New Radios being used by NYPD

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Danny37

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I can't imagine what NYPD digital would sound like. And I guess we never will. I've been to L.A. a couple times. LAPD sounded decent but even they don't have the constent radio traffic like NYPD does.

Not to mention the poor radio etiquette they have. I wonder how it'll sound when 10 radios key up at the same time talking over each other.
 

4-crime

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The one thing to remember is, New York City is not like many other cities, Los Angeles included. There are TONS of people who monitor NYPD radio traffic, including all of the media outlets, as well as all of these cop watch type groups and emergency notification groups. NYC is VERY liberal. And now more then ever, judges here seem to side with the other side when it comes to NYPD and keeping things secure and away from the public or to keep things on a need to know bases. Now, that being said, do I think it would probably work if they did make a big stink about it in the court system, probably not. But I for one would certainly not be surprised if some liberal judge ruled in favor of no encryption.
 

radioman2001

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I see both sides in this, I made some suggestions about keeping unauthorized radios out of the system, and will not give anyone any ideas what they were, but Mot decided to sell them the full package. It's going to take time, and I suspect that it's not going to go well on the first go around when they throw the switch. NYPD is fighting an uphill battle with technology, between scanners that read PL DPL NAC codes, and the CCR radios out there. I am not happy my own agency is going 700 "E" very shortly, and I don't know if we will have that system tied into our console so I can at least listen at work.
 

ansky

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The one thing to remember is, New York City is not like many other cities, Los Angeles included. There are TONS of people who monitor NYPD radio traffic, including all of the media outlets, as well as all of these cop watch type groups and emergency notification groups. NYC is VERY liberal.

What makes you think NYC is different than Los Angeles? There was an entire Netflix series (called Shot in the Dark) that was dedicated to freelance reporters in L.A. that monitor scanner radio traffic to sell news stories to the media outlets.
 

4-crime

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What makes you think NYC is different than Los Angeles? There was an entire Netflix series (called Shot in the Dark) that was dedicated to freelance reporters in L.A. that monitor scanner radio traffic to sell news stories to the media outlets.
The fact that New York has about 5 million more people and about 30,000 more police officers. Not saying LA doesn’t have freelance reporters, but New York has a ton, as well as New Jersey, and they all monitor NYPD radio traffic.

Now given the fact that New York City has been a terrorist target several times in the past, and continues to be, it is important to a lot of people to monitor and know what is going on in the city. If you take that away, in the event of a catastrophic event people may not be well informed and deaths, god forbid may come because of that lack of information. I’m just thinking outside the box and bigger picture, well because those of us in New York City have been through it before, and it is very real to us.

I know they are using the excuse of unauthorized radios on the system and jammers and that is all very real as well, but there are ways to control that as well. So as far as going full encryption, I’m not sold on it. But as we all know, it’s a sad reality these days.
 

Danny37

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My guess is that Staten Island and transit will be the last to go. Maybe parts of Queens too with the hilly terrain.

I'm curious as to how will they conduct testing while the frequencies are actively being used. Will it just be fix the analog bugs and coverage and then switch to P25 and cross your fingers.
 

Danny37

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The fact that New York has about 5 million more people and about 30,000 more police officers. Not saying LA doesn’t have freelance reporters, but New York has a ton, as well as New Jersey, and they all monitor NYPD radio traffic.

Now given the fact that New York City has been a terrorist target several times in the past, and continues to be, it is important to a lot of people to monitor and know what is going on in the city. If you take that away, in the event of a catastrophic event people may not be well informed and deaths, god forbid may come because of that lack of information. I’m just thinking outside the box and bigger picture, well because those of us in New York City have been through it before, and it is very real to us.

I know they are using the excuse of unauthorized radios on the system and jammers and that is all very real as well, but there are ways to control that as well. So as far as going full encryption, I’m not sold on it. But as we all know, it’s a sad reality these days.

I think P25 alone would've just killed the CCR rogue radios out there but I guess if they're already going p25 why not go full E.

The only way I see it not happening is if there's push from city councilmen and politicians. All these cop-watch groups and media will cry out but eventual they'll accept as it is. The question is will people even reach out to their local politicians? Citizen app will rely solely on FD and EMS and who's to say those will remain in the clear for the next decade.
 

