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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.'"
So, the police have a legitimate reason for securing their network, and have discussed options accommodating other stake-holders who might be inconvenienced by improving their system's security. It sounds to me like the police are handling this sanely and fairly. What's the problem here?
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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This has happened in hundreds of jurisdictions, and its been going on for a dozen years. Some jurisdictions only encrypt special tactical frequencies used for emergencies, but most realize that as soon as they did that they needed the decryption capable radios for every officer and car any way, and there was not much saving leaving regular channels unencrypted. They bought the radios, why not use them.
Not having reporters and wanna-be-cops show up at every incident was sort of a side benefit in their eyes.
Why the press would expect to be "loaned" a radio is beyond me. The press never "loans" their confidential sources to the police.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
What is key management like on these civilian encrypted radio systems? Can a single stolen (or hacked) key decrypt transmissions indefinitely? Do they regularly replace the keys? How do they securely update keys across hundreds of radios in the field?
All police are going this route and shortly the encryption will be broken or cloned radios will be available, so for thugs in the know it's a non-issue, for the news they will have to foster better connections with the people in the department, for the stupid, well you deserve what you get.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I'm more surprised they aren't using some sort of encryption already.
No offense, but why is this even on here? Perhaps in the movies the criminals are listening to useless chattter. Honestly, are the criminals going to listen and say to themselves: "Lets go out the North entrance because the South is covered. I heard it on my Radio Shack scanner!"?
Scanners are fun.
Until you are the one dialing 911 --- and fielding calls the next day --- the next week --- from every friend, neighbor and relation who picked up on the response.
Now only criminal organizations with the fund and resources to have a police officer or five on the take will have access to vital information. What is the lowly freelance hoodlum supposed to do?
I'll accept the police having encrypted communications, the moment EVERY COP on duty has video and audio surveillance on their person at all times recorded on person, and rebroadcast to their squad car for preservation without tampering.
Short of that? No, you can't have encrypted communications.
Google APCO-25 decoder.
I agree with Dan541. I regularly use these digital "encrypted" radios in NSW (not sure about other states), and these are used by all emergency services in the state (not just the police). Each group has its own "talk groups".
What I want to add to this conversation, is that the Pasadena police will most likely be using the Motorola radios sicne these are the most widely used digital radios. These kinds of digital radios also have a central control opcen. Basically, if a radio is stolen, it can be locked out, basically like a stolen mobile phone can be locked out using IMEI.
Current.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_25
And old but informative:
http://www.fordyce.org/scanning/scanning_info/encrypt.htm
From what I gather cell phone jammers seriously screw with this mode of communication, I think it's a bad idea all around to encrypt radios, not to mention repeater issues and the relatively low number of keys available.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Your ideas intrigue me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
TETRA is not necessarily scrambled. Plain TETRA is still hard to listen too, but I guess a TETRA scanner could be made. TETRAPOL might have encryption as standard
Motorola operate a TETRA system in Australia called 'Zeon' which companies, councils and universities can subscribe too (each with their own fleets). I use the Brisbane City Council radios as part of the State Emergency Service. The phone patch capacity makes the police jealous since they can't manage it with their P25 radios.
Nestled in quiet suburban Pasadena, a small university without a football team is full of hundreds of students who could probably crack the encryption scheme faster than they can finish their CS/EE midterms. That is, if they could be bothered to....
Police don't encrypt their radios. Anything remotely sensitive is done using cellphones. Listening to the police bands is rather boring.
... Maybe it's different in California, but where I live, there is no law granting the 'press' special powers or privilege to information that is denied to everyone else ...
The press would like us to believe otherwise but it is the same in the U.S. The only right that the press has is that it can not be muzzled, it has a Constitutionally guaranteed right to speak. It has no right to access the government beyond what a normal citizen may nor does it have any immunity from laws when pursuing a story. If they wiretap, trespass, etc they can be arrested and prosecuted.
When the press is treated advantageously compared to a normal citizen it is merely a courtesy or politics. Nothing in the Constitution requires it.
Maybe it's different in California, but where I live, there is no law granting the 'press' special powers or privilege to information that is denied to everyone else.
What about press passes, then?
They are a courtesy. They are at the police department's discretion.
They retain recordings of all the radio traffic and make it public after 24 hours.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I remember the switch made by our police forces to digital encrypted radios. There was outcry over the costs, there was grumlinbs about bad reception but not one journalist was stupid enough to complain about not being able to listen in. Why on earth would anyone grant radios to the media? Without radio they will either have to work harder or find other news.
