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Police Department Accused of Updating Their Radios With Pirated Software (www.cbc.ca)
Winnipeg's police department used encrypted radios to stop the public from listening in to their conversations with police scanners. But did they pirate their software keys?
Long-time Slashdot reader Curtman shares this report from CBC News: Winnipeg police have arrested a manager with the city for allegedly updating police radios with fraudulent software he got from a person considered to be a security threat by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, CBC News has learned. Back in 2011, Ed Richardson allegedly obtained millions of dollars worth of illegal software and instructed city employees to use it, police said in a January 2018 sworn affidavit, submitted to the Provincial Court of Manitoba when officers were seeking permission to search the man's emails...
In the affidavit, police said the Motorola radios needed frequent updating, which could only be done if the city purchased a "refresh key" or licence from the company to unlock the proprietary software. Motorola charged about $94 per update per radio, the document said, and a radio shop employee told police Richardson didn't like that. "[The employee] does not believe his actions were for personal gain; he believes that Richardson likes the idea of not giving more money to Motorola," the affidavit said.
The affidavit alleges that Richardson gave one employee 65,000 refresh keys, and told him that "you don't want to know where these came from."
In the affidavit, the employee adds that they "clearly" didn't come from Motorola.
Long-time Slashdot reader Curtman shares this report from CBC News: Winnipeg police have arrested a manager with the city for allegedly updating police radios with fraudulent software he got from a person considered to be a security threat by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, CBC News has learned. Back in 2011, Ed Richardson allegedly obtained millions of dollars worth of illegal software and instructed city employees to use it, police said in a January 2018 sworn affidavit, submitted to the Provincial Court of Manitoba when officers were seeking permission to search the man's emails...
In the affidavit, police said the Motorola radios needed frequent updating, which could only be done if the city purchased a "refresh key" or licence from the company to unlock the proprietary software. Motorola charged about $94 per update per radio, the document said, and a radio shop employee told police Richardson didn't like that. "[The employee] does not believe his actions were for personal gain; he believes that Richardson likes the idea of not giving more money to Motorola," the affidavit said.
The affidavit alleges that Richardson gave one employee 65,000 refresh keys, and told him that "you don't want to know where these came from."
In the affidavit, the employee adds that they "clearly" didn't come from Motorola.
I was working for a fairly large police department, and our mobile data terminals (MDTs) were not Y2K compliant. They were 386's running Windows 3, I can't remember if it was Windows for Workgroups, and Moto told us they wouldn't roll over properly and would cost on the order of $300+ per terminal to update, and we had over 1000 cars.
After researching further, we learned that when the officers logged on to our dispatch system that it downloaded the correct date/time from the Unisys mainframe, overriding the Windows clock. Y2K endrun, Motorola doesn't get a trunkfull of money from us. Everybody working 3rd shift on 31 December 1999 were instructed to log off just before midnight and sign back in just after. Everything worked just fine. The MDTs continued working properly for years until they were eventually replaced.
The only Y2K casualty that we had was the Dispatch system on the HP minis! A patch was supposed to self-deploy at midnight: it was compiled and ready to go, but someone didn't run the link/edit step, and when it deployed, crashed it crashed the whole shebang. At least our Windows network was flawless.
While I can understand the guy not wanting to pay Motorola a ridiculous amount of money to update the radios, if you sign the contract, you're obligating yourself to the licensing fees. Motorola was infamous for this, so either read the fine print and negotiate a better contract, or find a vendor that will give you a better deal - you don't have to deal with Motorola directly to buy Motorola equipment!
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
The radios are often encrypted to comply with things like HIPAA and other privacy laws. If there is a call that involves need for medical care then the call for help can require passing on information that may be protected. If the person involved is a minor, medical condition or not, then there are also privacy laws on this. If it's a matter of tracking down a fugitive then the police don't want the person to know where they are, they are giving the suspect a tactical advantage by hearing how they plan to track him/her down.
Certainly covering up "misdeeds" is a concern but where and how is this line drawn? I'm not aware of any law that the police are required to broadcast their communications. Should we be able to listen in on all of their phone calls as well?
I know I might be getting off topic but here goes...
I keep hearing on how only the police can be trusted with "X". Well, now we have a case where the police seem to not be trusted. Pick a lane people, can we trust them or not? Is there a middle ground perhaps? I think the middle ground was spelled out the in the US Bill of Rights. The police cannot search without a warrant or reasonable cause. If they violate that then the evidence found cannot be used against the accused. The police cannot disarm the public, people have the right to defend themselves. This includes defending themselves from the police. Every police officer is an individual. An untrustworthy cop should not be allowed to abuse another individual. Their right to privacy does not go away because they are now employed by the government. We need to keep records of what was said when in case there is a dispute, this does not mean live transmission of their communications.
There are ways to hold them to account for their actions besides unencrypted radios. Let them have the radios because I want the same technology for myself. I should have available to me the same tools as the police.
Bullshit. HIPAA applies to covered entities and that's not the police
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/defa...
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