Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Government Encryption

Why Many California Police Departments Are Now Encrypting Their Radio Communications (sandiegouniontribune.com) 104

Posted by EditorDavid from the Smokey-and-the-bandwidth dept.
"The San Diego County Sheriff's Department last week encrypted its radio communications, blocking the public from listening to information about public safety matters in real time," reports the San Diego Union Tribune: The department is the latest law enforcement agency in the county and state to cut off access to radio communications in response to a California Department of Justice mandate that required agencies to protect certain personal information that law enforcement personnel obtain from state databases. Such information — names, drivers license numbers, dates of birth and other information from the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, or CLETS — sometimes is broadcast over police radios.

The October 2020 mandate gave agencies two options: to limit the transmission of database-obtained personal information on public channels or to encrypt their radio traffic. Police reform advocates say the switch to encrypted channels is problematic. The radio silence, they say, will force members of the public, including the news media, to rely on law enforcement agencies' discretion in releasing information about public safety matters....

A sheriff's spokesperson has said the department is exploring ways to disseminate information about incidents as they unfold. One idea is an online page that would show information about calls to which deputies respond.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Why Many California Police Departments Are Now Encrypting Their Radio Communications More

Why Many California Police Departments Are Now Encrypting Their Radio Communications

Comments Filter:

  • How this is sometimes handled (Score:4, Interesting)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday January 17, 2022 @07:40AM (#62180257) Homepage Journal

    Some PDs provide an encrypted radio to members of the media so that at least someone can sorta kinda keep up with what they're up to.

    • That's quite impressive (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Giving encrypted radios to the media is as good as publishing the personal details discussed. Quite impressively failing to get this privacy thing.

      Personally I don't mind if the radios are encrypted iff the police reliably publish why they felt like racing around with light and sound afterward and most if not all the other things they do.

      I'm in a country where the radios have been encrypted for over a decade with a country-wide system for all public services that seems to do it quite well. (In regards to

    • Re: How this is sometimes handled (Score:5, Informative)

      by sid crimson ( 46823 ) on Monday January 17, 2022 @10:13AM (#62180697)

      A friend is in the local police. A common strategy is to use radio links to communicate in a manner that can be heard by police scanner radiosâ¦.

      â¦and then discuss their plans via cell phone. Tricky and effective against criminals. (And noncriminals too I supposeâ¦.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shaiku ( 1045292 )

        This is what the police and fire do in my city. They speak in the clear for 90% of their activities but the minute something turns sensitive or they have trouble hearing each other the radio they switch to cell phones.

        I think the issue here, however, is that they have a mandate to protect personal identifying information that is otherwise routinely broadcast over the radio during a traffic stop. I suppose they could walk back to the car and use an encrypted terminal to run people's records but this is ine

  • Encrypted radio communication for law enforcement and similar has been standard in Europe for at least a decade by now, so this is just a minor piece of news.

    When there are scanners that can get around the encryption then we can come back. And they will come.

    • Encrypted radio communication for law enforcement and similar has been standard in Europe for at least a decade by now, so this is just a minor piece of news.

      When there are scanners that can get around the encryption then we can come back. And they will come.

      While we like to think hackers can solve every problem - it can't. This is not DVD or blu-ray. Regardless of how any given system works at the moment, with a limited number of devices that regularly return to the base station for rekeying can create a system that is impossible to have cracked without a daily insider threat. You better hope this is true or all of your bank accounts and all cryptocurrency is also broken

      • While we like to think hackers can solve every problem - it can't. This is not DVD or blu-ray. Regardless of how any given system works at the moment, with a limited number of devices that regularly return to the base station for rekeying can create a system that is impossible to have cracked without a daily insider threat.

        You better hope this is true or all of your bank accounts and all cryptocurrency is also broken

        True, the most common "encryption" I've seen is simply frequency hopping and the rotation is transmitted on an FM subcarrier. That's not as difficult to crack as a BlueRay or DVD or CD for that matter.

        Financial transactions are much better protected that that.

        M does sell true encryption. I've just never seen it in the wild yet. Doesn't mean it's not there, just that I've not seen it.
        Yet.

        • Motorola has been selling encrypted radios to police departments for ... well at least 15 years at this point. The news is why it's taken California so long to get on board.

          And no, it's not just frequency hopping, but rather, encryption according to FIPS standards.