GTR8000

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I think P25 alone would've just killed the CCR rogue radios out there but I guess if they're already going p25 why not go full E.
How would P25 alone stop rogue radio transmissions? P25 capable radios can be obtained dirt cheap, programmed with the correct NAC, and it's no different than analog. Add AES-256 to the mix, and it's a bit of a different story. Without the correct key, and with the radios set to ignore clear voice, no rogue transmissions will make it through the repeater. Of course jamming the frequency is always a concern regardless of the mode of operation, but at least you won't have any jackasses screaming "10-13 OFFICER DOWN!" into the repeaters anymore.
 

Danny37

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How would P25 alone stop rogue radio transmissions? P25 capable radios can be obtained dirt cheap, programmed with the correct NAC, and it's no different than analog. Add AES-256 to the mix, and it's a bit of a different story. Without the correct key, and with the radios set to ignore clear voice, no rogue transmissions will make it through the repeater. Of course jamming the frequency is always a concern regardless of the mode of operation, but at least you won't have any jackasses screaming "10-13 OFFICER DOWN!" into the repeaters anymore.

I was referencing CCR which are incapable of operating on P25. But you're right you can get a p25 radio on the used market for cheap. But referencing these past 5+ years, the CCR were the main culprits. Even UMOS were using them, ofcourse being unauthorized.

I'll admit I don't have much experience with P25 conventional but I was under the impression that a P25 radio must have an ID when transmitting. If that's the case, then a P25 radio stun from a dispatch console would be somewhat effective.
 

GTR8000

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I was referencing CCR which are incapable of operating on P25. But you're right you can get a p25 radio on the used market for cheap. But referencing these past 5+ years, the CCR were the main culprits. Even UMOS were using them, ofcourse being unauthorized.

I'll admit I don't have much experience with P25 conventional but I was under the impression that a P25 radio must have an ID when transmitting. If that's the case, then a P25 radio stun from a dispatch console would be somewhat effective.
Implementing a solution that only prevents cheap analog radios from causing issues is akin to treating the wound but not the infection. If you're going to spend the time and money to convert to P25, then securing those comms is a logical co-step. I don't say "next step" because it's so easy to enable the encryption at the same time, that it's kind of a no-brainer. Assuming you have the budget to equip the radios, which they clearly do. Once the encryption keys are loaded into the radios, it's simply a matter of enabling it in the programming.

Nothing P25 is as secure as most believe it is, including trunked systems. It's no secret that it doesn't take much to program a radio to operate on or interfere with a P25 trunked system, as most of the info is easily obtained over the air with free software. Encryption helps curtail interference by way of rogue transmissions, but unless the system has some sort of radio authentication feature, any old piece of junk from eBay can be programmed up to appear like a genuine subscriber on the system. Conventional is even less robust. Even if the radio responds to a stun/kill command, what if the rogue radio is using the same ID as a legitimate user? So now you've potentially stunned the real radio as well. Oh and there are radios that will either not respond to a stun command in the first place, or you can disable the ability for the radio to be stunned in the codeplug.

So go digital (which actually has some real world benefits over analog, including slightly increased range at the limits of coverage), and enable encryption. Keep the skells from listening in, greatly decrease the likelihood that rogue transmissions will occur, and to some degree keep your own MOS in check by ensuring that every radio being used is authorized and accountable.

Not every move to encryption is done for nefarious or pointless reasons.
 

N2YQT

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"So go digital (which actually has some real world benefits over analog, including slightly increased range at the limits of coverage)"

I have this argument a couple of times a month. I don't understand why people would rather hear analog that they can't make anything out with rather than crystal clear digital with the occasional squawk on the fringes of coverage.

"But it's all or nothing with digital."

Correct. And the analog quality where digital decided to drop off the edge would be useless. -124dB digital sounds much better than -124dB analog :)
 

GTR8000

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I have this argument a couple of times a month. I don't understand why people would rather hear analog that they can't make anything out with rather than crystal clear digital with the occasional squawk on the fringes of coverage.

"But it's all or nothing with digital."

Correct. And the analog quality where digital decided to drop off the edge would be useless. -124dB digital sounds much better than -124dB analog :)
Worse yet are those whose arguments against digital are based solely on badly outdated anecdotes and technology. Arguments such as "FDNY tried digital on the fireground and it didn't work!" Yeah well, that was 20 years ago and using the original iteration of the IMBE vocoder. Times have changed, AMBE+2 is now the de facto standard and performance is vastly improved, especially when it comes to rejecting background noise.

