As if going dark wasn't already a looming issue... Then there's this.

[intuity]

I ran into a post on Craigslist here in Dallas in the 'gigs' section that said:

We're looking for someone to host a small radio we built in their home to pick up publicly available fire department radio.

Who are we?
- We're a group of programmers working on a project to map emergencies in the area.

What are we asking for?
- If you're in a location with good reception, we'd like to send you the radio and have you plug it into your home, preferably near a window. Other than initial set up, this requires virtually no work.

What are the requirements?
- You're based in Dallas
- You have reliable internet
- You can plug the radio into your router using an ethernet cord (we'll provide one if necessary)
- You're ok with occasionally rebooting the radio if it goes down (happens rarely)

What's in it for you?
- You're helping a good cause
- We can also provide a $50 per month stipend indefinitely just for keeping the radio up and running

Anything else you should know?
- The only noise the radio makes is a small, quiet fan that keeps it cool
- The radio is small and doesn't take much room (we can send you photos of what it looks like)
- It uses a very minimal amount of electricity and internet that you won't notice at all

Please email me if you're interested or have any questions!

Sounded interesting, so I responded and recieved this:

Hey Jake,

That's awesome! I think you're going to be really interested in what we're building out. Our setup we'd like to send you is a couple Airspies, indoor Bingfu antenna, connected to a Beelink mini PC.

Happy to get on a Google Meet and show you our incident data map and our radio live stream as well if you're open to it. Do you have any availability today/any time soon? I can send you a calendar invite whenever you're free. david@beakon.com is my email.

Additionally, if you could fill out this form that would be super helpful (it asks for your address etc to get a sense of how well we'd pick up NTIRN for Dallas PD/FD, county sheriff, etc). I'm actually based in New York, so wasn't able to find Bush and Midway on Google Maps, unfortunately.

Thanks and hope we can chat soon!
David Choi

I went looking for what this company he represents is doing, and apparently, it's 'threat intelligence' information aggregation/distribution, but in realtime..? IBM apparently is the big player in the space, but from what I gather, this Beakon business is the only one that's doing it real-time and sourcing their intel from ... get this.. police and fire dispatch.

Yeah, so if anyone else's alarm bells are ringing too, I hope it isn't just me. I don't know the details, I assume since they are breathlesslky touting AI, it's analysis of the dispatch traffic, but idk how on earth they're getting good enough audio for automated speech-to-text from a 6.25 khz wide TDMA channel - way better than Siri could EVER do, right?

I noticed that the ad was DELETED from the Dallas CL, but is still active in Houston. Lindsay, do you want to chime in on this ? I originally thought if they just wanted dispatch traffic, they should contact you since you're the de-facto honcho, broadcastify and all that. But they want to do it themselves ?

Doesn't 18 USC 2511 say you can recieve in the clear traffic that is reasonably accessible, but you can't relay that information to third party - doesn't that cover providing it for profit? The best part of all is ... They have customers apparently, and are doing this in Columbus, Ohio - and they want to pay someone $50 a month to do the data gathering? If that schlub knew what was being made on their little $50 a month... Whooooo that'd get expensive quick. They are charging thousands (literally) a month for their aggregated stream of aggravated data .

I think if anything we need to jangle the bells and whistles and let the NTIRN, TXWARN, and NCTCOG admins know about this so nobody gets blindsided, and I'm sure someone in DC might give a f**k.

 

[N5XPM]

Sounded interesting, so I responded and recieved this:


I went looking for what this company he represents is doing, and apparently, it's 'threat intelligence' information aggregation/distribution, but in realtime..? IBM apparently is the big player in the space, but from what I gather, this Beakon business is the only one that's doing it real-time and sourcing their intel from ... get this.. police and fire dispatch.

Yeah, so if anyone else's alarm bells are ringing too, I hope it isn't just me. I don't know the details, I assume since they are breathlesslky touting AI, it's analysis of the dispatch traffic, but idk how on earth they're getting good enough audio for automated speech-to-text from a 6.25 khz wide TDMA channel - way better than Siri could EVER do, right?

