Slashdot Mirror
Police Encrypt Radios To Tune Out Public
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Police departments around the country are moving to shield their radio communications from the public as cheap, user-friendly technology has made it easy for anyone to use handheld devices to keep tabs on officers responding to crimes and although law enforcement officials say they want to keep criminals from using officers' internal chatter to evade them, journalists and neighborhood watchdogs say open communications ensures that the public receives information as quickly as possible that can be vital to their safety. 'Whereas listeners used to be tied to stationary scanners, new technology has allowed people — and especially criminals — to listen to police communications on a smartphone from anywhere,' says DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier who says that a group of burglars who police believe were following radio communications on their smartphones pulled off more than a dozen crimes before ultimately being arrested. But encryption also makes it harder for neighboring jurisdictions to communicate in times of emergency. 'The 9/11 commission concluded America's number one vulnerability during the attacks was the lack of interoperability communications,' writes Vernon Herron, 'I spoke to several first responders who were concerned that their efforts to respond and assist at the Pentagon after the attacks were hampered by the lack of interoperability with neighboring jurisdictions.'"
Wouldn't it make more sense to have levels? Assuming that there's enough bandwidth for city-level, county-level, state-level, and federal law enforcement on a given piece of spectrum in a given area, wouldn't it just make sense for each municipality to have their own that can't be readily listened in on by others, but also be able to switch, with different credentials, to different encryption that could be read by other agencies? Or maybe to have one bit of spectrum and encryption for individual cities and agencies, and one for metro areas?
Or just have 'clear' channels. Your multi agency command and control channels SHOULD NOT be encrypted. That's for use in a disaster when you want everybody on the same page. Sure, encrypt the police channels - that is a reasonable thing to do to keep perverts^Hperps from being one jump ahead of the police. Everything else, not so much.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The solution is actually pretty simple. Use encryption and have it send out the data in the clear after [X] minutes. You can still listen in, but it's [X] minutes old, so not much use to criminals.
In practice, the most common phrase heard on the unencrypted trunked radio system around here is "Call me on my cell."
The entire concept of the police having the ability to hide what they are doing from the people is really disturbing.
Yes, but you have to admit there are certain important exceptions. But this can be easily rectified by recording the transmissions and using the key one time, so the signal can be decrypted after the fact.
I'm thinking of on-the-ground tactical radios. SWAT and such - there's not much reason the general public needs to hear that live, and you most definitely don't want some jackoff with a hostage catching wind to the fact there's a sniper aiming at him. Tends to make negotiation a bit difficult I would imagine.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I don't necessarily know that there isn't basis. Certainly, a basic search turns up plenty of video.
Whenever the police are trying to hide information from the public, the first question you should ask is what they're likely to hide, not what they SAY they are wanting to prevent from being released. Pretexting is very common among governmental agencies trying to grab more power.
These are the same guys who arrest people who videotape them misbehaving in public on "wiretapping" laws.
Are you SURE you want there not to be oversight of them? Because I don't trust the local cop as far as I could throw his donuts.
So what you're saying is, all somebody would have to do to break AES-256 is steal one of those "best key tapes" and then they'd only have to brute-force 10,000 possibilities?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz