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Pasadena Police Encrypt, Deny Access To Police Radio
An anonymous reader writes "There is media (but not public?) outcry over the Pasadena, CA police switch from analog radio that can be picked up by scanners to encrypted digital radio that cannot. 'On Friday, Pasadena police Lt. Phlunte Riddle said the department was unsure whether it could accommodate the media with digital scanners. Riddle said the greatest concern remains officer safety. "People who do bank robberies use scanners, and Radio Shack sells these things cheap," Riddle said. "We just had a robbery today on Hill Avenue and Washington Boulevard," Riddle said. "The last thing I want to do is to have the helicopter or the officers set up on the street and the criminals have a scanner and know where our officers are." Just prior to the switch over, city staffers said they would look into granting access to police radio chatter, most likely by loaning media outlets a scanner capable of picking up the secure signal.'"
You forget, this is Slashdot. If we give any service even a penny of tax money, we feel we should be able to watch and listen to every single thing they do, if desired, especially when technology is concerned. If they wanted more secure communications, they should've come up with something else. And then told us exactly how to monitor them, because we'll be damned if any of the money we give them is used. At all.
I am the slashdot man, and I can play.
What can you play?
Oh, liber liber tarian, tarian, tarian, liber liber tarian, libertarian.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I have even been encouraged by a sergeant at the local sheriff's office to request recordings, as often as I feel like, under the FOIA, just to make it a pain in PD's ass.
Mr Tool meet Mr Douchebag.
I nearly lost my job over that letter, since I'm one of the guys responsible for actually programming the radios and I have the requisite encryption keys on my thumb drive and can (pretty much literally) do whatever I want to make things work/fuck up the system.
Nearly? You were lucky you weren't working for a private corporation or else not only would you have been fired, you would probably never have worked again as anything other than a burger flipper. You are a disgrace to your profession. You sound proud of the fact that you didn't actually fuck up their system, well whoopy do for you Mr Citizen Journalist Tosspot.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it