Horry county police possibly going dark

Joshuascanner2021

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Well I do have a bit of possibly hopeful news I just happened to run into someone I know that works with horry and was told that as far as they know they were going to remain transparent as far as the radios go and hopefully keep the dispatch channels in the clear for the foreseeable future so hopefully that holds up
I hope that is true!
 

JohnSC

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Horry County may be smarter. A savvy public relations professional could have a lot of fun with this. College interns looking for summer experience. There are pressure points easily exploited in an area totally dependent on tourism where every dollar is precious. Billboards are cheap.
 

kittrav

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A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request sent to Horry County:
"Pursuant to this state's Freedom of Information Act, SC Code 30-4-10, et seq., I request a copy, transmitted in an electronic format to my email address, of the agreement between the County and the City of Myrtle Beach for their use of the County's Public Safety Trunked Radio System."

The response received:
"There are no records in the possession, custody, or control of Horry County Government responsive to your request."

To the radio system administrators reading this: does it seem likely that there would not be an agreement, if only for cost sharing?

Rereading the request and response, I am now wondering if there are no responsive public records because the request was for a " ... copy, transmitted in an electronic format ..." when a contract may exist in paper format, but not in a scanned electronic format?

In hindsight, the request should have read a copy, transmitted in an electronic format, if available.

Another FOIA request, amended as above, to include "if available," will be sent to the County.
 

N6JPA

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This maybe just speculation but I was wondering if anyone may have heard of horry county police possibly going encrypted I know that they do have some talk groups encrypted as I listen to them all the time I just heard whispers about all of them going encrypted which would be a shame I have been listening to them for a little better than 40 years since the early 80s back when they were on VHF the good old days
Yeah, Here in California all Police, Local Fire Dept and EMS services will be 100% encrypted by 2025. We will all soon live in a society ruled by a secret government. If your neighbor has a heart attack or fire you won't know thanks to 100% encryption. I'm not criticizing Broadcastify so I won't be banned. YMMV. IMHO.
 

kittrav

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What are they using ADP, DES or AES? Everyone assumes AES but didn’t know if someone ran a sdr and see.
I am running Unitrunker. The Service column reads P4 for the MB PD encrypted channels.

Is there a way to use Unitrunker to determine the method of encryption?
 

JohnSC

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South Carolina Press Association attorney, a professor at USC, writes on the association's monthly newsletter that goes out to every member. This is a serious matter as law enforcement closes off every avenue for legitimate scrutiny by taxpayers who pay their salaries.

 

mrat1234

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Palmetto 800 has 3 common systemwide encryption keys.

AES-256 is named SCMUTAIDAES
ADP is named SCMUTAIDADP
DES-OFB is called SCMUTAIDOFB

The DES-OFB is the most common one used but some agencies use ADP and AES
 

INDY72

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Surprised they still use DES-OFB. That will most likely change as they upgrade to newer gear. ADP is the standard E package that is freely part of the M radio deals. AES-256 is the most secure, and is the one that DOJ, USDHS etc recommended, and give grants pretty much instantly if used. DES-OFB is actually now recommended against. DES-OFB is to use an hated terminology, outdated.
 

rescue161

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If it works and is well established, there is no plus side to changing. A lot of users don't have radios that have AES enabled, so the common denominator is to continue to use DES. I pointed it out years ago that DES is still very viable in an RF environment. Lots of people stated that it is easy to crack. I called them on it and after YEARS of running a contest, nobody was able to decode what I had encoded with DES.
 

JohnSC

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Just for the record, circumventing encryption is bad business and NOT a part of any discussion I will be participating in. Goodbye, all.
 

rescue161

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It wasn't circumventing, because it was my transmission. I gave permission for any and all to crack it if they could, but nobody was able to do so, even after claiming it was easy to crack. DES for a document? Sure. RF? Not so easy.
 

tsalmrsystemtech

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It looks like the majority of LE and FIRE agencies are finally starting to get caught up just like SoCal has done over the past 5 to 10 years. There has been some cities within big counties where LE went fully dark right after 9-11 and never looked back. This was way before the internet was even in full force. There were no streaming apps and so on. Scanner apps on cell phones and streaming just added more wood to the fire. That's it.

Seems like it starts on the West Coast and moves East Bound. What is very scary is FIRE agencies are on-board now too. You would think FIRE agencies were safe and would not join the dark side but it is happening slowly and will gain speed. Absolutely mind boggling and we are here faster than we thought.
 

rescue161

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Our fire guys are fully encrypted. As a matter of fact, our entire system is encrypted. Every user, regardless of service type is encrypted full time.
 

Wnqk784

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Was just getting caught up on reading on this thread and I wanted to say that about the streaming on apps of police departments are not always reliable for example where I live I can hear several of the departments on the apps on my scanner and the app doesn't even come close to keeping up with everything that comes across the channels so I have always failed to understand why when a police department like Myrtle Beach uses apps as an excuse as to why they went encrypted I think it goes deeper than that
 
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