I keep seeing this thrown around. Explain how it hinders interoperability? Because its a flat out not true statement that it hinders interoperability if your system manager knows what he/she is doing.
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D.C Reporters Fight Police Radio Encryption Plan
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I keep seeing this thrown around. Explain how it hinders interoperability? Because its a flat out not true statement that it hinders interoperability if your system manager knows what he/she is doing.
Because most departments are small, under 100 officers, and don't even have a systems manager. What they have is a radio vendor that sets up the equipment and says call us if you need us, and a dispatcher who knows "push this button to talk", and that is the extent of their technical knowledge.
What happens then is that you go from a situation where surrounding agencies know what is going on, and can start rolling to serious calls, to a situation where those agencies would see 5 cars of the encrypted agency fly by code 3, and know nothing about it.
What happens then is that you go from a situation where surrounding agencies know what is going on, and can start rolling to serious calls, to a situation where those agencies would see 5 cars of the encrypted agency fly by code 3, and know nothing about it.
Lol! Well, thank you wten77 for being a premium subscriber, your support is greatly appreciated!
GrumpyGuard
Member
This is quite simple, let’s take the biggest city in your area and they decide that they want to be encrypted, because all the bad guy’s have scanners and listen to our conversations and they know where we are. You have a major incident and you have Officers responding from different jurisdictions. These Officers radios are capable to receive your frequencies, but they don’t have a way to decrypt the signal or they only have analog radios and the big city uses P25 digital. How are they supposed to have interoperability? Most of the time the dispatcher for the other jurisdictions have to call the jurisdiction that is requesting help, and relay the information to the responding units. This causes delays as well as inaccurate information being relayed or requested (no disrespect to any dispatchers out there, your job is tough enough without this added duty). As a child have you ever played the game Telephone? By the time the information gets back to where it started it is different and inaccurate.
I too am in Law Enforcement for a large State agency and my opinion is the sensitive transmissions should be encrypted or cell phones should be used. Every day dispatch channels and car to car channels should not be encrypted.
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MTS2000des
5B2_BEE00 Czar
your under the ASSumption that a single person/entity is in charge of every radio system. This may be the case in some areas, but is hardly reality in many.
Public safety radio is a segmented service. Because of this, many vendors with different, often incompatible systems are in place in a given metro area. Atlanta is a great example of this. There are plenty of others. You add proprietary encryption formats (such as Motorola's ADP, only available on Astro 25 subscriber units) and you just make it worse. This means other agencies, who might otherwise have COMPATIBLE subscriber radios, are locked out. Your EFJ, Kenwood or Icom won't work on an ADP channel/talkgroup.
Then the issue of key management comes into play. This many not be an issue when there is a large centrally managed metro or state system, but in the majority of this country, this isn't the case, and won't be until we can find the money ferry to pay for it.
Proprietary radio systems + proprietary encryption + no management = no interoperability.
We've been pushed into spending billions of our tax dollars since 9/11 on these costly radio systems, being made promises by vendors of end to end interoperability, yet what we got for our money has actually done more to go in the opposite direction than where we were before. Only thing that has changed is we have lighter wallets.
I'm glad you're in an area where you have an efficient, centrally managed secure voice radio system.
So what happens when you have the next 9/11 and my guys come to help you from GA with what we have on our belts?
See the problem now?
GrumpyGuard
Member
In California the CHP is installing GRE 600 scanners so the officers can know what is going on in the jurisdiction, if encryption were to happen they would not know what is going on.
MTS2000des
5B2_BEE00 Czar
so turn in your scanners at your local PD, and your guns too- and anything else while you're at it.
this has the be the most inane dribble I've ever read. I do find it funny how offended you are by RR but not enough to pull out your credit card.
RR feeds have very little impact on an agency going encrypted. Did live feeds cause the OC and all of United Kingdom to go encrypted? No live feeds existed for those agencies. What about Orlando Police, Jacksonville Police and Florida Highway Patrol? Yep, no live feeds for those departments prior to encryption. Washington DC is really the only major agency that has gone encrypted that has a live feed. The feed only averaged 20-30 listeners at a time a day, so using the excuse that a criminal is using a phone to listen is pretty lame. A majority of departments are more worried about criminals that have an actual scanner.