        • I believe it is the latter (encrypting the digitally encoded voice transmissions) they are talking about, and I have seen radios that can do this. Civilians in the USA have been able to buy radios that can decode digital radio transmissions (e.g. P25 phase 1) and follow trunked radio conversations for quite some time. (I do not believe we are talking about military grade frequency hopping which happens much more rapidly and is meant to counter a different level of threat) I believe a civilian in the USA can

        • While we like to think hackers can solve every problem - it can't. This is not DVD or blu-ray. Regardless of how any given system works at the moment, with a limited number of devices that regularly return to the base station for rekeying can create a system that is impossible to have cracked without a daily insider threat.

          You better hope this is true or all of your bank accounts and all cryptocurrency is also broken

          True, the most common "encryption" I've seen is simply frequency hopping and the rotation is transmitted on an FM subcarrier. That's not as difficult to crack as a BlueRay or DVD or CD for that matter.

          Financial transactions are much better protected that that.

          M does sell true encryption. I've just never seen it in the wild yet. Doesn't mean it's not there, just that I've not seen it.
          Yet.

          Afaik most countries use tetra based systems that offer end to end encryption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]

      • All you have to do is broadcast interference and the radios fall back to open mode without acknowledgement.

      • The bomb robots used by PDs are all the same military grade robots made by DARPA. The most classified piece of tech on it is their encrypted radio control unit. Being RC you would imagine its distance is limited to a short distance. It in fact is not. Thats the most classified part of the whole thing. Its somewhere in excess of 20km. These bots are not just useful for bomb disposal, but also pre-strike surveillance for SWAT-like units. It was only a matter of time before similar tech hit their comms gear t

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hoofie ( 201045 )

          Bomb detection and defusing etc is not something that should be done by Police really. In most major other countries anything to do with explosives etc. is handed straight over to the Military e.g in the UK the Army or Navy are called out depending on where it is.

          One single anomoly is the island of Guernsey where the Police deal with and destroy old munitions, flares etc found on the island, a hangover from their role after the WW2 occupation.

      • Re:Standard operation in Europe (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Brymouse ( 563050 ) on Monday January 17, 2022 @09:14AM (#62180481)

        with a limited number of devices that regularly return to the base station for rekeying can create a system that is impossible to have cracked without a daily insider threat.

        Yea, that's not how it works at all. In the US we use P25, and encryption is symmetrical keys. 99.9% of departments never rekey their radios as you have to physically connect them to keyloader (KVL). There is the possibility to do Over The Air Rekeying (OTAR), but this is expensive and the entire system needs to be setup for it. Then you have the costs of doing AES256 it self, which can be 1000 per radio in licensing; many departments run ADP, a week rc4 algo, just to get avoid the need for the AES license, KVL5000 loader (about $7k) and cables.

        Now the KVL is typically viewed as secure, once the keys are in it, they can't be viewed in plain text. This is not the case, as there's no encryption of the key on the wire between it and the radio (and it's a symmetric key, so even in FIPS mode, you can still decode it if you have the entire conversation) so you can get a device that "impersonates" a radio and then keyload this device. It's also trivial to embed a uP in an XTS5000 that records the entire keyloading conversation for later playback. 16k of storage captures over 60 keys! In this way you can get someone to keyload your radio and then get the keys from it.

        Since most departments don't cycle their keys, it's possible to record the entire system as a data stream. 9.6 kbit/s per channel, one RTL dongle per carrier, even the most complex trunked system is maybe 20 carriers, assuming it's online for 100% duty cycle it's 16gb/day of data. A single 16tb disk can store 1000 days of radio traffic (likely 3-4x that as the dutycycle is 20-25%). This means once you get the key, you can come back to it and decode it all. Of course only the voice traffic is encoded, the metadata (ID's, data, etc) is not encrypted. If you know who is what ID, you can develop a good idea of what's going on based on their talkgroup ID and what ID's are talking.

        Then we get into the quality of the keys. 99% of them are the phone number of the tech that installed it. I've seen "911911911911911911" too. It's a joke, if you use shit for keys, even the best crypto system is shit. The only ones who seem to understand this are the feds, USSS, etc. They keyload radios with keys provided by the NSA and keep the keyloader under lock and key when it's loaded with keys. They cycle keys every deployment or week, and have the radios setup to not work if the key is not there. That last part is important, as most radios are setup to work in the clear if they drop their keys, and the officers won't know it. The indication on the radio is only a small flashing Ø symbol. There's no indication if they transmit in the clear since enabling this is seen as "annoying" by most officers.

