Montgomery County (TX) Law Enforcement Encryption Updates

[W5NIO]

I have been in contact with the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office recently regarding the encryption of primary dispatch channels. I have received a response back to my questions regarding giving media personnel receive-only capabilities to their dispatch talkgroups.

Almost 5 months after giving the first external user access it appears that they had an "oops we forget to read the contract" moment and realized this broke the contract they had with them. How or why this was able to get approved in the first place is what I will forever wonder, as Harris County had to approve it, so someone either lied to them or they simply looked over i

I cannot find any evidence that the US DOJ ever stated anywhere for law enforcement agencies to encrypt their returns and other information. Interestingly enough, the California DOJ issued a bulletin on October 12, 2020, the same date as quoted in the below email, that discusses the same things discussed below.

The funniest part about all of this is that it involves law enforcement in California. Cal DOJ isn't even a higher ranking agency than the state attorney general's office.

Anyways, you can read the full email below, but it is 110% obvious not that MCSO has zero understanding of why they encrypted, and unlike previous responses I received from them in the past, officer safety is mentioned nowhere in this email.

 

[KevinC]

I thought WAVE would have been a perfect solution for the the wreckers. Make them RX only obviously and they have complete control over what they can listen to. And do away with rotation.

But HC is in control.

 

[W5NIO]

I thought WAVE would have been a perfect solution for the the wreckers. Make them RX only obviously and they have complete control over what they can listen to. And do away with rotation.

But HC is in control.

Yep. And media too in this case. It’s like a managed scanner app essentially. No worries of programming and managing radios either. Access is strictly controlled and can easily be revoked. I honestly never thought of using WAVE until this email came to me, but if HC allowed it, it would be a perfect feature.

 

[KB5SJ]

I have been out of the scanner listening mode for about 20 years and how things have changed. I recently purchased a SDS200 and was sad to hear that Montgomery County went encrypted. Still undecided on whether or not to keep the scanner. I am spent days trying to figure out why I could not hear anything except the Fire to Fire tac channles.

 

[rattlerbb01]

I have been in contact with the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office recently regarding the encryption of primary dispatch channels. I have received a response back to my questions regarding giving media personnel receive-only capabilities to their dispatch talkgroups.

Almost 5 months after giving the first external user access it appears that they had an "oops we forget to read the contract" moment and realized this broke the contract they had with them. How or why this was able to get approved in the first place is what I will forever wonder, as Harris County had to approve it, so someone either lied to them or they simply looked over i

I cannot find any evidence that the US DOJ ever stated anywhere for law enforcement agencies to encrypt their returns and other information. Interestingly enough, the California DOJ issued a bulletin on October 12, 2020, the same date as quoted in the below email, that discusses the same things discussed below.

The funniest part about all of this is that it involves law enforcement in California. Cal DOJ isn't even a higher ranking agency than the state attorney general's office.

Anyways, you can read the full email below, but it is 110% obvious not that MCSO has zero understanding of why they encrypted, and unlike previous responses I received from them in the past, officer safety is mentioned nowhere in this email.


View attachment 114593

The answer to all this trend is to put pressure on the elected officials to restore and maintain transparent communications for dispatch operations. Problem is…..too many voters don’t care because they don’t listen like we do, and probably half of them fully support police operating in full secrecy. I doubt any of us want to stand up to a sheriff or chief in a commissioners court or city council meeting, due to it looking like we are anti LE. Sure, we can go FOIA things all day long but that is a great way to waste our own time and tax funded resources. I think politely meeting with those in government who choose to encrypt dispatch is the only way to get a point across unless the national mood changes.

 

[W5NIO]

I run a Facebook Page in Montgomery County for incident alerts. We have very good relations with the Sheriff’s Office and have been told that they are actively working to enact policy that allows media members to have a keyed radio on the system, RX only, for dispatch monitoring. The policy they would have to write is actually pretty complicated, and isn’t perfect. They would still have admin make the final say, which would leave room for picking favorites.

Through these discussions with LE, we learned that an individual had impersonated a public servant on a swat scene, and was listening to the incident on his SDS. Encryption was scheduled for 2023 but the Sheriff went ahead and pushed the switch two years earlier (2021) due to this incident. Sometimes it’s people doing stupid things that ruins it for everyone. Additionally, I have been told by dispatchers that they have documented incidents of ATM thieves in The Woodlands using Broadcastify while committing crimes. Once they discovered this, they started airing them over back channels and they caught them. Might be a coincidence, but scanner apps also are definitely causing issues. For example, the public could hear a shooting or something on a scanner and it ends up being a much lower priority call. They then go post about it on Facebook the second it airs, and it causes mass panic. I’ve seen this happen.

