Duluth/ St.Louis County to encrypt in 2013?

[northscan23]

A couple of months ago I spoke to someone I know that works in the downtown Duluth area. They told me that they heard from an officer that Duluth and St.Louis County have been talking about encrypting a lot of their radio traffic in 2013. I kinda doubt at this point that the county would blackout their radio traffic completely due to the cost of such a system. My guess is that they might just do what Minneapolis and St.Paul have done which is to encrypt some channels(SWAT, Tactical, etc.) I could be wrong though. Has anyone heard anything more about this or is it just a rumor?

 

[kb0nly]

What we have heard time and time again is the counties that want encryption will get it but with another talkgroup specifically for it. Thats how others are doing it now on ARMER. The main dispatch talkgroup will stay in the clear, but they will have a TAC channel that is encrypted use.

 

[box23]

Might this just be facts changing through the different conversations and someone confusing 800 MHz P25 digital trunked communications with being totally un-monitor-able and encryption yet again?

But I agree with KB0NLY special TAC channels for encryption. That's the beauty of a trunked system, almost unlimited ability to assign talkgroups for very specific purposes such as SWAT, surveillance, etc.

 

[ThinBlueLine22]

Might this just be facts changing through the different conversations and someone confusing 800 MHz P25 digital trunked communications with being totally un-monitor-able and encryption yet again?

This is more likely the case. I know of coppers around here that still think ARMER is not able to be "scanned".

 

[northscan23]

I just spoke to the same person yesturday. He said the same thing I mentioned in my post. I kinda do wonder if the Duluth Police Deparment might opt to do it more extensively then the county. I hope if Chief Gordon Ramsey does announce full encyrption in the next year or soo that the local media outlets like WDIO/KDLH could meet with him to come up with somekind of compromise so that the public could still be informed right away when a major inicident occurs. There are many ways the police department can do this(twitter or facebook alerts , live CAD call lists etc..).