Jason
Jason
See response below
This is why you have event talkgroups. They are not ENC, everyone has access to them and there you have interoperbility. Your not going to run a single event that has 2, 3, or more agency's coming to you off a talkgroup that is encrypted, If you do then you deserve everything you get. This is why you create event talkgroups so you move everyone to a talkgroup that everyone can talk on.
See above statement. Being encrpyted and having a system that only allows certain makers on it are two different issues. One can be addressed by just what I said in the above post. The second not so much. As for you and your guys bring them on, we have wants to connect VHF, UHF and 800 and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference when your talking the someone else. People operate on encrypted talkgroups every day and never complain about interoperbility because why? They know to switch to event (or whatever you want to call them) talkgroups. Maybe these places need lessons in how to use their radio's other then turning it on and hitting the PTT button.
You beat me to pointing that out!
firetaz834
Member
Well, it is time to put my 2 cents worth in on this subject.
I have heard issues that officers lives are put in jeopardy because the bad guys are listening to them, well I want to say that sometimes that is just opposite. Many times an officers life is put in harms way because he is doing his job and the bad guy just doesn't know it.
I'm sure that if we look at it, you have a bad guy that just committed an armed robbery and then is stopped by an officer in another jurisdiction for a traffic infraction. The bad guys don't know that, they believe that they are being stopped for the crime they just committed and not for a traffic infraction.
Also, how many times have you had the police ask for the publics help in finding a child that was just abducted but the information is hours old, how much nicer would it have been if the public had know hours earlier. It seems that the police don't want us to hear certain things unless they feel it is good for them.
I'm sure we have not heard the police complain about the public use of cell phones when reporting crimes or when they see a drunk driver on the road but how would you feel if the encrypted radio prevented you from knowing that vital information. I also think that if we were to look into some of the apps that allow you to monitor scanner traffic it is not rr's fault or involvement in it.
I've also monitored channels that police agencie thought were secured and heard things that shouldn't have been heard (no, not what you would think about crime) but officer critizing fellow officers, other responding agencies and last but not least the public).
If these agencies want to encrypt then they will have to always be on the defensive as to why they did/did not do something. But, the news agencies will always be able to say what they want because they won't be able to hear what is actually is happening.
From being in the industry, I believe in officer safety, but I also believe that certain channels should be left unencrypted so that others can know what is happening.
I'm sure that if I'm driving home one day and I hear about a drunk driver heading my way I will know to keep out of the way. and that has happened
I have heard issues that officers lives are put in jeopardy because the bad guys are listening to them, well I want to say that sometimes that is just opposite. Many times an officers life is put in harms way because he is doing his job and the bad guy just doesn't know it.
I'm sure that if we look at it, you have a bad guy that just committed an armed robbery and then is stopped by an officer in another jurisdiction for a traffic infraction. The bad guys don't know that, they believe that they are being stopped for the crime they just committed and not for a traffic infraction.
Also, how many times have you had the police ask for the publics help in finding a child that was just abducted but the information is hours old, how much nicer would it have been if the public had know hours earlier. It seems that the police don't want us to hear certain things unless they feel it is good for them.
I'm sure we have not heard the police complain about the public use of cell phones when reporting crimes or when they see a drunk driver on the road but how would you feel if the encrypted radio prevented you from knowing that vital information. I also think that if we were to look into some of the apps that allow you to monitor scanner traffic it is not rr's fault or involvement in it.
I've also monitored channels that police agencie thought were secured and heard things that shouldn't have been heard (no, not what you would think about crime) but officer critizing fellow officers, other responding agencies and last but not least the public).
If these agencies want to encrypt then they will have to always be on the defensive as to why they did/did not do something. But, the news agencies will always be able to say what they want because they won't be able to hear what is actually is happening.
From being in the industry, I believe in officer safety, but I also believe that certain channels should be left unencrypted so that others can know what is happening.
I'm sure that if I'm driving home one day and I hear about a drunk driver heading my way I will know to keep out of the way. and that has happened
Confuzzled
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Then you very clearly don't understand how things work in the real world.
That's the second funniest thing I've heard today, first were some of the comments I've read in this topic.