... While it's nice that the media acts keeps an eye on our interests ...
No, the media acts on its own interests, selling ears and eyeballs to advertisers. When they protect our interests that is a happy coincidence and subordinate to their business or political interests.
They absolutely should not be exempt, but I can accept that they might need to be published on a delay. It seems that most police radio communications has a tactical lifespan of under an hour. That is, it doesn't help the bank robbers to know that an hour ago the police were going to check out suspicious activity at the bank. By then, they will likely be painfully aware of it.
Add to it the fact that it from time to time there are screwups with the system resulting in units being out of communication and even have to resort to mobile phones.
(Cell phone - Phone for inmates)
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Then in that case, the delay (which will vary based on the operation) will require that the public cannot monitor police radios. They would have to come up with an alternative mechanism for distributing radio chatter to the public, perhaps via the Internet.
But I'm curious as to why they need to be published at all. We do not publish private conversations between police officers at the station, so why do we need to publish their long-distance communication?
It won't be long before some career criminal or reporter gets a hold of a receiver capable of handling their crypto, then getting the key. :) http://youtu.be/S-XEINagmaU
I figure it's only going to be 5 months before non-cops are listening in, and the cops will have no idea unless someone broadcasts something to clue them in. I'd suggest a sound clip from Sinistar
Someone is going to crack the encryption and start selling decoders to all the criminals. So the result will be that only the criminals will know what everyone is doing.
and all that blabber should provide the answer to your fundamental questions.
The bigger question should be how much personal information with respect to those accused/victims/witnessing crimes is indiscriminately broadcast over police radio.
When faced with the 'next victim', it is too often a Chief-Wiggam event.
The rest is just astro-seeding.
If you think this will prevent the bank robbers from listening, you are naive beyond salvation.
The only thing this will do is prevent the public and media from listening to what your watchers are doing. ONLY THAT!
if now the robbers tune in with a $5 radio, tomorrow they will tune in with a $5000 radio or $5000 bribe, or a loot share for more people eying the police and reporting to them with $5 radios.
anyway, they will get around it. because well, that's the minimal investment on their part. the big investment is they risking their lives or freedom behind bars. and that they are already committing.
Somebody tweet Sheldon Cooper about this! I'm sure he'll have a radio pulse cannon that shoots decryption algorithms ready by the morning.
They have families, mistresses, and organized crime to feed too.
Funny this, Europe has been switching to TETRA in droves, and nobody cares. We simply don't have a tradition of listening in on the cops.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
My 2cents police radio use is not for point 2 point communications but broadcast communication so that everyone on the team maintains an image of whats going on. Police have always had alternate methods of communicating sensitive information off the radio even if that was only cell phones.
In this context my concern is not that encrypting broadcast is a bad thing but that encryption will be seen as an excuse for being lazy and not using point to point communication systems to convey operationally sensitive information.
Even if the encryption were 100% perfect and you had perfect operational security there are "alleged" bad guys routinely being escorted to station in the back seats of these vechicles.
Well personally I believe this is more of a move to remove public access to the goings on.
All this does is to give the police the ability to not be "watched" (or listened to as the case may be).
Well, of course!
When it comes time to roll out the trucks to transport people to the retraining and relocation camps, it makes the logistics and planning easier if those people don't have and cannot easily gain real time knowledge of when or where to run to avoid being picked up in the sweep-up and transport operations.
For some strange reason, most people are averse to the idea of being taken from their homes and placed in government camps, no matter how brilliant the government and other "elites" that are always behind these kinds of things say they are, or how brilliant and necessary they loudly proclaim their plans are. Silly people must think *they* know what's best for them! Good thing there are plans already in motion to relieve them of such silly illusions.
As to criminals, I'm surprised more incidents of jamming of police radios hasn't occurred. You don't need anything all that fancy. Just a cheap, brute-force wideband high power RF noise generator. Just build an RF oscillator/noise generator to create a swath of noise across frequencies you wish to trash, and then run it through a broadband transistor RF power amplifier, perhaps a modified Amateur Radio broadband mobile power amplifier designed for nearby ham bands. Maybe a couple hundred dollar's worth of parts/gear at most if done right? A hundred watts, maybe much more, of brute RF noise will swamp nearly any receiver for a good distance around...encrypted or not, cell, trunk...makes little difference. It would be interesting to see SWAT team members suddenly and simultaneously tearing off their helmets in a panic to remove their tactical comm headphones because of the horrible screeching!
I'm actually quite surprised some of the larger, more organized & sophisticated criminal gangs haven't made jamming of police comms a more common occurrence. That would be removing a huge tactical advantage from the police for comparatively little risk or expense.
What a bunch of cry babies. Our city, county and state governments have been on Motorola's StarCom21 system for a few years now. Each department has their own groups of channels, some of which are just digital and some of which are encrypted. It's nothing that a Uniden BCD-396T can't handle. I've run scanners since the days of having to use crystals to configure a channel through current generation Digital APCO-25. I have no complaints if they want to encrypt their traffic. The news outlets are just pissed because they might actually have to get off their butts instead of being lazy and sitting next to a radio all day.
The incidental effect of criminals being able to listen in is outweighed by the need to check the overreach of law enforcement.
Nothing but real-time broadcasts in the clear of all broadcasts is acceptable for accountability to the constituents. A delay would not prevent law enforcement from committing an unlawful action, it would only provide time to cover things up.
Since they are in the public interest, the only path that preserves accountability and transparency is to leave things in the clear without any delay or interruption.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
If there's someone you don't want to have access to your encrypted communication, it's the media, we all know they will use it for their own benefits. Why should media have access to the communication, there is no need for it.. the only reason people want it, is because of their sensation hunger they need to satisfy, and that can NEVER be a reason for not having encrypted communications.. Civilians don't want their cellphones to be listened in on, so why wouldn't officers have a safer working enviroment by having encrypted communications (as it's their asses that are on the line, not ours who sit behind the tv watching the mayhem)..
thank you for addressing the problem of unlawful criminals snooping on your radio traffic. as a result of your decision to use a widely adopted, commercially available, and readily hackable radio protocol at taxpayer expense ive found the pasadena police radio system to be a terrific folly on friday nights.
Expect that your radios will jam, crash, and be forced to revert to unencrypted mode.
expect to have your radios counted every hour, and a general location of each radio posted to the internet.
expect your radios to be cloned and sold to the highest bidder.
http://www.crypto.com/blog/p25/
regards,
the next nefarious hacker to read this article.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I cannot take the US serious anymore when parents start giving their children names that come straight out of cartoons.
I cant help but think that those who would oppose police privacy either naturally distrust most police officers or have personally invested in a police scanner and spend all their time living vicariously through it.
Because it is supposed to be work related and we're paying for it. Someone has to watch the watcher. The delay seems like the best way to address reasonable concerns on both sides.
Note, gaps in communications logs may be tajen as bad things happening unless a very good explanation is provided.
Drive (2011)
Seems quite sensible to me to encrypt police communications.
They don't want criminals to know what police are doing right now. That's reasonable.
Perhaps a compromise would be to set up a shoutcast server that broadcasts police traffic on a 24 hour delay.
That way everyone can hear what was said but not right when something is happening.
Open that up to everyone... media, public, everyone.
Total cost to the department would be a fairly cheap pc and a little bandwidth. If the department is cash strapped then have a pay service where the media can get a more current broadcast. I'd say anyone but that might get us back to the situation with robbers using iphones with 3-4G to listen to the police shoutcast server.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I work for a PD that has an encrypted radio system. The first generation used 56-bit single-DES encryption on the 8khz PCM encoded audio stream. That would've been fairly easy to crack given today's computing power, but not back then. These days the encryption is 168-bit 3DES, which is considerably more difficult to crack. Our next upgrade will employ 128-bit AES with keys rotated using an algorithm driven by a GPS netclock system, Your local jr college comp-sci kids ain't gonna crack that in their entire lifetimes.
Funny thing about crypto is that it often is not necessary to attack the crypto to have your way with a system.
Using the wrong block chaining algorithm? Using a VBR codec?
AES implementation without blinding?
Key management problems?
Group keys shared by hundreds? thousands?
As far as key rotation goes it just makes things slightly more difficult. Key rotation did not prevent TKIP from sucking did it? If you can derypt the initial conversation you know enough to defeat key rotation.
Radios with GPS clocks used in self organizing systems to provide timing for shared access schemes are just another attack vector allowing the communication channel to be interrupted by denying access to GPS which is trivial to do.
If GPS is only used by base stations then if the base station goes out it is like a cell tower going out everyone looses the ability to directly communicate with each other during a disaster.
I wonder what Sheldon Cooper has to say regarding this.
You're an idiot if you think I'm talking about students from a junior college.
How many UNIVERSITIES are located in Pasadena, whose mascot is a beaver?
The students who go there are most certainly NOT your average, run-of-the-mill college students. I had classmates that would sit down and write their own operating systems and filesystems over a weekend, just for the fun of it. Our professors were some of the most brilliant and renowned academic minds in the world (which, by the way, tended to make them lousy instructors). My previous comment was mostly in jest, but the truth is that there probably do exist a number of individuals (undergrad, graduate, or faculty) who have the knowledge and access to computational resources to break such encryption if they so desired, or at least devise some manner to circumvent it.
... but just to set you straight - the bow street runners were paid by the local magistrate - ie by the government. They were not a gang-for-hire. But lets not let that inconvenient fact get in the way of your right-on squawking.
Actually they really easily could have it, they just don't happen to have an "interconnect" on that particular P25 repeater system, the device that patches the radio to a telephone line. P25 is almost feature-identical to TETRA, but they are different data-wise so they aren't compatible with each other, but they are really equivalent as far as things like phone patch, group calling, encryption, etc. All they need to do is install a box at the base station and hook up a phone line to it.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Make a media room at the police station, put one of the police's receivers there, and let the media guys send drones to listen. The drones can call their companies when something of interest happens. The police get their encrypted radio, the media get their live feed, and people who shouldn't be listening might not be able listen (how good is the encryption?).
Doesn't it cut both ways? With the major govs sinkholing all digital communications, shouldn't private citizens therefore securely encrypt their messages as well?
Which is the answer, opacity or transparency? Who gets the upper hand? Government, law enforcement, and emergency services (all paid for by citizens), or the freedom loving citizens themselves?
The arguments on both sides have valid points, but what solution fosters the values of a society that we can salute to?
---
Gimmee Liberty
That is because the media has managed to get the average person to think that when the First Amendment says "freedom...of the press" it is using "press" as a synonym for "news media". When in actuality when the Framers used the word "press" in the First Amendment, they meant "printing press" and were saying that anybody's right to publish anything they wish shall not be infringed.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
If I want to communicate with another employee, using what ever means necessary, what business is it of anyone what I use....why does anyone feel the police needs to answer to why they are changing their comm to encrypted. It is pretty obvious, no....you don't want the bad guys to know what is going on....pretty simple... I think this whole thing about letting people know is a bit too overrated. Why would anyone need to know, especially media what sting operations cops are trying to set up. If there is an issue about having order or control over cop activities to keep the cops in check then that is another story, but I would not let the media control that, i would let a governing body control that.... rodney king was a great example of why you need to have on the spot people filiming, but when a bank robbery is successful in circumventing every move the cops do, because they have access to their comm links, then let the cops do what they need to do....i don't see why this is even an issue!
Well that was fun but you can't blame the cops for finally starting to secure their radio communications.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That would involve spending money ... As it stands, in the rural parts of Brisbane, the SES using the council radios have better comms than the police. Both use motorola radios, so it all comes down to implementation
The systems are not trunked, and just like analogue radio, trunking makes phone patching easier (the radios have a dialpad for a start by default). I've used MPT1327 trunked radio with phone patches and ham radio with patches (in NZ, not Australia where they are still illegal).
The Queensland Police don't even have automatic position reporting, so the bus company has a better idea of where the buses are than where the police are
I was in the US Coast Guard for about 10 years through most of the 90's. They used regular VHF marine radio for most communications, but they had an encrypted local area radio that they could switch to if necessary. The quality wasn't as good as VHF, but you were pretty much guaranteed that every boater in 10 miles wasn't listening in if you were discussing something sensitive like looking for a body in the water, etc. If we wanted to notify people to be on the look out for a missing boat we'd broadcast on VHF. If we didn't want hundreds of random people to know that we're investigating a drunk boat operator or assisting somebody who had a heart attack or other medical issue we'd "go secure".
