voxiso
Member
I was was invited to speak to my city hall to discuss rather my PD EMT and FD should be going encrypted. I need help you guys, give me talking points on why they should not.
I need talking points to keep my county going eng
- Thread starter voxiso
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Cost to go aes256 and Proven dangerous for firefighting. Washington DC. To continue to get fed money you must use aes256 not ADP.
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No to ENC
Boy, there's a battle. It probably won't matter. The County will do it for "safety" reasons even without any data to prove the real bad thugs have scanners or even phone apps. My old county I lived in was in the clear forever. A certain Chief came in and wants ENC for everyone in the county now. Many fought them on it and some here in RRef too. I called the Chief 2 X on the phone even though I don't live there anymore but relayed how many times having a civilian monitor for the Police saved my butt. He publicly said he didn't care what we say ... so it's mostly ENC now except for older VHF frequencies on fire. That's life in the Scanner hobby today. Good luck. I hate to say the day is coming when all transmissions will be gone and we'll have to monitor garbage like twitter to hear up to the minute happenings. I'm just happy they still have Fire and IDOT in the clear here for the most part.
Boy, there's a battle. It probably won't matter. The County will do it for "safety" reasons even without any data to prove the real bad thugs have scanners or even phone apps. My old county I lived in was in the clear forever. A certain Chief came in and wants ENC for everyone in the county now. Many fought them on it and some here in RRef too. I called the Chief 2 X on the phone even though I don't live there anymore but relayed how many times having a civilian monitor for the Police saved my butt. He publicly said he didn't care what we say ... so it's mostly ENC now except for older VHF frequencies on fire. That's life in the Scanner hobby today. Good luck. I hate to say the day is coming when all transmissions will be gone and we'll have to monitor garbage like twitter to hear up to the minute happenings. I'm just happy they still have Fire and IDOT in the clear here for the most part.
W8RMH
Feed Provider Since 2012
They are prohibiting the public from being their eyes and ears. I don't know how many times we were aided by the public because they heard something on a scanner and called in to help. If there is something sensitive to discuss switch to an encrypted side channel but leave all dispatch in-the-clear. When Cincinnati switched to their new system they 'specifically' left dispatch in the clear for that reason. They had a study done in reference to public relations since they had many issues years ago, and that's what the experts told them to do, be open and honest with your citizens and it will come back to help you.
Don't let them use the HIPAA excuse either - http://psc.apcointl.org/2010/08/26/hipaa-radio-emd/
Reasons to Not Encrypt Police Communication
› 1st Amendment
› Government transparency
› Citizens & media oversight
› To allow citizens & off-duty public safety personnel to respond to emergencies
› Backup & neighboring police officers receive delayed information
› Inhibits the media’s ability to accurately report news in real time & inform citizens
https://www.zipscanners.com/resources/police-scanner-encryption-explained/
Don't let them use the HIPAA excuse either - http://psc.apcointl.org/2010/08/26/hipaa-radio-emd/
Reasons to Not Encrypt Police Communication
› 1st Amendment
› Government transparency
› Citizens & media oversight
› To allow citizens & off-duty public safety personnel to respond to emergencies
› Backup & neighboring police officers receive delayed information
› Inhibits the media’s ability to accurately report news in real time & inform citizens
https://www.zipscanners.com/resources/police-scanner-encryption-explained/
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K2RNI
Member
I'm too afraid to call in like that, I always imagined it wouldn't have been taken well.
ScannerSK
Member
Additional reasons not to encrypt:
1.) After trying encryption, some agencies are switching back to non-encryption.
2.) It can prevent or limit the available communication channels across jurisdictions during major emergencies.
3.) Instead of simply listening to the activity on a scanner when systems are encrypted some people will get in their vehicles and drive to go see what is going on.
4.) Encryption of all communications either means the agencies are afraid of doing something criminal and being caught by the public or they are so unprofessional in their job with handling secure information that they have to hide the fact from the public.
5.) It falls in the same category as the police not wanting anyone to record their actions with cellphones. Many want unlimited power and the capability to do what would be deemed as unlawful things to citizens without evidence or recourse available to those citizens.
Shawn
1.) After trying encryption, some agencies are switching back to non-encryption.
2.) It can prevent or limit the available communication channels across jurisdictions during major emergencies.
3.) Instead of simply listening to the activity on a scanner when systems are encrypted some people will get in their vehicles and drive to go see what is going on.
4.) Encryption of all communications either means the agencies are afraid of doing something criminal and being caught by the public or they are so unprofessional in their job with handling secure information that they have to hide the fact from the public.
