Orange County CCCS P25 Update

[allend]

Were the fire people claiming "safety" as the reason for encrypting fire comms? I always thought playing the "safety card" was a method to get their hands on all the DHS grant money for "safety" in communications equipment.

Paul

I can pretty much say you are completely right about getting grant money from DHS. I believe there is a clause or something in place when receiving grant money that you use encryption. But also keep in mind that The Orange County Sheriffs Department controls the whole radio division for The County of Orange. I bet OCSD had a big influence on it, but we shall see how it goes down the road. I see a disaster coming somehow or someway. I believe Washington D.C. Fire has some issues with their radios and dead spots with encryption and they reverted some of their talkgroups.

 

[Anderegg]

Well, if "interoperability" is used also as a means to get DHS grant money, then I can see them claiming that patching a non encrypted fire talkgroup to an encrypted law talkgroup would allow "the bad guys" to eavesdrop on law enforcement assets at whatever type of incident those in charge would claim for security concerns. Just a thought.

Paul

I can pretty much say you are completely right about getting grant money from DHS. I believe there is a clause or something in place when receiving grant money that you use encryption. But also keep in mind that The Orange County Sheriffs Department controls the whole radio division for The County of Orange. I bet OCSD had a big influence on it, but we shall see how it goes down the road. I see a disaster coming somehow or someway. I believe Washington D.C. Fire has some issues with their radios and dead spots with encryption and they reverted some of their talkgroups.

 

[allend]

Just keep in mind that there is NOT 1 Fire Department in The State of California that is encrypted for Fire Dispatch and their tactical channels. NOT end to end. We will see how this will go. This is new charted territory. Many departments in The state of CA that have gone from Analog Trunking to Phase I FDMA P25 trunking and left their Fire Department Talkgroups in the clear for many reasons. Its call normal logic. It's called a balanced approach. There are many documents out on the internet that are related to the last upgrade to the 800mhz system with a balanced approach to what will be locked down and what will stay in the clear.

I just hope it fails to teach government that locking the public out for fires and pubic safety communications is a bad idea. I am sure that the local fire department personnel that monitor from their own residents or in their vehicles are not happy about it. Also, you have certain CERT and RACES volunteers in The County of Orange that monitor and pay attention to emergencies in the county too. Their own departments are locking their own employee's out. The County of Orange is very unique as each individual city within the county has their own local volunteers that they heavily rely on for disasters that possibly could and will happen down the road. I think what will happen is that a lot of their volunteers will feel like they are getting pushed to the side since there will be nothing left in the clear to monitor in sense that they will move on and quit. Think about how many volunteers that possibly will sense this betray and just fold. Do I blame them, NO. I can honestly be a 100 percent sure that The County of Orange did not take into account of all of their volunteers since they tunneled in on fire department encryption.

There are a lot more pieces to the puzzle that probably was never taken into account with regards to locking down the FD's a 100 percent. Law enforcement does not have that many pieces to the puzzle that need to be connected like the fire departments do.

 

[hbscanner1]

Hi all, live in Huntington Beach, and I am perturbed, to put it mildly, about this news!! For one, the med talkgroups, when ID'ing patients, have a call/case number, so there is NO WAY the listening public can connect a case number with a real name of a patient!!(so HIPAA goes out as a reason for encryptiion). I sent a mssg to the LA Times informing them of the plans to encrypt all fire comms; maybe our news organizations can exert tome influence on the powers who decide upon this. I would suggest others of you, if felt obligated to, to contact TV stations and other news organizations to see what they can do about this. How does LAPD and LAFD have their comms in the clear??(except for the rare frequencies for LAPD narcotics/surveillance) . Is OC that much crime riddened to need this even for fire??? I fail to see any logic in this!!!

 

[oracavon]

How does LAPD and LAFD have their comms in the clear??(except for the rare frequencies for LAPD narcotics/surveillance) .

As I recall, LAPD was prohibited from encrypting their routine comms as part of their settlement with the Feds over chronic civil rights violations.

 

[techman210]

Their director is a former Riverside County Sheriff's commander.

This is what happens when you put Fire or LE senior staff in communications technology leadership positions.

 

[xjf79]

yes OC is phase 1 but encryption can happen on any digi flavour.
where I live we have it on p25 phase 2
encryption for everything pd fd ambulance.
and province wide local town pd is p25 p1 encrypted end to end

 

[norcalscan]

Just to clear any confusion from some posts saying encryption is required on grant-funded systems...in layman's terms, encryption is not required for federal grants, but any encryption used on a system funded by federal grants today must only be AES128/256 (excluding fine print, correct me if I'm wrong...) The intent is for interoperability so vendor A's encryption works with vendor B's encryption. There's lesser encryption algorithms built into various vendor radios, but they aren't cross-platform compatible.

There's a new system being brought online near me that is grant-funded that has built in "free" encryption but it isn't AES. The agency nickle and dimed the system so no AES licensing was purchased, thus no encryption allowed. However the "lesser" encryption was recently turned on temporarily on purpose-made talkgroups to get through an unprecedented disaster. It'll be off by the time the system comes fully online, but it'll be interesting to see if that temporary "demonstration" of silence might be an effective sales pitch on proper AES licensing once the system comes fully online in the next couple years...

 

[allend]

The NorthWest and SouthWest Cell on the old system has been retired.

 

[KK6UME]

Looks like the North Cell has began the P25 cutover. North cell public works users are using countywide TAN and BROWN channels for now.

 

[allend]

Ouch. Another Cell Site gone

 

[allend]

The cut-over for the new P-25 system for The County of Orange Fire Departments is scheduled for this Monday 4-8-2019.

8:00 am is the cut-over time.

Most likely is not going to be good news.

 

[kearthfan101]

The cut-over for the new P-25 system for The County of Orange Fire Departments is scheduled for this Monday 4-8-2019.

8:00 am is the cut-over time.

Most likely is not going to be good news.

Any word on if Red, DSP-DSP, Aircall, and the transit sheriffs will also be encrypted? Since they’ve been in the clear too...

 

[allend]

Any word on if Red, DSP-DSP, Aircall, and the transit sheriffs will also be encrypted? Since they’ve been in the clear too...

From the news I heard and from a good source that everything will be gone for Public Safety. This is to keep in line with "First Responder Safety"

If all of the Fire Talkgroups will be gone then most likely everything else that has been in the clear will be gone too.

 

[Eng74]

I guess the change over did not happen this morning. The OCFA feeds are still up on line as of 1 p.m. on the 8th..

 

[CommLt]

I heard yesterday to expect July or August as not all of the dispatch consoles are ready yet. Makes since to me since it will be the middle of fire season.

 

[allend]

The North Cell has transitioned over to the P25 system. Some LE and Med Channels have moved over. Not sure if it is in full force but most likely in testing mode.

 

[Markb]

Northwest and Sothwest, too.

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[nholguin97]

Today, MetroNet has stopped using the temporary Countywide 2L/2O TGs for major north incidents, and have switched back to the North Cell 2N/2M. For all the North major incidents with Battalions attached (Structure Fires, TC Cut and Rescues), they are now utilizing Zone 22, Tac 2N (Encrypted). The original 2N now shows out of range. It sounds like all the other fire channels and MetroNet South are still in the clear.

 

[Markb]

It appears that the cut over is going swimmingly. There was a plane crash at KFUL at around lunch time and half the units couldn't find or didn't know about the new 2N.

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