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.'"

Comments

It won't work, Sheila!

[elrous0]

You can tune me out from monitoring your radio, but you can't tune out my love.

Scanner Proof...

[Mister Transistor]

Encryption also makes the conversations unavailable to portable scanners, as well as the internet audio feeds to smartphones. These have been around a lot longer. It is just the recent upsurge in people using the scanner audio streaming apps that is feeding this latest FUD. In my state there is a concerted statewide effort to get all local municipalities on the state-wide system, which can very easily use encryption if the local agency wants to. This is aimed at "fixing" interoperability by having everyone on the same system using the same keys.

Re:Scanner Proof...

[TWX]

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?

Re:Scanner Proof...

[ColdWetDog]

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.

Re:Scanner Proof...

[Mister Transistor]

They do, sort of. Trunked radio systems use "talkgroups" which are isolated group-call (multicast) messages aimed at specific radios. You can send a voice "message" (transmission) to a specific radio if needed, but normal transmission go to the entire talkgroup. You would have Fire on one, Police dispatch on one, detectives on one, etc. That way they normally only get traffic they are interested in, but in an emergency they would all switch to a "city-wide" talkgroup so everone would hear everything. They also can reserve the talkgroups to be forced encryption or forced non-encrypted (clear) in case someone doesn't have the proper keys.

There are also common clear channels reserved for interoperability nation-wide in the 800 MHz band just in case someone outside the state needs to join in the fun.

Re:Scanner Proof...

[X0563511]

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.

Re:Scanner Proof...

[X0563511]

The point is when the negotiator is trying to talk them down, you don't want them to hear the radio chatter about the team getting ready to shoot him if it fails. That jacks his stress right up, and makes it much more likely he'll panic and do something stupid, getting people killed or hurt.

You can wait an hour to find out what Officer Joe said.

Re:Scanner Proof...

[X0563511]

No, he isn't. The whole job of the negotiator is to bring it down then try to talk them out. If their stress is firewalled the whole time, then that negotiator is doing a very poor job.

And remember, I'm not saying encrypt it and never ever release the key. I'm only talking about delaying. We still get our oversight, and they still get their operational security.

Re:Scanner Proof...

[Jafafa Hots]

Has it been so serious a problem so far that it warrants a drastic reduction in civilian oversight capability?

I mean, has there been a huge rash of hostage-takers listening in and reacting badly, so much so that it's worth blocking 350 million people from having the ability to keep tabs on who's keeping tabs on them?

Somehow I doubt it. Sure, a few criminals might be using this capability, but I know of another technology that is FAR more often used to aid the commission of crimes.

Wheels.
Do away with 'em.

Re:Scanner Proof...

[X0563511]

It doesn't have to be the cops in control of the key. It could be a different agency, or a contractor, or committee etc.

That's the fun thing. Dash cam footage exists in one place for the most part and is easy to disappear. Radio keys would be loaded into every radio used, and the keying system could be linked into another system the cops themselves do not have control over (see above) that would take care of the release. I think you can call this key escrow? Losing that key would be a lot riskier for them, because the chances of someone else having it are much higher. Bad deeds look even worse when you get caught trying to hide them.

Took long enough

[Anrego]

I get that there are probably huge cost and scale issues, but it has always baffled me that police communications are still mostly unencrypted as complex encryption technology has gotten cheaper and cheaper.

Re:Took long enough

[SeanDS]

I get that there are probably huge cost and scale issues, but it has always baffled me that police communications are still mostly unencrypted as complex encryption technology has gotten cheaper and cheaper.

Yes, until I saw this article I thought the police would have been encrypting this kind of stuff for years.

Re:Took long enough

[X0563511]

Not a radio operator are you? Digital systems don't work so well with interference or weak signals. On a digital system you'd end up with garbage or silence where without the cipher and digital codec, you might actually be able to hear them through the noise. So, there is a distinct advantage to open analog.

That said, encryption certainly has it's place. Squad-level tactical circuits for SWAT, for example.

Re:Took long enough

[Obfuscant]

Er, no.... on my own equipment my voice drives the phase modulator directly. At no point is it digital,

And thus you are not using a digital radio system. And thus you will not have available the modern digital encryption methods.

Modern encryption uses modern algorythms on the digital data produced by digitizing the voice analog signal. The voice becomes data upon which DES or AES or whatever encoding is applied.

