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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.'"
You can tune me out from monitoring your radio, but you can't tune out my love.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
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.
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.
sudo mod me up
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.
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make install -not war
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.
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.
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.
Beware of the Leopard.
In practice, the most common phrase heard on the unencrypted trunked radio system around here is "Call me on my cell."
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.
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/
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
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.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
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"...
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
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.
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! :)
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality