Live audio and towns that can't afford encryption...

[loco-lee]

Does a police / government agency have any right to ask a an individual feed provider or RadioReference to disable a feed temporarily during a state of emergency or any other reasonable incident for that matter?

Does this set a precedent? Is this a good or bad idea? Would any of you RR users comply? Has this happened to RR and how did they respond?

[nofdexplorer406]

unless your breaking a FCC rule or a RadioRefence.com rule they have no jurisdiction over your feed, now common sense to you if you see it as a sensitive reason for disabling your feed, Me personally if i got a call from one of my good PD friends and got asked to drop my feed for a little while due to sensitive nature, etc i would in a heartbeat its all about PR

[loco-lee]

Yes, but the problem is the rules are vague here, if any at all about rebroadcasting (or divulging) public safety radio on the web. That said if they want you off the grid, the authorities can come in an seize your stuff and let a judge sort it out later. Cops dont interpret the law, that happens by a judge after cops enforce a law (correctly or incorrectly.)

My question is more about precedent. Are we setting any precedent if we all start disabling feeds on request or should this just be good practice in our hobby?

[K4IHS]

If it was illegal... sites like RR would have been shut down by the government a long time ago. This has been hashed over a hundred times. It's not going to happen...

[ibagli]

Originally Posted by loco-lee

Does a police / government agency have any right to ask a an individual feed provider or RadioReference to disable a feed temporarily during a state of emergency or any other reasonable incident for that matter?

They have First Amendment rights too, so they're definitely allowed to ask.

[nofdexplorer406]

One good question is how do they know your the hoster? in order for them to find out they need a FEDERAL Warrant to find out the Location of the feed that means RR.com would be hit before you but your violating Zero Laws so they have no grounds on a warrant

[Spitfire8520]

Originally Posted by nofdexplorer406

One good question is how do they know your the hoster? in order for them to find out they need a FEDERAL Warrant to find out the Location of the feed that means RR.com would be hit before you but your violating Zero Laws so they have no grounds on a warrant

The question is whether or not they could have right to ask a feed provider to take a feed down. I haven't heard of any law that made it so Police or Federal agencies weren't allowed to ask something. Last I saw, there was a button called Contact Broadcaster that anyone could use to get in touch with a feed provider. I also haven't seen a law where asking something suddenly required a federal warrant.

[loco-lee]

Originally Posted by nofdexplorer406

One good question is how do they know your the hoster?

Seriously?

Take the example of the RR feeds for Oldham County, Kentucky - it doesn't take much to poke around RR and find that they are hosted by Phillip Garrett who claims to be located in LaGrange, KY 40031. A quick search with Google will show tax records for Phillip and his wife, a street address, his actual city, and even a phone number.

If any RR user can do that, imagine what the Feds can do with CJIS databases. Need I say more?

[n5ims]

Originally Posted by loco-lee

Seriously?

Take the example of the RR feeds for Oldham County, Kentucky - it doesn't take much to poke around RR and find that they are hosted by Phillip Garrett who claims to be located in LaGrange, KY 40031. A quick search with Google will show tax records for Phillip and his wife, a street address, his actual city, and even a phone number.

If any RR user can do that, imagine what the Feds can do with CJIS databases. Need I say more?

While some are easy to identify, others are not quite so easy. There are several feed providers that don't use the forums or are careful to not provide an easy way to identify themselves by the ID, Location, Signature, or details within those posts.

With the split of the feeds from the forums that will happen shortly, it would be quite easy to create an ID on RR for your posts and a totally independent one on Broadcastify.com for your feeds to further isolate your identify as a feed provider. With careful planning it would be difficult without assistance from the site to track who was providing the feed.

[Chauffeur6]

There is also an "anonymous feed" option that broadcasters can enable, which effectively disassociates their account from their feeds. I host a feed here, but you wouldn't know it by looking through my profile. Without Lindsay's help in identifying who provides an anonymous feed, you'd have no way of knowing.

[KD0TAZ]

Originally Posted by loco-lee

Yes, but the problem is the rules are vague here, if any at all about rebroadcasting (or divulging) public safety radio on the web. That said if they want you off the grid, the authorities can come in an seize your stuff and let a judge sort it out later. Cops dont interpret the law, that happens by a judge after cops enforce a law (correctly or incorrectly.)

Uh. No. They can't. The lack of probable cause for a warrant aside, if they do you'd have a hell of a ACLU lawsuit against them.

[loco-lee]

Originally Posted by Chauffeur6

Without Lindsay's help in identifying who provides an anonymous feed, you'd have no way of knowing.

Unless I am mistaken, he has said elsewhere that he will always comply with idenitfying of users when requested of law enforcement.

[KD0TAZ]

It's not illegal in the US, and Lindsay has no obligation to cooperate with Canadian authorities.

[blantonl]

Originally Posted by loco-lee

Unless I am mistaken, he has said elsewhere that he will always comply with idenitfying of users when requested of law enforcement.

We only comply with formal court orders or subpoenas in cases where a user's identity is requested by an agency.

In cases where an agency has asked us to intervene with regards to a broadcast, there have been instances where an agency has contacted us to report a feed provider TOS violation.

But we've only taken action on a feed from a simple request from an agency just one single time. During the RNC four years ago, the FBI contacted me directly and very nicely requested that we delay the Minneapolis PD feed because they were seeing officer safety issues. They were cool about it, didn't threaten or make demands, and said I didn't have to take any action, but were politely asking us to.

[burner50]

Originally Posted by blantonl

They were cool about it, didn't threaten or make demands, and said I didn't have to take any action, but were politely asking us to.

Attitude is everything.