh can send an IM to the cops inside, so that they can laugh also.
2. LA cops can download the "Mr. T" skin for quake and play "pretend it's compton" with each other without having to go inside. Donut eating and racist "justice" are simultaneously accompished.
-- http://www.criticalassets.com