Donald duck is what you hear when you are listening to the wrong sideband, or are "off center" of the sideband. That's not anything to do with scramblers,

Yes, actually, it is. In a frequency-inversion analog system, you mix the voice signal with another fixed frequency, inverting the frequency content of the voice. E.g., a 3kHz tone in voice will move to 300 Hz and vice versa. This is EXACTLY the same as listening to "the wrong sideband" in single sideband radio, and that's exactly what the process is supposed to create.

Re:Well

[jrmcferren]

No, they will win a trip to federal PMTIA prison as decrypting communications without authorization is a violation of the communications act of 1934 as amended as well as other laws.

Why not Opt-In encryption or sharing the keys?

[j-pimp]

Generally speaking, why not use a solution where you can opt-in or out of the encryption? There can be a a clear radio channel that all emergency responders in a jurisdiction can broadcast to unencrypted to, and encrypted ones when that's deemed necessary. I'm not sure where I stand on the encryption. Honestly, encryption might work if it was was weak enough where you could brute force after a certain period of time. While there are abuses for closed communication of LEO's, there are plenty of channels where that could occur. If a scrambled signal was available that would be encrypted long enough to not let burgulars know the cops were coming, but would show weeks later that the cops planted those drugs on the suspect, that seems like a good balance.

Re:Why not Opt-In encryption or sharing the keys?

[Pope]

BOO! I'm a repeater.

Hey! Stop all the radioing!

Publish Them

[Doc Ruby]

There is a real argument that realtime police communications requires secrecy to protect police and their operations while they do the majority of their work that is indeed properly protecting the public.

But there is also a real argument that hiding those communications also hides lots of the minority of their work that at best doesn't protect the public, some of which severely harms the public.

These arguments don't conflict when the realtime parameter is removed. Both legitimate cop business and legitimate public protection are served if all these comms are published after some short delay. Like the following day, or perhaps even just a few hours later.

Publishing them also removes the advantage that some people have who can spend on equipment to monitor the comms. Instead any interested member of the public can check them. All of them, compared to audited logs of the activity on the cops comms equipment. The publication order has to have teeth, prosecuting people for obstructing justice when they're hiding cop comms they find inconvenient to reveal.

Re:Publish Them

[ColdWetDog]

Virtually all public service radio channels are recorded. If you have the right credentials (and this would be the issue) you can get access to them. They're used in rehashing calls, determining times and for internal investigations. Offhand, I have no idea how or if the public could get access to the tapes, but they are there.

Re:Publish Them

[wheels4me]

Seriously? How can you be that naive on /,? The US Attorney in Seattle can't get SPD video. He had to take the SPD to court to get video and still likely never got all of what he asked for. Who has the "right credentials"? Certainly not the local ABC affiliate, KOMO TV. They sued and got jacked around. "In October of 2008, Rachner was arrested while out with friends. Police stopped them, and Rachner refused to identify himself, which is not legally mandatory. He was arrested for obstruction of justice. One officer bragged to colleagues he arrested Rachner because he “acted edjumicated.” Rachner filed a complaint with the Office of Professional Accountability, the civilian-run oversight organization of the Seattle Police Department. Immediately after he filed the complaint, the city filed obstruction charges against Rachner that were later dropped because the prosecution lacked proof. Rachner received one dash-cam video recorded from a police cruiser’s dashboard camera during his criminal case but learned of six others that police refused to release. Rachner sued the Seattle police in 2008 for covering up the existence of the six other videos from the night of his arrest and other records pertaining to his case. He won a judgement against them in 2010, but filed a subsequent lawsuit on Oct.6, 2011, for false arrest, “spoilation of video evidence” and “malicious prosecution.” According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Seattle Police Department is currently under federal investigation for not releasing video evidence from dash-cams when requested. Seattle news station KOMO, an ABC affiliate, filed a lawsuit against the SPD in September, claiming that the SPD had knowingly violated the Washington state Public Records Act. U.S. Attorney Mike McKay of Seattle has also sued the SPD for refusing to release records about criminal investigations and arrests." I would far and away rather have a few more property crimes than leave in a secret police state.

Easy fix.

[Voogru]

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.

Stopping the bad press.