Now before anyone gets the wrong idea from what I just said, know that I am 100% against the idea of using digital on the fireground. I've got no issue with promoting spectral efficiency and all that jazz, and I think P25 certainly has its place for wide-area comms, but keep fireground analog simplex. There is no need for digital or repeaters when everyone is within a few hundred feet of each other, and a good clear analog signal is still better sounding than a digital one, as well it's easier to make out the voice over the background noise with a clear analog signal, no matter how much improvement and tweaking is done to the AMBE+2 vocoder.

That doesn't mean that digital is garbage and doesn't have its place, because it's not and it does.
 

radioman2001

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All I can say from my own experiences is that P-25 has it's place, but when you try and set it up for use in the canyons of Manhattan and or with simulcast, (which maybe is not known everywhere that every big building in NYC has BDA and DAS equipment in it for all the services), there will be problems. I am quite surprised that it took this long after 911 to go "E", and politically it's a non starter their isn't a politician that will go up against NYPD, It would have to come from outside like Albany as was the case with the pocket knife debacle. All PD services in NYS have been trying to go "E" for at least the last 20 years, and remember SWIN that was supposed to give interoperability throughout the whole state and "E".
 

902

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Not to mention the poor radio etiquette they have. I wonder how it'll sound when 10 radios key up at the same time talking over each other.
I went through this in a migration to digital in another part of the country. The short answer is "It won't." It won't sound anything. Unlike analog signals, when digital encounters another digital signal, they corrupt themselves and the bit error rate soars. You won't hear anything.

The "fix" for that is programming radios to inhibit on proper NAC detect, and that negates another key feature of NYPD systems - being able to talk over the dispatcher and getting priority over the air. They can "Quick Key Override" the inhibit, but that's a major training issue. And, I had to insure that every deputy going from analog to digital in my area had some kind of backgrounder on what stayed the same, what was different, and what they needed to do differently.

After a while, they'll learn that they can't key over anyone else and would have to wait to talk.

On the bright side, P25 has imbedded unit ID. It might be possible to filter users out by PTT-ID and develop a conventional "subscriber list" that validates the ID before opening audio. I don't think there is such an animal today, but it's relatively easy to do in software. In that manner, an invalid, lost, or "turned off" ID won't bring up the system. Like I said, that animal doesn't exist for the conventional world, but it shouldn't be too hard to SP.
 

coolrich55

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Watch live pd and see how many times an officer gets annoyed when they try to talk and get that busy signal because someone else is talking. Maybe the new NYPD will work differently. Otherwise the officers will just need to learn to use their radios differently.
 

radioman2001

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The number of radios purchased I heard was between 30K and 50K units, so each and every Officer is going to be issued their "OWN" personal radio. The unit ID thingy would be very hard to implement when you are talking about that many radios. Every radio is going to be programmed the same, so any Officer can show up on any of their 100+ ? frequencies at any time. Coding for "E" is going to be a nightmare also, they are talking about 64 AES keys, so I don't see this going well in the beginning. Never mind about lost or stolen radios.

Quote"
Watch live pd and see how many times an officer gets annoyed when they try to talk and get that busy signal because someone else is talking. Maybe the new NYPD will work differently.

NYPD doesn't get busy signals, they are conventional and will stay that way, the system was designed for local operation of 1 mile square or less.
 

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The number of radios purchased I heard was between 30K and 50K units, so each and every Officer is going to be issued their "OWN" personal radio. The unit ID thingy would be very hard to implement when you are talking about that many radios. Every radio is going to be programmed the same, so any Officer can show up on any of their 100+ ? frequencies at any time. Coding for "E" is going to be a nightmare also, they are talking about 64 AES keys, so I don't see this going well in the beginning. Never mind about lost or stolen radios.

Quote"
Watch live pd and see how many times an officer gets annoyed when they try to talk and get that busy signal because someone else is talking. Maybe the new NYPD will work differently.

NYPD doesn't get busy signals, they are conventional and will stay that way, the system was designed for local operation of 1 mile square or less.
It wouldn't be that bad, really. And, they could do a KMF which would centralize all of it. It's not like the old days of having to crawl into the trunk or call back people from vacations and LODIs to connect up and do it manually.
 
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