As time progressed we also started using cell phones more and more since the cell phone coverage for a couple miles from the coast is pretty decent these days in most populated areas and the quality is typically very good. Why shouldn't police departments be afforded the same level of security in their communications? Yes I know cell phones aren't perfect and could be intercepted by somebody intent on doing so, but at least you don't have to worry about hundreds/thousands of people eavesdropping by simply flipping on a radio.
mod up
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
The police all use their cell phones for the "good stuff" today. With the exception of a few dumb ones in Texas who recently were 'on the record' on the old radios with blatant racism, many police are now chatting with each other over their personal - or sometimes job-supplied - cell phones.
Can't we just agree that citizens of both the US and UK suffer unacceptable breaches of their liberty? There's no need to argue about who is freer, we both suffer terrible abuses.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
There isn't really any way to deny *anyone* secure tactical communications these days. Just get everyone a push to talk app for their smart phone and a bluetooth headset. You can even encrypt the messages if anyone actually cares (the police wouldn't).
A lot of comentors seem to be just fine with the idea of only the media having the scanners. Really?
1) You trust just a few privileged media groups to keep the police honest?
2) Surely not every small tv/radio station, newspaper, online journalist, etc... can be given a radio by the police. Who would manage it? Who would decide who qualifies? More likely just 1 or 2 big media outlets would be given radios, reinforcing the lead they have against their competition.
3) Privileged media companies that get radios might not want to report things that show the police in a bad light for fear of losing their radio
4) What about people in the general public that want to listen? They are both the taxpayers and the voters. Paying taxes gives them the right to here how their money is spent, voting gives them the need.
If there are a significant number of real examples of criminals getting away or police getting hurt b/c of scanners then I do get it. A compromise might be to give the public (as in everybody, not just a few media types) a delayed access while giving media a real time feed. Unfortunately there is no way to implement this that completely eliminates 2 & 3 but they could be reduced if you get rid of the scanner idea and just give them internet streams. The media version can be encrypted + password protected. It would be easier to manage and pay for than issuing radios. But please... consider the rest of the public too. At least give them a free, open stream even if it has to be time delayed. How about 1/2 hour?
I doubt it. It's not like cracking a computer program where anybody can download a copy or even rooting a phone or tablet where millions are already buying them anyway. To crack this you would have to buy a very expensive DSP and FPGA board. Then, once you have your crack the only practical way to share it is everyone else that wants to use it buys those expensive boards too. It's not like walking into a Best Buy and picking up the latest iDevice to take home and jailbreak.
Doesn't he use a police scanner? Actually, I think of super heros do that.
No. Encryption codes get constantly updated and they have ways of locking stolen/missing radios out. Think satellite radio but without the 'just keep it off after unsubscribing for a while' loophole.
If it can be encrypted, then it can be decrypted with the same hardware. How long before an enterprising scanner company releases a scanner that decrypt those encrypted communication is real time? What have the police bought? A few days.
Why wouldn't it be illegal to decrypt these encrypted communications? It's somewhat more serious than getting round the DRM on a DVD.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Perhaps because the economy sucks due to the banksters robbing the people.....
And we don't need a scanner for that, just a peoples mic. to inform the authorities....who will then do what?
Our local PD shares a trunking system with 4 other PD's and FD's in the area. Each group has a set of encrypted channels they can and do use in situations when they don't want the average person listening in. This provides the security during crisis situations, but still maintains the openness that the community wants. Win/Win and they are not having hand out hardware to non-gov people that need to listen in.
Should I have the right to drive to the central PD HQ, take the elevator to the third floor where they plan/coordinate investigations of narcotics trafficking, and open up a camping chair in the middle of the floor and sit there all day listening to the logistics of their current operations? Why or why not?
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
Thereby giving them another club to threaten the media with and further entrenching the establised organizations. No. Publish all the communications after the fact or keep them completely secret (the juicy stuff will leak, of course).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
For a number of years, I lived in a city. The neighborhood was good overall, but it had its problems. One was a house down the street. The occupants were known to be a good source for just about any stree drug, and they had loud parties regularly, with people spilling out on the street. We first tried talking to them--it didn't work. As soon as we started calling the police, we started seeing a pattern.
Within moments of the call (no matter who made it, no matter whether or not the occupants were told we were calling), all the young men would leave the house, through the back alley, and a number of women and children would come out onto the front step and front porch. When officers arrived, the women played dumb, claiming there was no party and that no one else was in the house (presumably true by the time they arrived).