        In summary encryption is a joke as deployed. It's expensive and fragile.

        • This. Also DOD has a similar policy. Radios are filled weekly by a key loader kept under lock and key often under better security than the armory. Lose the key loader and itâ(TM)s an immediate serious incident and a complete turnover of keys. Which is not to say police departments canâ(TM)t implement something similar. If the Army can get privates to follow the system, police departments are at least intellectually capable of doing the same thing. Whether they have the patience to follow throu

        • AES is a free and open algorithm, and doesn't need any licensing to use.

          • Re:AES license? (Score:4, Informative)

            by Brymouse ( 563050 ) on Monday January 17, 2022 @02:12PM (#62181543)

            To do AES or DES crypto in a Motorola (or other) radio requires a crypto module, with the algorithm enabled. In Motorola this is known as a Universal Crypto Module, UCM or newer radios, a MACE crypto board. The UCM and MACE come blank, with no code on them to support crypto (it's therefor not an ITAR item). You must load the software on it which is about 700-800 dollars plus the UCM cost. Example an NNTN4934 UCM with AES+DES+ADP is 1,298.00. If you want OTAR support you need the infrastructure for that (about 50k) and then the radio must have that feature licensed. Not to mention every radio you OTAR needs a license on the OTAR server to support it (think M$ CALs).

            In many cases the radio may be 4000-5000 but features enabled may double the final price. This gets expensive real fast.

            Now DMR (TRBO) is much cheaper, but Motorola doesn't sell or support AES encryption on it in the US. Don't even talk about TETRA, as that's way cheaper and a truly open system.

            • Some people game the system anyway.

              https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]

              I worked, indirectly, with this guy for many years. Never would have thought.

              • That was not criminal, but rather civil. Motorola loves to threaten their users and throw their weight around to get people like this. They have a history of passing laws rather than improving their system security.

                That said, you can't run a production network that's not licensed properly. If you're unable to pay for the legit licenses, you don't enable them anyways.

            • Or the fact encryption for regular HAM class licenses is banned.

              No transmission that is not readable by everyone with a callsign is allowed.

              Then the comments no one would know, then my rebuttal with foxhunt links of how hams actually enjoy pinpointing illegal transmissions to send FCC goonsquads after. Then other links about roaming FCC vans with said equipment that also drive around waiting to write 20k fines.

              -signed,
              A ham.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        While you had better hope that is true, that's not the way to bet, at least if a major corporation of state actor is involved. Quantum key breaking may not be true *yet*, but the way to bet is that key breaking will happen within a decade. It will be quite expensive at first. There's a question as to how rapidly the price will decline, and that's based on technical questions that nobody knows the answer to.

        One time pads are safe, but they require secure key exchange. (Perhpas you were thinking about tha

        • All public safety radio systems use symmetric crypto with a shared key. Assuming you use a good key, symmetric encryption is not vulnerable to quantum computing attacks. Even over the air rekeying uses an AES KEK, Key Encryption Key. This is used to encrypt the new keys, and must be loaded on the radio, as it's still symmetric crypto.

    • From a UK perspective, I've always found it bizarre that you could listen in to police radios. All sort of operational and confidential information goes over them. Why on earth would the police allow that, and why would people think they have a right to? Just one of those American "freedoms" the rest of the world never knew they needed. I guess it must have been possible here years ago, before encryption, but it would have been illegal so only criminals (by definition) would be doing that. I'm not sure I bu

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

        From a UK perspective, I've always found it bizarre that you could listen in to police radios. All sort of operational and confidential information goes over them.

        In this day and age of in-car computers there's no need for any PII to be transmitted over the vox radio.

        Why on earth would the police allow that, and why would people think they have a right to?

        The police "allowed" that because they couldn't stop it for many years since encrypted radio was too costly, and the people got used to it and having it be a way to keep tabs on what the police are up to — which is often nefarious.

        I guess it must have been possible here years ago, before encryption, but it would have been illegal so only criminals (by definition) would be doing that.

        It's not illegal to receive any clearly broadcast, unencrypted communications in this country, police or not.

        I'm not sure I buy the argument that this is an important source of "information about public safety matters in real time"

        Well, it is.

        some how the rest of us seem to manage.

        More poorly than you know, by definition.

        • I guess it must have been possible here years ago, before encryption, but it would have been illegal so only criminals (by definition) would be doing that.

          It's not illegal to receive any clearly broadcast, unencrypted communications in this country, police or not.

          I know it's not in the US, but it is here in the UK.

          some how the rest of us seem to manage.

          More poorly than you know, by definition.

          Can you give us a couple of specific examples of how, in the UK, our public safety would be improved by us being able to listen in to police radios?

          • Can you give us a couple of specific examples of how, in the UK, our public safety would be improved by us being able to listen in to police radios?

            I can give you an explanation of why it's important:

            Police beat reporters have long filtered out routine scanner chatter for major incidents such as shootings, serious traffic mishaps, fires and suspicious deaths.

            Now, instead of dispatching reporters and photographers to breaking news to observe the scene and interview victims, witnesses and first responders, media outlets must now rely on the auspices of the police to let them know when major incidents occur [edmontonjournal.com]. Unfortunately, law enforcement agencies are not

            • Did you miss the stipulation about an example in the UK?

              • I don't know why you think that matters. No doubt you've got less problems with your cops, but if you think that the same kinds of people aren't attracted to the job you're bananas

          • I know it's not in the US, but it is here in the UK.

            No doubt. The same folks that need a license to watch television. LOL

            https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/... [tvlicensing.co.uk]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Entrope ( 68843 )

          It's not illegal to receive any clearly broadcast, unencrypted communications in this country, police or not.

          That's wrong. Huge swaths of spectrum require license even to receive. There are federal laws against things like even trying to intercept phone communication -- including mobile phones, whether encrypted or not -- without proper authorization: https://www.justice.gov/archiv... [justice.gov] .

          • The summary misses something particularly relevant to this discussion... 18 USC 2511 (2)(g)

            (g) It shall not be unlawful under this chapter or chapter 121 of this title for any person-
            (i) to intercept or access an electronic communication made through an electronic communication system that is configured so that such electronic communication is readily accessible to the general public;
            (ii) to intercept any radio communication which is transmitted-
            (I) by any station for the use of the general public, or that relates to ships, aircraft, vehicles, or persons in distress;
            (II) by any governmental, law enforcement, civil defense, private land mobile, or public safety communications system, including police and fire, readily accessible to the general public;
            (III) by a station operating on an authorized frequency within the bands allocated to the amateur, citizens band, or general mobile radio services; or
            (IV) by any marine or aeronautical communications system;

            What this means is that, with a few notable exceptions like old cell phones, you can listen to pretty much whatever you can receive without going through extraordinary measures, like trying to break encryption. The way many of the restrictions are enforced in the US is by the FCC regulating the capabilities of radios sold to the civilian population. (e.g. requiring cell phone band blocks on radio scanners)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hoofie ( 201045 )

          In this day and age of in-car computers there's no need for any PII to be transmitted over the vox radio.

          Unlike the US, a lot of police in European cities walk around on foot or bicycles - London, Paris etc. are prime examples of this. An in-car computer isn't a lot of use then.

      • Police speak in code. they habe numerical codes for specific situations. They usually are not radioing in someones DL info. The squad cars have network connected laptops and VPNs. Thats where most of the information is conducted. I did a ride along for a citizens police academy course. During the 10hr shift very little got sent over the radio, usually car number and that they were responding to the call. Even when a call goes out like an OD requiring police presence to protect the ambulance crew, 90% of the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by teg ( 97890 )

      Encrypted radio communication for law enforcement and similar has been standard in Europe for at least a decade by now, so this is just a minor piece of news.

      When there are scanners that can get around the encryption then we can come back. And they will come.

      Indeed. There is a lot of sensitive information that goes over there, and in addition I don't want criminals to be able to listen to - or disrupt - police communications.

      A lot of day to day policing is handling things like drunkeness, child abuse, domestic violence, drug addicts, mentally ill or unstable people that are dangerous to themselves or others- While lookups can be handled over VPNs securely, there are also going to be a lot of sensitive information - and identifying information, like addresses -

    • Pretty much yes, but I think it was closer to 20 years ago than 10 years. I remember, because it was an issue of discussion at work (offshore oil rigs) whether we should train our firefighting teams with this equipment (and obviously purchase enough sets). But there were concerns for several years over reports of the equipment issued to onshore firefighters having a sparking problem when damaged and in a flammable atmosphere (5% v/v methane in air, less for other components of our regular products) ... whic

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        A helicopter should then still have air radio as well since they need that to communicate with air traffic controllers, so a few of those hand sets around on a rig ready for use would solve that problem.