[BrookHarty]

This has nothing to do with safety, this is to mute the press. The press follows the scanner conversations to report on all accidents and incidents. With police hiding records and conversations due to lawsuits, we dont need more "hidden" police communications, we them open to keep them honest.

Its bad enough the PR for police is on TV, almost 1/2 of the line up are some cop based shows, perfect cops fighting evil criminals.

In reality, we have a growing movement in the US to keep police honest due to the mega lawsuits in almost every major city. I'm in Seattle, and the police abuse is way out of hand here. The internal coverups, the blue code of silence, the getting ride of whistle blowers, the incompetent police are costing this state with awards and settlements in the millions. Its also sad that the state budget hides these lawsuits. The most open lawsuit loses, department of transportation, they list every payout in our budget. We need that detail for police.

Re:Stopping the bad press.

[Obfuscant]

This has nothing to do with safety, this is to mute the press. The press follows the scanner conversations to report on all accidents and incidents. With police hiding records and conversations due to lawsuits, we dont need more "hidden" police communications, we them open to keep them honest.

As someone who works in SAR, I can tell you that muting the press is a valuable and useful goal, for two reasons. First, if we find something or someone, it would be very nice if eighty reporters and cameramen didn't descend upon the scene and get in the way of trying to save a life or even just preserve evidence at a crime scene. And second, family members of the person we are looking for are better served learning about the results of a search from an in-person discussion with a trained professional than a news flash on the radio.

Re:There's an app for that?

[Known Nutter]

Yes, there's an app for that.

Basically, you've got it right. Folks around the world have scanners plugged into streaming software on their computers which stream up to a centralized service. RadioReference.com serves up the majority of these feeds. RR provides a API whereby any app developer can access the streams.... thus there are many apps on all platforms for monitoring public safety agencies in most areas of the US.

Part of the argument against streaming police radio feeds in this way is obvious. It provides the bad guys a quick and easy way to listen in, where in the past you had to purchase a scanner or two, know how to use it, etc. etc... accordingly, some in the scanning community have advocated for a delay built into the stream (5-15 minutes, say) in an effort to appease law enforcement into not going encrypted. I think the damage is done though as more and more agencies continue to go digital/encrypted, mostly on the back of grants funded by federal US tax dollars.

Re:Well

[Known Nutter]

I don't really believe there is a basis in fact for your statement.

Keep in mind that many agencies (not all) which do encrypt provide subscriber units to the media. In either case, someone is always listening.

9/11 Monies screwed it up

[quetwo]

Right after 9/11, all sorts of grants and public monies came out so that police and other first responsers could upgrade their aging systems -- also with the stipulation that the communities work together to be able to allow intercommunications.

Everybody wrote a grant and everybody got a brand new radio system.

Very few people worked together to make sure they were compatible with eachother. In fact, since most departments moved to digital systems on dedicated frequencies, they lopped off a whole integration system between different radios that allowed officers to talk from one municipality to another.

In our case, our State Police post can only communicate to the 5 surrounding municipalities via cell phone (or land-line, I guess). We have a central dispatch that does our 911 center, and they have to have 3 different radio systems in order to communicate with the three areas they dispatch for. It is a complete mess, and it call came from each silo wanting to do their own thing and not talking to anybody else.

And I know we are not the only ones...

Re:Well

[Man On Pink Corner]

In practice, the most common phrase heard on the unencrypted trunked radio system around here is "Call me on my cell."

Re:Well

[Moryath]

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.

something to think about..

[ehrichweiss]

Most of the police departments are moving to APCO P25 which just so happens to be extremely vulnerable to a simple hack...

http://hackaday.com/2011/08/18/project-25-digital-radios-law-enforcemnet-grade-vulnerable-to-the-im-me/

Re:something to think about..

[tqk]

However, for government stuff they use AES-256, which can take many years to brute-force a key ...

Emphasis mine. I've often wondered what're the chances that *the* key ends up being the first one in the keyspace to be checked. Do crypto systems guard against that (for some value of "guard"), or is it just left to chance? That'd be a fairly damning failure if so. Who cares how big your keyspace is if one of these days, *the key* is going to show up as the first, or in the first ten/100/1000 ... keys checked against?

All it needs to be is secure *enough* ...

Strongly agree, but what's "secure *enough*" mean when you can build a beowulf for lt. U$100/tera(?)flop?