I watched this happed repeatedly over a series of months before I finally got to talk to one of the officers about it. He told me that, from all the reports they had received, it was pretty clear that things were going on there, but that the occupants always "put on their show" whenever an officer was dispatched. He surmised, as had I, that they were using police scanners to monitor when officers were dispatched to their address. When the call came over the radio, their show started.
Yes, I know many of you may have concerns about secret police conversation, but I, for one, am tired of the bad guys getting away because they know the cops are coming.
[We left the neighborhood about 18 months later. We're still in touch wtih neighbors who report that they still see the little show, but not as often, and that they have seen them get busted once--they apparently had plainclothes officers in the neighborhood after hearing a tip about the party. That time, they snagged people in the alley after the call went in.]
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
I hope someone with the power to do something reads this. I am an avid scanner listener, ham radio operator and electrical engineer. May I suggest that the PD only encrypt certain channels or groups in their digital system. Give the officers and anyone who would use this feature access to the encrypted group and everything else stays unencrypted. Switch over to the encrypted group when they have sensitive information that they want to relay to other officers. This way dispatch and everyone else who needs to listen but are not involved can listen in on a digital scanner. Anyone who is telling people to go to radio shack and just buy a digital scanner to listen in doesn't know what they are talking about. You cannot buy a scanner that can listen in on encrypted transmissions. THEY ARE ILLEGAL! and no one makes them. The only other way to listen in is for the police to provide radios to the people who they want to be able to listen in on encrypted conversations, and this can get extremely expensive at $3000.00 or per radio. Also just going out and purchasing the same brand and make of radio that they use on their encrypted system won't work either because they also have to be programmed for the proper encryption algorithm that they are using. It's just like trying to put an outside computer on a secure network. You can't just plug it into the network and use it without having a log in and permissions to allow it to be used. Out of the box an un-programmed radio is nothing more than a very expensive brick.
I imagine the authorities would throw the book at you for doing something like this.
Not The Book! I imagine the Zetas are shaking in fear at this very moment.
I mean, if they can afford their own encrypted, hidden cellular network, having the US branch of their gang swipe encryption keys from Pasadena will be no big deal.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm sure the radios they use don't likely have keys that change. I bet it would be good for years before it would stop working.
If I were really into organized crime this would be great. Police would think their communications are fairly safe from outside ears. I'd steal a police radio and listen in and they would have no idea I was able to listen to their communications.
True, this wouldn't help the guy listening for speeding traps or whatever, but this would be a boon for someone who is into a big heist (which is the exact scenerio they are worried about).
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Growing up in a small town in Texas, a police scanner is some of the only entertainment we had. Besides laughing at your friends when they get pulled over, you get an idea what kind of idiots get deputized. I've spent many nights laughing my ass off listening to inept officers chasing their tails. If you learn the car numbers and all their codes, you get an idea of how often that particularly fat sheriff's deputy stops for snacks. If you figure out the frequency of their "private" channel, you get to hear them talk about all the racist, redneck stuff they do. Eventually they stopped doing that. Now they "public service" each other (which means they just break out the cell phones when they wanna talk about racial profiling, accepting bribes, or whatever other corrupt shit they do). Actually, now that I say it out loud, it's no surprise they want to encrypt transmissions.
The reason for allowing potentially-hostile entities to communicate securely with one another in certain forms, is that they already have the means to communicating securely in other forms, and there's no conceivable way this capability will ever be denied to them.
Let's take a bad scenario, where cops are talking on their encrypted radios, arranging plans to do something contrary to the public interest and for which the public who funds them and otherwise invests them with power, and a right and need to know. It sure sounds bad, doesn't it? But they can do the same exact thing by meeting in person! It's impossible to prevent conspiracies.
This is one of the same arguments that privacy advocates use against government intrusion. The motivation that privacy advocates have can vary, and one of them is that We The People are more important than law enforcement, and I agree with that point of view, but it's not the only reason. The other reason, nothing social-contracty, is that aggressive surveillance by law enforcement is futile. If I intend to commit a crime, then I can very easily secure communications with my co-conspirators to a degree that is far beyond LE's capabilities to intercept. Thus, aggressive surveillance will tend to only catch people who don't think they're committing crimes, or small-time stuff where the bad guys made the wrong convenience/security gamble, etc. You might find some good in those scenarios, but overall it doesn't help you with exactly the kind of stuff that government uses to justify their expensive invasiveness.
