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!

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. ;-)

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.