        • Our standard VHF radios - with about 16 channels - covered that. One channel for maritime operations, one for airborne, one for emergencies, one for deck crew and cranes, one for operations (process plant, etc) one for drill deck, one for electrical and maintenance. Spare channels for particular operations groups as required ; channel assignments part of the pre-printed agenda for pre-shift toolbox talks before you go out on deck. The range within and through the steelwork was adequate - a few hundred metre

          • with about 16 channels

            Sorry, "16 channels", though some had channel 2 (maritime emergency) hard wired to squawk into the selected channel, so had a 15-way selector. There may have been other designs too - generally my service had a hard-wired squawk box to the drill floor, having no need to know what the deck crew were doing - we could always phone the appropriate crane pedestal to find out if, for example, it was safe to leave our computerised PortaKabin.

    • However from what I heard from my understanding of Western European police, is that they are less prone to abuse as American ones are.

      Being that recently a lot of abuse in the American Police force came up from citizens taking recordings of events posturing yourself to be more secretive, vs more open isn't the best option.

      When ever you have a person in a position of power and/or respect they will need additional checks to make sure they are indeed not abusing what they have, as it is very easy to be abusive

  • Experience here in Ontario Canada (Score:3)

    by Goatbot ( 7614062 ) on Monday January 17, 2022 @07:52AM (#62180295)
    The system is encrypted but apparently not very well as the keys are always floating around as is the hardware. Whack-a-mole game as anyone seriously interested in listening will still be doing so.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      That's an implementation detail. And Ontario isn't in California. It could easily be encrypted as well as, say, https. Of course, it may not be, as your experience argues, but that's subject to change, and differing results in different cases.

      • Implementation and #OpSec are paramount for this; perhaps California is better idk. You too can get an inexpensive radio that will at least receive the signals from these services. Hell some will even broadcast but that's super stupidity in action.

  • Problem solved (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Monday January 17, 2022 @07:58AM (#62180315)

    Unencrypted coms mean criminals and tow trucks are listening in, not just radio enthusiasts.

    Have a decent in-car computer and the names and personal information will drop to near-zero because sliding a driver's license into a card reader is a lot easier than reading the ID number to dispatch over the radio, and the response comes back in text format to be reviewed at the cop's leisure.

    If your police department is worried about appearances - and in almost all cases they AREN'T - they can publish their main dispatch feed to the Internet with a delay, and push anything important to secondary channels.

    You'll hear log ons and log offs mostly, with a side order of officer checks from dispatch, because if they have the aforementioned in-car computers that's how they're doing their dispatching.

    Basically, listening in to police radio is not effective police oversight, you're not losing anything. It never was - unless you think news agencies didn't have access to radio scanners.

    • Re: Problem solved (Score:5, Interesting)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Monday January 17, 2022 @09:22AM (#62180501)
      A lot more fun, back in the day, was to use the scanners to listen in on mobile cellular phones. Mostly car phones in the late 80s. I think most of the conversations we heard had to do with cheating spouses trying to hook up. All the calls were within a mile or two. So what you heard was someone close by.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

        In the late 70s into the 80s they were close to the NOAA weather channel on transistor radios. Close enough it would pick them up. I used to be amazed at what people would say over the air. I'll leave my car here, unlocked, keys will be under the floor mat. Sometimes they'd leave money, etc. I guess they didn't know anyone could listen in.

    • Re:Problem solved (Score:4, Interesting)

      by kbrannen ( 581293 ) on Monday January 17, 2022 @12:50PM (#62181289)
      It's not just people listening in that's the problem (and I don't think it's all that large of a problem). What really bothers the operators of these networks is people jumping on the radio system and using it when they aren't authorized to. All you need is a P25 radio with the correct frequency range and a bit of work to get the talkgroup IDs (or just randomly try them until you get 1 that works) and off you go. By moving to encrypted channels, especially when you say only "these keys are authorized for transmission", then you cut off all of those "random Joe's" from taking space on the network, which is in some ways a DoS. It doesn't happen a lot, but it happens frequently enough that the operators are wanting & willing to do something about it. Disclaimer: until recently I used to work for one of the companies that sells these systems.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      Unencrypted coms mean criminals and tow trucks are listening in, not just radio enthusiasts.

