I heard an interesting message on the system today on countywide. It was a message to all PSAPs (Public Safety Access Points, meaning all public safety agencies) that an unknown logical ID had been
logged on the system on one of the alert channels, alert 1 I believe.
This isn't unknown. There very well could be a working radio or two in the county that are outside of the
county's control.
But what's interesting is that they didn't give the LID of the radio, but instead its ALIAS, which was for a BCSO patrol car. (Sorry, I don't recall exactly which one it was. I tried but my memory is not perfect.)
If they gave an alias for the LID, then they MUST have assigned that alias earlier to a specific LID.
But now they're calling it an unknown LID.
Sort of strange. I see two practical possibilities: A retired radio was powered back up by someone
to see if it worked, or someone programmed his own radio outside of the system and neglected to
ensure that it could not transmit, and picked that particular LID at random, most likely. With the
system having roughly 12,000 user IDs and just 16,380-odd valid LIDs, the odds of any given LID you
choose at random being an active one is about 3 out of 4.
It does show that they are watching the system closely for rogue radios. Anyone who may choose
to use a radio to scan should be extremely careful to avoid giving the radio any transmit capability
without authorization. If you want the ability to call the police in a real emergency, stick to the
conventional mutual aid channels. They will work for that purpose.
I have EDACS customers. I have the ability to program onto any EDACS system. But I never, EVER
program transmit capability into a radio without specific authorization, radio by radio.
Elroy