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

Poor choice of words

[positive]

Gah, don't put LA and Drive By in the same sentence!

LA and Drive By

[Anonymous Coward]

LA and Drive By Two things that go together better than Michael Jackson and little boys.

DUCK!

[AlaskanUnderachiever]

I can't be the only one that instantly associated LAPD and Driveby am I?

Must be fun...

[ChaoticChaos]

...to drive a police car and surf for pr0n at the same time. ;-)

Re:Must be fun...

[Mononoke]

Please think about it ...

Please think about sending in a requisition order to Central Supply for one (1) Sense:Humor.

Thank you.

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.

Re:Please...

[d3kk]

What good would that do?

probably require s

[stonebeat.org]

VPN tunnel, and 2-factor authentication (RSA secureID), to get connected. otherwise it would be very unsecure.

Re:probably require s

[pi_rules]

I'm seeing way too many of these posts. It's a non-issue folks. If you read the article (I skimmed it) you'll see they see it being used for:

• Sending mug-shots over the air.
  
• Sending maps.
  
• Sending Amber Alert pictures.
  

They need it for -- pictures. None of which are sensitive information. Mug shots can be obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Amber Alert pictures are intended to be public, and last I knew maps of your local town weren't a closely guarded government secret.

Besides, do you really want police having information that's too secret for you? I sure don't.

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?

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

[mshultz]

...can't they just upgrade their equipment when 11g gets stable instead of having to use up other parts of the spectrum?

From what I've read, 802.11g becomes significantly less reliable than the b variety at the same ranges. In other words, range here might be a more critical concern than throughput. Just a guess...

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

[Cef]

They could upgrade the Access Points, yes. For the LAPD however, if I was running the show, I'd be waiting till 802.11g is a proven technology, and that Symbol could produce decent equipment around the 802.11g standard.

Other things of note:
Symbol Technologies have not released an 802.11g capable device (Hand Held or Access Point) yet. The Symbol devices are very rugged, and they need a very long battery life if they are to be used in the field for any length of duration. Changing anything, including the radio card, could increase the drain on the battery. It's no use if you can get things 3-4 times faster if your battery only lasts 1/8th the time.
Wideband WAN stuff will require special cards in the units, which once again will be a battery drain. An alternative option of course is to have Wideband from the patrol car to the network, while still using 802.11b/g from the patrol car to the Hand Held unit. A number of logistic companies use this sort of system (using systems capable of mobile data, such as GSM and GPRS), though many connect the device serially in the vehicle instead of via RF.

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

[(54)T-Dub]

Car charger??

Groan

[Anonymous Coward]

So does this make them Ham Radios?

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?

[spanky1]

Some 802.11 implementations are very secure. Cisco, for example, doesn't use a static WEP key like home 802.11 equipment. The only wireless equipment I would trust with sensitive data is made by Cisco. For home use though I buy the cheap stuff and use 128-bit WEP with MAC filtering.

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....

increased efficiency

[whovian]

"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."

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.

This isn't efficient!

[I'm just joshin]

They need to put them in donut shops to reach the greatest number of cops.

IM for the pigs

[The Ape With No Name]

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.

802.11a secure?

[MoeMoe]

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.

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.

NJSP has had similar tech for years

[LinuxHam]

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.

Googling for felons

[Faust7]

Now cops can search Google ultra-quickly for their criminals...

"Hey Frank! That the guy?"
"Hang on Burt, lemme do an Images search..."

War-driving the cops

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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.

Re:War-driving the cops

[bobKali]

Even better, you could man-in-the-middle to replace the 10 outstanding warrants, suspended liscense, and stolen car flag for a clean record, valid liscense, and no stolen card record as they're running your plates/ liscense.

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.

Re:Wouldn't jamming ...

[cadillactux]

This is possible, but remember, each car will still be equiped with the 800Mhz 19.2k Motorola systems. If for some reason, WiFi was jammed, they could just switch back to the old system. I wonder if the WiFi system will be integrated in such a way where this will be an automatic function? Even with 27 stations throughout the city, the gaps between the WiFi signals will be great, and it would be a pain to have to manually switch it on and off when you think you might have a signal.

It's a transport medium. Security is not it's job.

[mindstrm]

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

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Slow WAN

[SN74S181]

There was a time when most of us envied the rich dudes who had the 2400 baud modems.

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 /.

Re:Must be fun... [OT]

[bobKali]

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.

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.