Re:something to think about..

[Mister Transistor]

Sort of. I know the NSA used to deliver to the Secret Service tapes of the 10,000 "best" keys in the DES space. The facility that sends keys out to radios picks 16 of those 10,000 strongest keys, so ridiculously obvious ones like "1234" and "0000" are eliminated (I know they're not proper length keys but they're just for example). I suppose there is always the rare possibility of the 1st one you try just happening to be the right one but statistically that situation would happen once in every x years of billions of tries, based on key length and algorithm strength. I don't know if there are any "weak" keys for AES-256 because that is what all the serious players with three-letter names are using these days.

As for secure "enough"... it's all a game of money. I'll bet your Beowulf won't crack my AES-256 in the 24 hours between me re-keying. But again the other side of the phrase applies too - if the message is not time-sensitive, you can replay and retry the brute-force till you're blue in the GPU or you get it. Just don't rely on that key still being actively used by the time you figure it out...

Re:something to think about..

[blueg3]

As far as I know, some RSA systems take this in to account.

In AES, there's no known reason for one AES key to be weaker or stronger than another, as far as I know. The keys also have no restrictions -- every one of the possible 2^256 AES-256 keys are valid. So cryptosystems generate them using secure random number generators. As far as I know, nobody protects against the incredibly remote possibility that a key with a "pattern" is selected, but with a 256-bit key, really the likelihood of that is very, very, very small. So as a result, key brute-forcing has no reason to try one key before another.

But then, there's no reason to attempt AES key brute-forcing, 128 or 256. It's impossible with any current technology.

Re:something to think about..

[mrchaotica]

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?

Re:something to think about..

[L4t3r4lu5]

Nope, he's saying that you'd have to perform some statistical analysis on the DES keyspace to find the 10,000 "most random" keys, and check those first.

It should be apparent, but they don't do this anymore. AES-256's keyspace is sufficiently large to not require safeguards against "bad" keys.

Sine and Tetra...

[MindPrison]

Man...even though I know a lot more about this than the average Slashdot audience, your idiot mods are probably going to mod me out into -1000 troll territory for saying what I'm about to say, but guess what - bring it on mods, you're morons...not techs....so I can afford it...

Not a single person of you here, know what the SINE or TETRA system is...but I'm going to explain it to you. (gawd knows why...)...but I'm all for information to the public, so I'm going to tell...

In Scandinavia the police use Sine and Tetra. The radios are developed by Motorola and often called "Spectra". (google it if you must), these have a specific software & hardware encryption system. It works something like this - every unit has a GPS built in, in fact...it's kind of like a 10 year old cell-phone with a GPS, pretty crappy screens, but it does sport TETRA and SINE, an infra-system that is very difficult to crack (but HAS been cracked, with a 32-piece FPGA card...again...google this, I don't care what you know), or you could use an average pc. to crack one minute of conversation in 1 hour if you don't care to have it real-time.

The thing is...the police wanted a system that was interconnected with the Fire-department, Hospital & Ambulance, and lock out any of the public listeners as they could be drug-distributors, thieves & criminals...but things didn't exactly go according to plans, the system failed numerous times, and they had to revert to their old systems (which...btw...also had an analog&digital encryption option...that still hasn't been cracked...)

However....this new system had a downside...namely people! People all over the country was used to owning and listening to police radio...you know...analog signals...kind of like your FM or CB radio...for years, like the last 30 years...these where gone now, everything was SINE (tetra) and digital, so no layman out there could listen in (unless they where geeks, and purchased the very expensive 16x2 (32) FPGA cards for their pcs...and installed the geeky software) realtime, so the police didn't get the info on purps...as they usually got from the faithful legal scanner listeners...they used to get information from.

What do I mean by this? Imagine your average joe out there, wanting some action, purchasing a Scanner...he listens in....hears the police talking about some criminal in his neighborhood...he looks outside the window...discovers the purp...calls the police, and informs..

Now...he can't do that anymore, because it's encrypted...

The only people who can do this now...is the Drug barons with a lot of money to buy the Open-Source 32-FPGA cards that are available to the public...and eliminating the average JOE from listening in...helping the police.. ...I bet the authorities didn't see that one coming.

Re:Sine and Tetra...

