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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!
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. ;-)
So does this make them Ham Radios?
"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.
What good would that do?
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.
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...
"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
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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There was a time when most of us envied the rich dudes who had the 2400 baud modems.