I noticed that the ad was DELETED from the Dallas CL, but is still active in Houston. Lindsay, do you want to chime in on this ? I originally thought if they just wanted dispatch traffic, they should contact you since you're the de-facto honcho, broadcastify and all that. But they want to do it themselves ?

Doesn't 18 USC 2511 say you can recieve in the clear traffic that is reasonably accessible, but you can't relay that information to third party - doesn't that cover providing it for profit? The best part of all is ... They have customers apparently, and are doing this in Columbus, Ohio - and they want to pay someone $50 a month to do the data gathering? If that schlub knew what was being made on their little $50 a month... Whooooo that'd get expensive quick. They are charging thousands (literally) a month for their aggregated stream of aggravated data .

I think if anything we need to jangle the bells and whistles and let the NTIRN, TXWARN, and NCTCOG admins know about this so nobody gets blindsided, and I'm sure someone in DC might give a f**k.

Most interesting that an AI-centric organization was unable to locate a major cross street to a major road over 50 miles long.

 

[AB5ID]

@intuity did they want anything from you other than a mailing address?

 

[intuity]

@intuity did they want anything from you other than a mailing address?

They wanted me to fill out some Google form that asked where I was located in lat/long, and some other basic stuff. I have sent them a reply but I have yet to hear back.

 

[Enforcer52]

Beakon is doing the same type of information gathering as Dataminr. Don't see a problem here.

 

[jasonk]

This guy left Citizen about 2 years ago and started this company .... Citizen has been doing this for at least 5 years now - so not sure why your Spidey Senses are all of a sudden getting alerted. This is not a new space - and not a new use of Public Safety Data ...so you probaly dont need to contact NTIRN to let them know someone is monitoring their P25 system ...

 

[alexkjohnson]

"Dataminr ingest audio consumer" has been continuously attached to my feed (DPD NC substation) for the last year. I wouldn't worry too much about this.

 

[Cavscout]

So many better things to listen to than CH 6... unless they like hearing all the X-tra job mark outs at North Park.

 

[RaleighGuy]

I think if anything we need to jangle the bells and whistles and let the NTIRN, TXWARN, and NCTCOG admins know about this so nobody gets blindsided, and I'm sure someone in DC might give a f**k.

Totally think you are off base here, and making an issue about this with NTIRN, TXWARN, and NCTCOG admins would just bring more attention to the fact monitoring happens and fuel the argument for encryption. Also, those in DC really couldn't care less about legal business activities.

 

[gillham]

Spoke with these guys yesterday at ISC West, since it's relevant to some use cases for our national and international security staff.
We're not a LE agency, but having assets globally, we don't have real time data to have better situational awareness around our facilities.
In addition to Speech-to-text, they also have analysists listening to the audio to help translate it to something that makes sense.

I also asked what they would do if a system or town has gone Ø, and they mentioned they're exploring the option of requesting a radio or stream from the agency, similar to how some media outlets have one.

I didn't ask if they're scraping sources like OpenMHz or Broadcastify.

 

[Giddyuptd]

Spoke with these guys yesterday at ISC West, since it's relevant to some use cases for our national and international security staff.
We're not a LE agency, but having assets globally, we don't have real time data to have better situational awareness around our facilities.
In addition to Speech-to-text, they also have analysists listening to the audio to help translate it to something that makes sense.

I also asked what they would do if a system or town has gone Ø, and they mentioned they're exploring the option of requesting a radio or stream from the agency, similar to how some media outlets have one.

I didn't ask if they're scraping sources like OpenMHz or Broadcastify.

Highly doubt they would get access. Vouched media has a hard time in most places getting limited access as is and it would defeat the purpose of a secure system. It will also push for more secure methods such as link layer authentication, and some asking for technology to secure the control channels to be designed.