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."

Comments

Please...

[koh]

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.

802.11b now ... but 802.11g in the future

[madro]

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

I think this guy's got the right idea, deploying wireless stuff around police stations ... 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?

Security of their network?

[rickthewizkid]

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!"

Re:Security of their network?

[ConsumedByTV]

As it stands it would take me less than two days to crack your network with moderate use.

MAC auth is so easy to fake I wouldn't even bother.

How much power?

[TheDefunctMunky]

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....

WiFi Security Issues

[hillct]

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

uh oh

[chillax137]

so now other cops will know right away that i have already receieved my warning.

Radio is what made cops get stronger

[CrazyJim0]

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.

Wouldn't jamming ...

[fygment]

... 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.

Short-range patrol car detector

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Must be fun... [OT]

[thynk]

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 /.

Some cities already do this...

[LWolenczak]

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?

Another HORRID implementation by Symbol

[MobileDude]

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.