Oakland County Sheriff Bouchard was in downtown Royal Oak this morning on a campaign stop. I asked about encryption in Oakland County. He said a new MPSCS system is being built in Oakland County and that it will be encrypted. He said that the City of Southfield will join the system as well, as currently they are the only city that broadcasts in the clear in Oakland County. He said it will take two years to complete. He said the reasoning is that criminals were monitoring their broadcasts and were using it to avoid detection while committing crimes, also organized criminals can use the scanner to know where the police are or where they are responding from, or to monitor the police to determine what tactics they will use next. He also said the fire dept's. will be encrypted because they cannot split the system for one side to be encrypted and the other to not be encrypted. He also said they do not have software to broadcast the radio traffic on a 20 minute delay.
Spoke to Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard About Encryption
- Thread starter rivermersey
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Canned speech. As I recall, Southfield is on OpenSky (or something like that), nobody but subscribers get to hear them.
Is the rest of Oakland County on OpenSky?
Last I heard Oakland County will not be joining MPSCS P25 Phase 1 due to cost and budget concerns. They're currently still on OpenSky.
No, Southfield is analog in the clear. 424.325 Mhz Police dispatch, Fire 423.625 Mhz dispatch.
Yes, entirely. Madison Hgts Fire, Troy Fire, and Rochester Twp. Fire, have pagers, and you can hear the fire stations being dispatched and it ends there.
yes, but the new system will be MPSCS and will be finished in two years.
a29zuk
Member
It should have been called Closed Sky!
Jim
Jim
Umm, yeah. Ok. Strange how countless other systems, and counties on MPSCS, are able to do it.
kd8ati
Member
Either he purposely lied or just does not understand how the system works, or maybe a little of both. Not only can the system be split for partial encryption but it can also be split up on a talkgroup by talkgroup basis or a radio by radio basis. Wonder how he thinks MPSCS does it now with some cities/departments encrypted and some not. Also the software is out there to rebroadcast on a xx min delay... they are just not interested in using it.
It sounds like the sheriff needs to attend the MPSCS user class. I would be happy to give him one, along with his senior staff. (They should all know what they are getting in to.)
They don't care about technical abilities. The salesmen knew their audience and knew they could sell them encryption. They'd rather pay obscene amounts for encryption to hide activities than spend that on more operationally beneficial features.
I see the higher ups in Oakland county love their own closed off empire. When they prevent compatibility, they ensure job security. Obscure the truth and they can tell you whatever they want.
It's all political fun and games until first responders and citizens die due to poor interoperability when outside support is needed!
The last sentence is a pure lie. Software is available and free to provide the feed on a delay. I use it, They just want to be opaque in what they do. Ya know keeping them on their side of the blue line. The system is perfectly capable of both open and encrypted. No excuse for encrypting the Fire.
Where can I find this software?
I am guessing more a statement made in ignorance, than an outright lie.
Trunk recorder has a delay, sdrtrunk has delay among others.
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