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.'"

Comments

So?

[Kell Bengal]

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?

Re:So?

[errandum]

The problem is the status quo. People got used to have access to something (and I'm sure some have a legitimate reason for it), so it is conisdered bad form to remove said feature. That's the way I see it, at least.

Re:So?

[johngaunt]

My only problem with this scheme, and I work for the local constabulatory as a civilian, is that they hope to give preferential treatment to the 'press'. If they won't let Joe Citizen have access to, then no one should. Just because you work for a paper or TV or Radio station doesn't make you better or more able to access information than anyone else. 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.

Re:So?

[cupantae]

I think if the mods had a "+5, Hysterical" option, people would use it all the time.

Re:So?

[Z00L00K]

Why not present the radio traffic time lapsed on the web?

A delay of up to an hour wouldn't hurt the news agencies that much and still would keep any criminals off track.

It also allows for the possibility to further delay or even cut traffic in special cases.

Re:So?

[symbolset]

I'm actually surprised it took them this long. Operational security is important, and bad guys listening on scanners has been a fiction theme for what, 25 years? It's been well proven to happen in practice too.

And no, for the commenter above, time delay doesn't work. Even response times, the names and numbers of units, processes and practices are all operational security elements that can be exploited by criminals and these would be revealed by a time-delayed online stream. Besides, providing it requires public moneys put to a use outside the police department budget.

I'm as suspicious of some members of the police as the next guy, and feel they generally need good supervision. But transmitting their radio signals in the clear is a simple detriment to the public safety mission.

Re:So?

[walshy007]

Even response times, the names and numbers of units, processes and practices are all operational security elements that can be exploited by criminals and these would be revealed by a time-delayed online stream.

By this logic, the public should have no method of determining their local police forces typical response times, how well or under staffed they are, etc. Being able to not reveal a thing to the public might do wonders for the security of the police, but without some oversight how can you tell if the police are doing their job well or not?

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Law enforcement will never be able to justify to me why their actions cannot be 100% transparent.

Because they have a job that's far less dangerous than fishing for crab off Alaska.

Snark aside, that's the usual bullshit excuse - that they're risking their lives and all that. Sure, there are a very few places in this country where officers would probably increase their safety by volunteering instead to sweep for IEDs by hand in Iraq. But by and large, the common knowledge of it being dangerous to be a cop is absurdly overstated. Yet this continues to justify military-like armaments, ridiculous pay and pension, effective immunity from prosecution, a lack of transparency and oversight, et cetera.

Re:So?

[Gription]

Ding,ding,ding,ding! We have a winner!!!

Government unobserved very quickly starts to smell very bad. Often government only has to obfuscate their actions in plain sight to hide their actions. The City of Bell in Los Angeles is a prime example. Take an organization that is granted extraordinary powers, self regulated, and (when caught out) investigates itself and you have a recipe for disaster. The only protection that the public has to protect itself is to be able to observe in a meaningful manner the actions of the police.

Do you think that police are good and magically 'special' so they can be trusted? It is a pretty well excepted fact that a single person, observed, will tend to make choices that we would describe as moral simply because they are being observed. You put together a group of like minded people and then you can start to see really questionable behavior. When you get really large masses of people in a hierarchy then you can get truly obscene, despotic behavior. Question any police officer you know and you will find seeds of this. They have a culture ingrained with the idea that the laws don't really apply to them combined with equal parts of "they are a brotherhood that stands apart" and the fact that they investigate themselves.

Ask any police officer you know if they have chosen to not give a 'brother officer' a traffic citation simply because they are a police officer ("One of the brotherhood"). They will say things like "professional courtesy" and if pressed for a better reason will come up with something like, "I don't give them a ticket because this is someone that I might have to count on to back me up in an emergency situation at a moments notice". Really!??? The police officer's excuse breaks down to, "a policeman might be so unreliable and sophomoric to not pitch in during an emergency situation because someone gave them a traffic ticket"? I don't believe that answer for a minute even though the officer probably believes it, because it has been ingrained in him through the culture of his department and training.
Let's break it down:
- They can choose which laws apply to their brotherhood.
- They have a culture of protecting their own before they protect the public. (all people are this way)
- They are put in situations where on an average day they see the worst in humanity and the normal human thing to do is to anticipate/expect/look-for that behavior out of of every new person they meet.
- They have a culture of secrecy.
- And then they investigate themselves and only they can decide to send one of their own in front of a judge.
- - - - - - - - -

Trust your government as far as you can spit upwind in a hurricane. A government unobserved is a recipe for tyranny... and the baking time till ready is almost instantaneous. Remember that Morality is a function of consciousness, and a government (or corporation) is not conscious so it cannot make moral choices. They may appear moral or the actions may agree with your moral choices but that doesn't make them moral choices.
It is actually just a big process populated by people wanting to justify their own positions and to a large part by people who think citizens are accountable to 'The Process instead of the other way around. A big thing to look for are governments that think that the constituents are their source of revenue. This tells you what the people at the top think the relationship is. And everyone else in the hierarchy is sucking from the teat above them so you know how the Kool-Aid is distributed.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

We've had enough UK precedence, thank you.

Re:So?

[Joce640k]

The way the police are headed recently we need every single control and check possible over what they say and do. Letting them censor their own communications is a bad idea.

*Everything* the police does should be made public. If it was up to me I'd have every public servant walking around with a video camera on his shoulder recording everything they say/do. We need to watch the watchmen.

OTOH, yes, letting criminals listen in real time isn't good - it helps them get away. There's a better solution then 'encrypt everything' though...

Why is this news?

[icebike]

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.

Re:Why is this news?

[epyT-R]

the cops are supposed to work for the public interest, but they don't. they work for the state's and thus not for us. the media is supposed to keep tabs on the government's activities, but they're really in it for their own personal gain and glory these days. I think if public money gets pumped into it, it should be accountable to the public should individuals take an interest. in this era of standing up for your rights = terrorist, locking up the radio broadcasts is just one more step towards an opaque state that can do whatever it wants.

Re:Why is this news?

[garyebickford]

I wouldn't object to a delay, say 15 minutes, before public availability, if the data is streamed directly onto a public access server not controlled by the police force (perhaps a service bureau that acts as a neutral third party). That would meet the public's right to the information, and also the need for the police to not let the bank robbers listen in while the police are saying "you two go around the back, you go up on the roof, and we'll go in the front door on five ... one ... two ... three ... four ... FIVE!".

Quid Pro Quo

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:We the people...

[Mister Transistor]

They don't release that information over the air. They just don't, ever. They use KDT terminals in the car for any sensitive information like names, addresses, etc. The most they will usually EVER give over the air is a phone number or situation codes like "Signal One", "Code Black" or "10-8". If they can't use the data terminals, most of the cops have figured out that a cell phone is an easy way to keep things off the air and confidential, a lot of them use the phone to call their dispatch and discuss any sensitive information like the type mentioned above on a regular basis and hardly ever use their radios at all anymore. As they switch to digital and encrypted type communications, they actually are finding their radios more useful than before - due to the extra margin of security, they actually CAN safely discuss names, addresses, etc.

That said, my Cook County Sheriff here in Chicago has been running full-time encryption since they went digital about 4 years ago. A lot of smaller city agencies are also in the process of going digital and want full-time encryption, too. When they did this, the world did not stop, the media did not dry up and blow away - somehow they still report on crimes in a timely manner, but a bunch of scanner geeks and hams were pissed off. That was it, that was the sum total of the impact. Unfortunately, I'm one of the hams that used to listen in because it was interesting when there was no Ham traffic to listen to, but hey, life is short - there's a lot of other things to do and listen to elsewhere!