Similarly, if we rely on intercepting cop communication to find out about cop misconduct, we're going to be looking at the least important misconduct. We have bigger fish to fry, than exposing some guy who comes back 10 minutes late, at public expense, from his donut break. The cops will still be able to meet at the station and make plans to go beat the shit out of protesters, and they'll be able to maintain radio silence (or at least not give anything away) on the way there. We get nothing.
In addition, once you move to modern encryption and its hardware, we're generally talking about much more generally capable equipment than old style analog radios. There's no reason it can't be recording everything anyway, to be automatically time-shifted (as a lot of people here are suggesting) or later subpoenaed or FOIAed (to support rather than initially expose, evidence of a wrongdoing).
So let them have their secure communications, and let them become Yet Another example/leader/precedent for all of society moving toward decent comm tech. Saying they don't need decent comm is like saying their cars don't need round wheels. Encrypt-everything is beyond even a right; it's a minimal best practice for which exceptions should only be made when there are compelling reasons. That goes even for cops.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
On Friday, Pasadena police Lt. Phlunte Riddle said the department was unsure whether it could accommodate the media with digital scanners.
I'm confused. At what point did law enforcement become obligated to provide the media with any form of access whatsoever to their real time communications? In this day and age I am disappointed to learn that the Pasadena PD is just now switching to encrypted digital radios.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
There are legitimate law-enforcement reasons to keep some real-time communications out of the public's hands.
But given many decades of police deciding to use radios knowing that they could be intercepted, rather than using some other technology, means it's not a huge problem.
As a compromise, allow encrypted radio use, PROVIDING that:
* Almost everything is recorded and kept for 30 days after publication or, if never published, for several years, whichever comes first. Once published, third parties would be able to make their own copies.
* By default, everything will be published within a few minutes of transmission. By and large, the public would know all police activity within a few minutes of when it was discussed on the air.
* By prior arrangement, certain communications related to ongoing investigations or other multi-day events (e.g. Superbowl) can be embargoed until secrecy is no longer needed.
* A real-time censor may embargo certain conversations for a few hours if he senses there is an event in progress such as a bank robbery.
* A real-time censor may embargo certain conversations for a few hours and flag them for immediate extension if he senses they will need to have their embargo extended. Examples would be hostage situations and cases where common sense says the conversation should have been covered by a pre-approved long-term embargo but there wasn't one in place.
* Any embargo longer than 30 days would need high-level approval AND an extension every 30 days with high-level approval, and oversight to make sure that the long-term-embargo privilege wasn't being abused.
* Some information, such as citizen's confidential health information, should be quickly and permanently erased without publication. This would require heavy outside oversight to prevent abuse.
The same rules would apply to non-voice communications.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'm an old ham and SWL, learned the law about being allowed to listen but not republish point to point radio communications as a young teen, and live in a small town where the only news is via scanner, so I wish this were not necessary, but the police have been going to frequencies not covered on most scanners and other methods of secure communications for years. The FCC forbids us private citizens from encrypting most radio traffic, but the organized narcotics rings and others do it all the time. I was on a police ride-along many years ago in Dallas and the dispatcher had the officers go to a pay phone (remember those?) for a message about a bomb threat to avoid panic. At one point there was a city ordinance in Dallas against having a scanner or police radio in a private car that was aimed at ambulance-chasing lawyers and the media. Having known of cell calls by politicians, and radio messages to and from Air Force One, being intercepted and illegally published, I'm sujrprised this has taken so long. I practiced privacy and criminal law for years before being forced to retire. I've known the dispatch tapes to prove useful if you can catch those before they are routinely recorded over about every 24 hours, and I love dash-cam video which sometimes is hte only true account from either side of what really happened in a chase, stop, shooting, etc., but you don't really hear anything unguarded and relevant on police radio because they're smart enough not to say "Let's beat the out of him and say he resisted" on the air. I've known some police abuses and outright state and federal crimes, and some lies about them. I arrived at court one morning to learn from the bailiff, who had a police radio, and the judge, who also heard this, that the police had broadcast a report that I had been found murdered. This was the second such occasion and they knew this was false, and I never could find out who originated this, but, for reasons attorney-client confidentiality prevents me from explaining here, I took this as a threat. I'm not sure we really want to put all police and other emergency radio traffic on the Internet even with a delay. That's permanent and too easy for people to misuse. This traffic also often includes privileged and confidential medical and mental health data.