[Anonymous Coward]

Im sorry but let me fill you in on someone who works in policing. The publics information is considered private (much like healthcare and HIPPA). They have to pass very stringent computer/network security configurations and auditing to be able to process the data. While this is in place and all good, Joe Public can hear it on unencrypted (analog or digital) via scanner. If someone getting their plate run gets information leaked (most information is NOT needed by the public and only on rare occasions is it helpful) and harassed because someone heard it on a scanner, they could sue the police dept. for not protecting their systems by going to encryption (not really hackable, NexEdge or Motorola Turbo encryption). It is NOT the publics business to hear who is being pulled over and their birthdates, who they can and cant be around, etc. That is PRIVATE. Many times someones name is listed on the radio and they are NOT persons of interest in terms of being wanted, but rather a sexual assault or domestic assault victim. How would you like it if your sister was raped or beat up by her ex bf or something, would you like that all over the airwaves for the public to hear? I bet you wouldn't.

Most police departments to appease the media and public now put crime stats and summaries of arrests or incidents on maps or in daily reports for download after the fact that may or may not include someones name and birthdate. If you do want to hear unedited information, you can put a Freedom of Information request in for any incident that is of interest to you that is not currently before the courts (anything in front of the courts is only for the defense and the DAs). This is to prevent influencing a decision by incorrect information.

If you want to have a say and want to complain, I suggest you attend your police boards public meetings that you can hear the ongoings of the station including budget and implementation, otherwise, stop complaining.

Re:Sine and Tetra...

[macwhizkid]

Imagine your average joe out there, wanting some action, purchasing a Scanner...he listens in....hears the police talking about some criminal in his neighborhood...he looks outside the window...discovers the purp...calls the police, and informs..

Not that I disagree with you on whether citizens should have access, but has this actually ever happened? Not just once (I'm sure it's happened somewhere), but on a regular basis?

It's neat to think that this is possible, but things like "most wanted" lists have been around a long, long time without producing very many tangible results. Trying to do it in real-time is even less likely, even before considering how few people are likely to be listening to police scanners at a given time vs. seeing a most wanted list on the news or at the post office. I don't work in law enforcement, but I get the impression that when criminals are caught, it's usually either good detective work or having their personal information looked up for an unrelated office (i.e. pulled over for speeding six months after robbing the bank).

Re:Sine and Tetra...

[Dhalka226]

your idiot mods are probably going to mod me out into -1000 troll territory for saying what I'm about to say

Yeah man, it must be because everybody on this website is too dumb to recognize your brilliance.

It couldn't be because you're some anti-social, self-important twat who spends the first paragraph of his post calling people names, the second paragraph insulting their intelligence and gushing about yourself and how there is literally nobody in a two-million-plus person community who could possibly know what you know, and have a signature that--just in case somebody missed it--does it all again.

Perhaps you have problems with troll mods because, I don't know, you go out of your way to troll people?

Re:There's an app for that?

[X0563511]

Check this out - basically something like that, but without all the extra goodies and flexibility? :)

Re:reason 328

[Obfuscant]

Well this of course could easily be solved by national standards dictated from Washington tied to various financial incentives. We couldn't do that during the Bush administration because "we don't want the government picking winners and losers" so instead we had 11 years of no progress. Now we could just pick a good solution and go with it.

And that is, of course, why the APCO P25 digital standard wasn't developed during the Bush years and didn't become a standard required by federal funding agencies for new purchases.

And that is why, in this modern, standards-friendly administration, we are now adding MotoTrbo and Tetra as alternative (non-interoperable) digital standards.

This issue is not new, and it is not surprising. Not to anyone who actually has to deal with it. Everyone talks about "interoperability" and how great it is, but then we push for ever-fancier technology which is inherantly NOT interoperable, or interoperable only at a huge price.

For example, moving from 150MHz VHF to 700MHz. Under 150MHz VHF analog (or even digital) I can bring MY radio to an incident, and as long as I have the right frequency and digital "squelch" programmed in, I can participate. With 700MHz, my radio might not even have the right digital format, and it will not talk to the existing system because the system will lock it out. Not to mention that if I want to talk to my people there, I will have to have my 150MHz radio, and then a 700MHz radio to talk to other people. Two radios.