5.) It falls in the same category as the police not wanting anyone to record their actions with cellphones. Many want unlimited power and the capability to do what would be deemed as unlawful things to citizens without evidence or recourse available to those citizens.
Shawn
NYRHKY94
Member
W8RMH provided some excellent talking points. In my opinion, Encryption of all communications (not just sensitive operations) is indeed a "policy decision". While the chief of a public safety department may be the initial impetus behind a move to full encryption, the decision to do so ultimately rests with those who that same Chief reports to: City Mayor, Town Manager/Town Council, County Executives etc. In other words, you are going to be talking to the right people!
Technology and vendor sales pressure aside, it's the elected political powers in a given jurisdiction that make the final call as to whether or not "all" communications will be Encrypted. These same elected officials are also responsible for upholding a certain level of transparency & openness in their government operations - including allowing their constituents (public and media) some level of access.
Like any other policy decision, it's incumbent that our government officials strive to find a healthy balance between the need to protect officer safety and the right of those they serve (the public) to have transparency in the government they pay for. I personally believe this is where the dialogue around this whole issue needs to move to.
That compromise for lack of a better word is somewhere in the middle IMO. Encryption of sensitive operations if a department so desires/needs, while leaving day-to-day dispatch activities in the clear is something most taxpayers & public officials can probably support. Easier said than done....but it can be done.
Good luck!
Technology and vendor sales pressure aside, it's the elected political powers in a given jurisdiction that make the final call as to whether or not "all" communications will be Encrypted. These same elected officials are also responsible for upholding a certain level of transparency & openness in their government operations - including allowing their constituents (public and media) some level of access.
Like any other policy decision, it's incumbent that our government officials strive to find a healthy balance between the need to protect officer safety and the right of those they serve (the public) to have transparency in the government they pay for. I personally believe this is where the dialogue around this whole issue needs to move to.
That compromise for lack of a better word is somewhere in the middle IMO. Encryption of sensitive operations if a department so desires/needs, while leaving day-to-day dispatch activities in the clear is something most taxpayers & public officials can probably support. Easier said than done....but it can be done.
Good luck!
On the police side, every scanner listener is another set of eyes looking for the "bad guy". Every scanner listener is one less person to innundate the 911 system when numerous police cars are in the neighborhood asking "what's going on?". Every scanner listener may be one less driver trying to travel down a road blocked by an incident.
Officer safety is an important thing - few cops will be hurt by a criminal who flee the scene prior to police arrival. I can remember several times officers telling me a common tactic is to use lights and sirens responding to fight calls. The thinking was that hearing the siren, the fighters would stop.
Having said that, I favor encrypted comms for SWAT, narcotics, investigation and intelligence operations.
On the fire side, I'm a retired fire chief with 39 years in the fire service. The only thing I can think of that warrants secure communications is an injured firefighter situation. Rather not have families hearing on the scanner that a loved one was hurt. Major incidents (train derailments, plane crashes, tornadoes) happen rarely but when they do there is little forwarning and preparation time. Mutual aid assistance can come from several communities away and when encryption is used, communications suffer. (Yeah an unencryoted common channel can be used, but trying to conduct all comms for a major incident on one channel is ugly).
On EMS, while its nice to hear this stuff, I can see the privacy value for encryption.
Officer safety is an important thing - few cops will be hurt by a criminal who flee the scene prior to police arrival. I can remember several times officers telling me a common tactic is to use lights and sirens responding to fight calls. The thinking was that hearing the siren, the fighters would stop.
Having said that, I favor encrypted comms for SWAT, narcotics, investigation and intelligence operations.
On the fire side, I'm a retired fire chief with 39 years in the fire service. The only thing I can think of that warrants secure communications is an injured firefighter situation. Rather not have families hearing on the scanner that a loved one was hurt. Major incidents (train derailments, plane crashes, tornadoes) happen rarely but when they do there is little forwarning and preparation time. Mutual aid assistance can come from several communities away and when encryption is used, communications suffer. (Yeah an unencryoted common channel can be used, but trying to conduct all comms for a major incident on one channel is ugly).
On EMS, while its nice to hear this stuff, I can see the privacy value for encryption.
K2RNI
Member
If you already have capable Motorolas for it, it's just a matter of flipping the option on in the settings. Most program over the air so from their side not much reason not to ENC.
D
DaveNF2G
Guest
Don't accuse the local officials and agencies of being incompetent or corrupt. Even if it's true, saying so in public will only cause them to disregard anything else you have to say and do what they can to discredit you.
jim202
Member
Having worked with Public Safety radio systems for about 40 plus years now it's always an interesting discussion about encryption. One of the most concerning, is that any of the radio sales force always push for full encryption. This is just a cost increase to each radio and console. The sales force smile all the way to the bank.
