Kansas City, KS P25

[KCoax]

Watching the local news feeds the past several weeks, I am wondering if the encryption is more to SERVE to cook the books on crime stats and has little to do with officer safety. Indep and KCK are rarely in the news. The only reports I see out of there are homicides, structure fires or the occasional car wreck that goes out over KHP. Even the morning drive zoo has been rather "slow". The homicides and assaults are probably known because they were transported to a hospital or pronounced at scene. From listening many hours per week, I would assume that the LEO working a chase like that probably consider their new fancy radios as more of a blunt object that a communicative device.

 

[MadSpleen85]

Watching the local news feeds the past several weeks, I am wondering if the encryption is more to SERVE to cook the books on crime stats and has little to do with officer safety. Indep and KCK are rarely in the news. The only reports I see out of there are homicides, structure fires or the occasional car wreck that goes out over KHP. Even the morning drive zoo has been rather "slow". The homicides and assaults are probably known because they were transported to a hospital or pronounced at scene. From listening many hours per week, I would assume that the LEO working a chase like that probably consider their new fancy radios as more of a blunt object that a communicative device.

Agreed. I understand the officer safety argument to an extent... Full encryption is useless and only makes the public skeptical of what the local PD is really up to, since no one can listen in. There are a number of options for encryption here in JoCo as well, the primary dispatch is clear but, who's to say there aren't "sensitive" calls being dispatched on the encrypted secondary TGs? Even the fire tactical channels are encrypted in JoCo, at least KCKFD is fully in the clear.

How did this tin foil hat get on my head?

 

[joeuser]

I think its ridiculous that FD & EMS would be encrypted. Maybe between EMS & the hospital, that would make some sense but you'd rarely, if ever use the patient name anyway. Police dispatched is somewhat understandable. However, I wouldn't care for it, but I'm not a LEO. However, they run encryption to much... It might be a false sense of security.





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[nec911]

I am sure there is a 12 year old Chinese kid working on the problem of encryption and one day they have to go to a new method. I know people have accountability and transparency issues and those are valid.

The biggest problem I see with encryption comes from a Justice System standpoint.

Simply said, persons who know they are on secure/encrypted channels are too often using the talkgroups and channels like they do on the CB and FRS radios where everything goes. Unfortunately, there are radio recorders on most systems and most if not all of those transmissions can be ordered into the court process.

Radio discipline with encryption is apparently not being enforced in many agencies. In my radios, out of the 817 talkgroups I have programmed, I can hear all of them except two. There are 102 of which are encrypted. The conversations that I am hearing are very worrisome because if/when that radio traffic is subpoenaed someday, it is going to be bad day for someone.

If you would not tell your god-fearing 90 year old grandmother something for fear of offending her, then you should not say it over public airwaves. No matter whether they are secured/encrypted or not.

When our channels for my agency finally put in the radios, I am going to continue to warn my personnel that there is nothing that is truly secure/encrypted. EVER.

And yes, I said 817, but you have to remember that as a deployable asset we have nine different systems in the radio right now.