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"Police Detector" Monitors Emergency Radio Transmissions
schwit1 writes A Dutch company has introduced a detection system that can alert you if a police officer or other emergency services official is using a two-way radio nearby. Blu Eye monitors frequencies used by the encrypted TETRA encrypted communications networks used by government agencies in Europe. It doesn't allow the user to listen in to transmissions, but can detect a radio in operation up to one kilometer away. Even if a message isn't being sent, these radios send pulses out to the network every four seconds and Blu Eye can also pick these up, according to The Sunday Times. A dashboard-mounted monitor uses lights and sounds to alert the driver to the proximity of the source, similar to a radar detector interface.
How do you say "My pig sense is tingling." in Dutch?
our police overlords will have this banned very quickly. Imagine a network of these in a city that can update a location map in realtime. Remember, just because the cops are public officials operating in public doesn't mean they think the public has a right to know about anything they are doing.
like if you are driving 90mph in a state where radar detectors are illegal
We've had this technology in the US since around 2006, however it was restricted to trunk/hybrid, or analogue radio systems and came bundled as part of a radio scanner. Scanners in many states are illegal to operate in a motor vehicle, hence the technology never really caught on. its biggest, perhaps only manufacturer, was uniden with their 'beartracker' feature
in the states many municipalities still use antiquated strobe technology to change traffic signals in the event an emergency vehicle needs to pass. several of our radar detectors alert for these 'strobes' of IR radiation. "Safety radar" was an invention that never saw much usage in the united states but would alert the driver of road hazards and approaching ambulances using dedicated transcievers. its largely been discontinued.
radios in the United States use APCO P25; this change was made largely after 2001. A digital system, it has cryptographic capability and is best-effort in protocol. Gnu Radio projects to capture and decode the unencrypted traffic are successful, and can yield through data capture, ping latency and triangulation a wealth of information such as who is in a given vicinity, their name, their unit number, the radio MAC address, what shift they work, and even their routes. much of this data wouldnt require 'listening' to the communication at all but is, much to our chagrin as slashdotters im sure, metadata
http://www.crypto.com/blog/p25... unrelated but this presentation gives insight into how pointlessly flawed APCO p25 is.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Surely this is old news, the bad guys in games like GTA have had this tech available for years.
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
In many places, Ambulances and firefighters are using the same technology. So expect some false positives...
Yeah, but is it encrypted?
Isn't it easier to just drive carefully, refrain from exceeding the posted speed limit by more than 5-10mph depending on whether you're in town or on a highway, stay in the right lane, avoid tailgating, and use your turn signals? The people who would find this useful are the sort of crazy asshole drivers for whom I used to keep a grenade launcher.
Unfortunately, my wife took away the M-79 I kept under the dash soon after we got married. Said it made her nervous.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
I had an idea to build something like this combined with a police scanner using an SDR and a Raspi or similar. And at over 1000 euros for this system, those plans are still looking pretty good.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Or you could, you know, follow your local traffic regulations instead of casually breaking the law.
Why is everyone so obsessed with breaking speed limits?
You know the score, pal! You're not a cop, you're little people.
Because I have better things to do with my life than sit in my car, and because speed limits are always set far below the speed at which I feel safe driving.
Radars produce signal when not active. Normal ones aren't "off" when not taking a reading, they are inactive, which means their components are still warmed up. They emit detectable signals, nothing electrical is quiet when it is on.
Now there are what are called "pop" radar guns that go from off to on real fast... but they are, near as I know, not legal for measuring speeds since such a device cannot be made accurate. You can't make a 20GHz transmitter that turns on and stabilizes in a fraction of a second.
Let's see how US compares to Germany with traffic related death rate:
Germany: 4.9 road fatalities per 1 billion vehicle km
USA: 7.6 road fatalities per 1 billion vehicle km
Maximum speed limit:
Germany: unlimited (on 70% of the Highways)
USA: 120 km/h