In most cases now the federal mandate is to have AES as the standard to be able to get federal funding. The radio vendors don't give this AES encryption away and charge a good premium per each radio. With the knowledge that Federal funding hinges on the AES encryption a must, they have played this card to the extreme and pushed the price to what ever the market will allow. When sales start to drop off for it they will lower the price.
As others have mentioned, having full encryption has hindered the interop ability between agencies that would normally respond to any event where additional help is needed. With your agency using encryption, the other responding agencies will need to have your encryption key installed in their radios or not have direct communications.
With my work with public safety agencies as a radio consultant, I cringe when I hear that an agency is going full encryption. This places a high labor cost on just maintaining all these radios. The encryption key needs to be changed on a regular basis to control system protection. The down side of this is many agencies forego changing their encryption key for very long periods of time. Like on the order of maybe a year or more.
During the time your in the process of changing the entire fleet of radios to a new encryption key, you loose the ability to communicate on the system once you start the key changing process. Look at it this way, someone changed the railroad track switch and has sent the train in the wrong direction. Until the train track switch is put back to normal, all the trains will end up at the wrong destination.
What I try to suggest to agencies is that they keep their dispatching in the clear. Set aside a radio channel or talk group that is encrypted for those discussions that really need to be in the encrypted mode. This way the entire radio system doesn't come to a stop while a new encryption key is being installed across the entire fleet of radios.
I have no problem with certain users having an encrypted channel like Narcotics, Swat, Admin and maybe a special EMS channel. The rest is a major problem trying to swap over the entire fleet when the encryption key needs to be changed.
Depending on what model of radios you are currently using and their age, the choice to change the radio system to encryption may be a major logistics problem. If your building out a new radio system, you can get the radios with the encryption already installed. If your talking about an existing radio system, the radio shop will end up spending a huge amount of time trying to update your old equipment. Some of the radios may or may not be capable of even having the AES encryption installed. It will be an expensive proposition on the old radios. Not only will you have to pay for the upgrade, but you need to take into account the labor of updating the radios. Most agencies forget to take this into account when they look at encrypting an old radio system.
Don't forget the surrounding agencies and their radios. Who is going to pay for their radios to be upgraded? Many agencies don't have the funds to upgrade old radios with encryption. Your agency might be asked to fund the process for these other agencies if it is deemed a requirement for interoperability that they had before your agency decided to encrypt your radios.
We could talk about this all day long and still not come up with all the good and bad sides about encrypting your whole radio system. But don't loose site of the bottom line of just what the effect will be and what the cost is going to be.
In most cases now the federal mandate is to have AES as the standard to be able to get federal funding. The radio vendors don't give this AES encryption away and charge a good premium per each radio. With the knowledge that Federal funding hinges on the AES encryption a must, they have played this card to the extreme and pushed the price to what ever the market will allow. When sales start to drop off for it they will lower the price.
As others have mentioned, having full encryption has hindered the interop ability between agencies that would normally respond to any event where additional help is needed. With your agency using encryption, the other responding agencies will need to have your encryption key installed in their radios or not have direct communications.
With my work with public safety agencies as a radio consultant, I cringe when I hear that an agency is going full encryption. This places a high labor cost on just maintaining all these radios. The encryption key needs to be changed on a regular basis to control system protection. The down side of this is many agencies forego changing their encryption key for very long periods of time. Like on the order of maybe a year or more.
During the time your in the process of changing the entire fleet of radios to a new encryption key, you loose the ability to communicate on the system once you start the key changing process. Look at it this way, someone changed the railroad track switch and has sent the train in the wrong direction. Until the train track switch is put back to normal, all the trains will end up at the wrong destination.
What I try to suggest to agencies is that they keep their dispatching in the clear. Set aside a radio channel or talk group that is encrypted for those discussions that really need to be in the encrypted mode. This way the entire radio system doesn't come to a stop while a new encryption key is being installed across the entire fleet of radios.
I have no problem with certain users having an encrypted channel like Narcotics, Swat, Admin and maybe a special EMS channel. The rest is a major problem trying to swap over the entire fleet when the encryption key needs to be changed.
Depending on what model of radios you are currently using and their age, the choice to change the radio system to encryption may be a major logistics problem. If your building out a new radio system, you can get the radios with the encryption already installed. If your talking about an existing radio system, the radio shop will end up spending a huge amount of time trying to update your old equipment. Some of the radios may or may not be capable of even having the AES encryption installed. It will be an expensive proposition on the old radios. Not only will you have to pay for the upgrade, but you need to take into account the labor of updating the radios. Most agencies forget to take this into account when they look at encrypting an old radio system.