Yes, there is movement towards multi-band public service radios, but that's the "huge price" I'm referring to. A digital single-band radio will run about $1500 for a reasonable version. A multi-band starts at $5k and goes up. That's not to say a high-feature single band is cheap -- the latest handhelds CAP distributed are list price $4500 or more.

Interoperability used to mean "everyone can talk to each other" directly. Now it means "everyone might be able to find someone they can talk to that can also talk to someone else", or at best, "someone will have a portable linking system that will link two systems together." It's more of a nightmare now than it was ten years ago.

HIPPA

[linuxwrangler]

I enjoy listening to the local police/fire but have always wondered whether HIPPA does/should cover fire-department dispatches.

Given the encryption and privacy requirements for your doctor/hospital/pharmacist, it's a bit odd to hear the constant stream of "Engine 71 respond to a medical. 1233 Main apartment 12. Attempted suicide. 23 year old female took a bottle of pills. Stage for PD.", "Engine 65, respond to 4321 Center. 34 year-old female having a miscarriage.", "Engine 72 respond for a 76 year old male non-breather. 8765 Harbor Place.", etc.

No name, but age, sex and address which pretty much uniquely identifies the person and which is combined with potentially embarrassing information (drug overdose, drunk, family disturbances, sexual assualts, and the like).

Other info that I'd prefer stay off the air: "Use gate-code 5564 to get in.", "Person is disabled, key is in the fake rock by the chimney"...

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

They're most likely to hide "Carl, grab some donuts on your way back", then "There's DUI driver on $intersection", then "Armed burglary at $shop". Encrypting work-related communications is pretty much common sense, doubly so when it's critical services like police, firemen or ambulances.

The real question is not "Why are they doing this?", but "Why the hell didn't they do it long ago?"

There are lots of things to be paranoid about, but you're looking in a wrong direction.

Re:Well

[Moryath]

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.

hiding from the public

[transporter_ii]

Well, I'm currently installing P25 systems in different counties -- and I also think we are moving toward a police state -- but I actually don't think the motive here is to hide communications. Most agencies we have converted are not using encryption, though the scanners are expensive. Most seem to care less about being able to encrypt.

I think they were sold a buzz word. The systems cost a fortune. Due to the nature of digital radio, they work well, or not at all. If you work for the city water system, that's fine. When you work for the police, not working at all is a huge problem. Several firefighters were killed somewhere up north because nobody heard their calls for help.

To get radios with federal grant money, the radios have to be P25 compliant. However, there is zero law that says they have to be used in digital mode. All the radios work in analog mode. All the systems we have put in will work in digital and analog mode. But no matter what the complaint of the new systems are, they can't reach over two inches and talk in analog. Why? Because it isn't a buzz word. I honestly don't think it has a thing to do with anything but that. It would almost be funny if the radios didn't cost hundreds of dollars more than their old radios.

See also: Google about the planned nationwide 700 Mhz system for public safety. It was falling through the cracks but Senator Jay Rockefeller is now trying to get the project going again. The Rockefeller family has a lot of power in Motorola. Who wants to guess how much money he/his family is probably getting in a round about way through Motorola.

This isn't about public safety. This is about multimillion dollar deals to enrich the same old people...in a country that is flat broke.

But hey, I'll still cash my paycheck! :)

Re:Buzz words

[transporter_ii]

Wait a minute. I'm a police chief, and I've been reading a lot of case studies and watching a lot of webcasts about APCO P25. Based on all of this glorious marketing literature I have absolutely no reason to doubt the safety of any digital communications.

The case studies all use words like "secure", "interoperability ", "inter-agency communication" and "encryption" to describe the security of APCO P25. I don't know about you, but that sounds damn secure to me! Some P25 systems even use Improved Multi-Band Excitation (IMBE) vocoders. That's rock solid in my book.

My main concern isn't with the security of APCO P25, but rather with getting my team to learn all about it so we can deploy some state of the art Motorola radios to provide the ultimate platform upon which we can layer our communication, because there are still a few verticals that we need to leverage before we can move to the next phase of the P25 project.

Re:Well

[Squiddie]

"Oh, yeah, the recording function stopped working as we were arresting this man that claims we beat him for no reason."

Re:Well

[RoknrolZombie]

Strictly speaking, most people ARE criminals. There is no doubt in my mind that every American on Slashdot could get arrested for something, even if it's bullshit.