      Have a decent in-car computer and the names and personal information will drop to near-zero because sliding a driver's license into a card reader is a lot easier than reading the ID number to dispatch over the radio, and the response comes back in text format to be reviewed at the cop's leisure.

      True. But not all communication is one in the car. That's why they carry handhelds. And a laptop isn't a substitute for a handheld.

      (Phones, however, can be.)

  • Poor Peter Parker (Score:4, Funny)

    by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Monday January 17, 2022 @09:25AM (#62180513)
    What the hell is he going to do now that he cant listen in on the police scanners to catch the bad guy. Just another example of big government oppressing your friendly neighborhood vigilante.

    • I think you've got the wrong coastline there: Spider-Man doesn't protect San Fransisco or Los Angeles, he protects Miami. :-)

    • Don't worry. They still have a big-ass flashlight and a bat symbol cut out of cardboard.
      Or rabbits. Or kids making shapes.
      They'll catch'em!

  • Law enforcement has long railed against encryption technology [washingtonpost.com] because it makes it harder to investigate and prosecute criminals. I guess what's good for the geese is not good for the gander.

  • The most common reason given for switching to encrypted radios is that then the bad guys can't listen in and know the cops are coming for them. One way to balance this with the public right to hear public communication would be to publish the police band recordings on a delayed basis. This could take many different forms including simply relaying on an unencrypted band, internet-based streaming, automated transcription, etc.

    Of course this idea has many issues that might make it a non-starter, such as how

    • Who's going to pay to redact all the privacy-sensitive material from the recording or delayed feed? The reason for this move to encrypted radio traffic in the first place.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        Oh so that's the excuse the PDs are using. But it's not a valid one in my opinion. Police bands that are unencrypted are available for anyone to listen to live, and have been for decades. But somehow privacy is now an issue?

    • A delay in the information would address the complaint on the bad guys getting information on where the police are located but it does not address the complaint of personal information being publicly available. Filtering out such information on a recording would take considerable resources.

  • Oh, can citizens get a backdoor? I mean citizens cannot provide oversight when police communications 'go dark' like that. The PD should have nothing to hide...

    • The PD should have nothing to hide...

      Criminals are smart, and they monitor communications to avoid getting caught. I lived in a town that had a bad heroin problem and the sheriff's department could never catch the suppliers because they all had scanners. The department started using cellphones to coordinate their efforts and were able to apprehend the main players in the operation. During the investigation it was discovered that the criminals were calling in bogus crimes on the other side of the county to distract the cops. They'd have a

  • U.S. government wants all first responders to switch to LTE FirstNet. https://www.criticalcomms.com/... [criticalcomms.com] Federal agencies have largely done this, there is now push-to-talk interoperability available, so in theory police departments can incrementally migrate to LTE. Haven't heard of any doing this yet, but it will happen.

  • Damn! (Score:2)

    by PPH ( 736903 )

    No more tips on snorlax sightings [slashdot.org].

  • Many agencies just have an unencrypted âoedispatchâ channel and an encrypted one for running drivers licenses and dealing with private information. It makes more sense logistically speaking anyways because every cop doesnâ(TM)t need to hear the results of another cop running a drivers licenses and if they do they can put their radio in scan mode.

  • It kind of works both ways. When stopped by the enforcers, give them as little information as possible. The precise minimal information is dependent on your state.
  • Most financially endowed departments in California have all been encrypted P25 for well over a decade now. Also this was all packaged into some Federal funding to para-militarize police throughout the US (because militaries technically don't have to answer to civilians in the US...) Nothing new here. You guys just weren't paying attention.
    • ...also I've tried FOIA requests for certain broadcasts... ...if you're lucky and you get a department that promotes freedom of information, and just plain honest people, it will take days/weeks/months (yes even 1 case was a year) to process several times over. it's hit or miss when you get the transcripts/recordings (it's at their discretion what they provide), and more often than not they are the wrong time segments (probably some dipshit clerk type who doesn't appreciate quality information). tl:dr FOIA
  • This is the state that tried to stop people from going to church.

    And got shot down by the supreme court.

    They want to control how people think and believe in California.

    And they want to hide what the police are up to.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will." -- Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"

Close