Don't forget the surrounding agencies and their radios. Who is going to pay for their radios to be upgraded? Many agencies don't have the funds to upgrade old radios with encryption. Your agency might be asked to fund the process for these other agencies if it is deemed a requirement for interoperability that they had before your agency decided to encrypt your radios.
We could talk about this all day long and still not come up with all the good and bad sides about encrypting your whole radio system. But don't loose site of the bottom line of just what the effect will be and what the cost is going to be.
K2RNI
Member
It doesn't hinder interop, that's what the unencrypted TGs or channels are sitting idle for. Funny how everyone on here claims they are/were in public safety/radio shop.
If you can't make an arguement without bringing that up to lean against everytime than you have no arguement and are merely mentally stroking yourself off on the whackerism and trying to get everyone to accept your speaking out the butt as fact to lazily push whatever agenda/perception of reality you got going on in the head.
If you can't make an arguement without bringing that up to lean against everytime than you have no arguement and are merely mentally stroking yourself off on the whackerism and trying to get everyone to accept your speaking out the butt as fact to lazily push whatever agenda/perception of reality you got going on in the head.
I am a proud scanner carrying member of the church of wackerism.
scanmanmi
Member
They want to encrypt so you can't hear what's going on and then go see it. You wouldn't know anything is going on if you couldn't hear it.
scanmanmi
Member
wackerism ???? I had to look it up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDtMYs2X-O0
D
DaveNF2G
Guest
The absolute worst argument you can make, especially to police officials (in most areas), is that encryption keeps the public from listening in. That is the selling point for encryption. In my part of the country, police are sometimes uncomfortable with the idea that other police agencies can hear them.
There are other poor arguments.
1) My taxes pay for your radios and/or your salaries.
Really? Do you own a real estate? If not, then your contribution is miniscule if it exists at all.
Besides, what are you going to to about it? Stop paying taxes?
Basically, they don't need to care.
2) Encryption is unconstitutional.
No, it is not. Period.
3) The Supreme Court has said that a free press cannot function by waiting for releases from government officials.
That used to be a good argument, but "the press" have destroyed most of their own credibility on the national level.
There are other poor arguments.
1) My taxes pay for your radios and/or your salaries.
Really? Do you own a real estate? If not, then your contribution is miniscule if it exists at all.
Besides, what are you going to to about it? Stop paying taxes?
Basically, they don't need to care.
2) Encryption is unconstitutional.
No, it is not. Period.
3) The Supreme Court has said that a free press cannot function by waiting for releases from government officials.
That used to be a good argument, but "the press" have destroyed most of their own credibility on the national level.
f2shooter
Member
An interesting conversation. I once asked our local fire chief if the rumors were true and our town was going digital and encrypted. He said absolutely not, it was an absurd cost and they had no interest in spending that kind of money. This is a town with a pretty good financial base so they can afford it but choose not to. My problem with all of this is that one day I arrived home at lunch to find 9 police cars in my neighborhood. That had not happened before or since, never more than maybe two in the same place. A bit concerned I called the non-emergency number to ask what was going on. They flat out lied to me saying nothing was going on and there was nothing to be concerned about. I turned on a scanner and within 2 minutes found out that there had been a home invasion a block away and they were looking for three people on foot and two in a car. My biggest problem here is that my back yard is fenced in and someone could easily have been hiding in it. If there are small kids around they could be in serious danger. I can understand the need for some limited encryption but if the department is going to lie to us in a way that might put us in danger they don't deserve encryption of any kind. I have since listened in on two foot pursuits within a half mile of my home.
Rick H.
Rick H.
kayn1n32008
ØÆSØ
Encrypted interop talkgroups also do not hinder interop.
One system I know of is a 700MHz phase 2 system. The ONLY unencrypted talkgroups found so far are the radio techs.
OTAR and agencies that can put aside dick swinging, and work together to plan and share encryption keys. When EVERYONE buys into a regional system, and everyone can play nice in the sandbox, using encryption is very doable.
This system will support dozens and dozens of police and fire agencies and one ambulance service.
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Only if all agencies are on the same system, and one competent entity is responsible for generating and disseminating keys.
When multiple radio systems are involved, with multiple entities responsible for generating and disseminating keys, then the probability of an encryption-related interop problem approaches one--e.g. the DC Metro fire incident, where the DC Fire and Metro are on different systems, and a key change made the day before the fire wasn't shared with other agencies.
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