Did you read the rest of my post? I utilize other radios to monitor police and fire....radios I own...radios not capable of decoding encryption. Even if I did utilize my department issued radio, I strongly doubt the police would share their encryption keys with fire and EMS. Moreso, the surrounding communities. Up here, there is a different system manager in each discipline responsible for their radios, and they really don't care about the other agencies. We're still on UHF conventional, not a trunked system, so your view of a system manager is probably different than mine.
Why would you need the encryption key? Once again, if your responding to another agency they need to be putting everyone responding on a different channel so everyone can communicate. With console's today they can patch VHF,UHF and 800 together so it doesn't matter what radio you have. So again, your point about it hindering interoperbility isn't true.
Come work a shift with me, you'll see that your idealistic view just doesn't exist where I work. Separate dispatch centers, separate dispatch SOPs for police, fire and EMS. They are not going to patch my department's frequency (100,000+ calls a year) with the police district frequency (150,000+ calls per year) for every response that involves both agencies, it's not feasible. I'm lucky if the cops respond on calls for violent psychiatric patients with me, but when they want the ambulance, they want it NOW. If they were to go encrypted, you would never see a patched channel or any information shared, which could jeopardize MY safety.
Do you work in public safety? If not, regardless of how much radio knowledge you have, you'll never understand.
Confuzzled
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^^^ It sounds more like he's making a Motorola sales pitch than anything else.
When you have police, sheriff, fire, (more than one FD), EMS, coroner, emergency management, state troopers and you're dealing with State, County and City (maybe more than one) all dealing with their own budgets and leadership, you're not going to get much of a consensus to let one system manager handle everything. They may all have different brands of radios on different frequencies with different PL tones. If you're dealing with an incident on the border of two or more counties, you could be dealing with 10 or 15 different agencies. Many of the PD and SO units may have scanners so they can listen to the neighboring agencies. If they hear something happen, they can respond to assist or at least position themselves to watch for anyone fleeing. Maybe even an ambulance or fire truck can watch for a fleeing vehicle if they know what to look for.
Now if you have one or two agencies go encrypted, they have essentially cut themselves off from all other agencies as far as assistance. Many of the SO and PD units that have scanners may have bought them out of their own money. Volunteer firefighters may have to buy their own 2-way radios. That's fine when you're talking about a $200-$300 radio, but it won't happen if they have to buy $1500-$2000 radios.
You may have a city with a larger budget that can afford a trunked system with encryption, but the surrounding agencies may be volunteer or have much smaller tax bases and budgets that can't afford to participate.
In such cases interoperability can be severely hampered when one agency goes encrypted which is exactly the opposite of what the goal is supposed to be.
But that's not the line Motorola and Harris are selling because it won't make them money.
When you have police, sheriff, fire, (more than one FD), EMS, coroner, emergency management, state troopers and you're dealing with State, County and City (maybe more than one) all dealing with their own budgets and leadership, you're not going to get much of a consensus to let one system manager handle everything. They may all have different brands of radios on different frequencies with different PL tones. If you're dealing with an incident on the border of two or more counties, you could be dealing with 10 or 15 different agencies. Many of the PD and SO units may have scanners so they can listen to the neighboring agencies. If they hear something happen, they can respond to assist or at least position themselves to watch for anyone fleeing. Maybe even an ambulance or fire truck can watch for a fleeing vehicle if they know what to look for.
Now if you have one or two agencies go encrypted, they have essentially cut themselves off from all other agencies as far as assistance. Many of the SO and PD units that have scanners may have bought them out of their own money. Volunteer firefighters may have to buy their own 2-way radios. That's fine when you're talking about a $200-$300 radio, but it won't happen if they have to buy $1500-$2000 radios.
You may have a city with a larger budget that can afford a trunked system with encryption, but the surrounding agencies may be volunteer or have much smaller tax bases and budgets that can't afford to participate.
In such cases interoperability can be severely hampered when one agency goes encrypted which is exactly the opposite of what the goal is supposed to be.
But that's not the line Motorola and Harris are selling because it won't make them money.
Alright, I'm closing this thread. It has run it's course.
Update, everyone can take their discussions regarding RR, feeds, scanners, and encryption to the following thread in the tavern:
http://forums.radioreference.com/ra...ive-audio-feeds-scanners-wait-encryption.html
Have fun and debate away!
http://forums.radioreference.com/ra...ive-audio-feeds-scanners-wait-encryption.html
Have fun and debate away!
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