Additionally, a candidate for 2024 Sheriff who is a retired Texas Ranger, told my group last night that he does not support the current encryption of dispatch, and seems to support rolling back the current encryption of dispatch.

 

[KevinC]

They would still have admin make the final say, which would leave room for picking favorites.

Scott E….never mind.

 

[W5NIO]

Scott E….never mind.

This might surprise people, but Scott E gets along terribly with the Sheriff’s Office. His relations with them went down significantly over the past year or two. My guess is he retires within the next 2 or 3 years.

His truck he rides around in is also not helping his case. He has red and white flashing lights on his Tahoe, both of which are illegal on non-emergency vehicles.

 

[KevinC]

This might surprise people, but Scott E gets along terribly with the Sheriff’s Office. His relations with them went down significantly over the past year or two. My guess is he retires within the next 2 or 3 years.

His truck he rides around in is also not helping his case. He has red and white flashing lights on his Tahoe, both of which are illegal on non-emergency vehicles.

This talk about Scott got me to thinking about Lloyd Overcash. I didn’t know he passed away last year.

 

[tunnelmot]

I worked with Lloyds's son, Aaron. I'm sorry to hear of Lloyd's passing.

 

[pastormg2]

I know a police officer from one of the departments in Montgomery County. He says that they are having more problems with the encryption of their radio's. He said that to even login with your radio you need to have multiple passwords. And that means they need to write all of these down in a book. They even have a hard time logging into the system with their laptops to check a license number and stuff like that. And I hate to say this, but 800 Mhz is one of the worst frequency bands that the police could have gone to. The FCC only allows them to operate 5 watts max. ERP. So if you have a lot of hills, valleys, so forth and so on, good luck having the repeater hear you with 5 Watts. Plus, if they are in a building, they have multiple problems with being able to copy dispatch or police to police communications. The manufacturers of these radio's are selling these systems as the best thing available, but they are nothing more than a piece of C**P. High priced radio's that do not work the best depending on your location. At least with Montgomery County when they were on Low VHF communications was much more reliable. And if you talk about the PA State Police, their system still doesn't work too good.

 

[KevinC]

I know a police officer from one of the departments in Montgomery County. He says that they are having more problems with the encryption of their radio's. He said that to even login with your radio you need to have multiple passwords. And that means they need to write all of these down in a book. They even have a hard time logging into the system with their laptops to check a license number and stuff like that. And I hate to say this, but 800 Mhz is one of the worst frequency bands that the police could have gone to. The FCC only allows them to operate 5 watts max. ERP. So if you have a lot of hills, valleys, so forth and so on, good luck having the repeater hear you with 5 Watts. Plus, if they are in a building, they have multiple problems with being able to copy dispatch or police to police communications. The manufacturers of these radio's are selling these systems as the best thing available, but they are nothing more than a piece of C**P. High priced radio's that do not work the best depending on your location. At least with Montgomery County when they were on Low VHF communications was much more reliable. And if you talk about the PA State Police, their system still doesn't work too good.

Where to start...

Logging into a subscriber has nothing to do with encryption.
Logging into a laptop has nothing to do with encryption.
800 Mhz works fine. Maybe the system isn't designed for inbuilding coverage. And even by Texas standards, Montgomery County doesn't have hills and valleys.
VHF lo???? You mean back in the 60-70's? You can't even start to compare coverage needs from 50+ years ago as compared to today.

 

[Echo4Thirty]

I know a police officer from one of the departments in Montgomery County. He says that they are having more problems with the encryption of their radio's. He said that to even login with your radio you need to have multiple passwords. And that means they need to write all of these down in a book. They even have a hard time logging into the system with their laptops to check a license number and stuff like that. And I hate to say this, but 800 Mhz is one of the worst frequency bands that the police could have gone to. The FCC only allows them to operate 5 watts max. ERP. So if you have a lot of hills, valleys, so forth and so on, good luck having the repeater hear you with 5 Watts. Plus, if they are in a building, they have multiple problems with being able to copy dispatch or police to police communications. The manufacturers of these radio's are selling these systems as the best thing available, but they are nothing more than a piece of C**P. High priced radio's that do not work the best depending on your location. At least with Montgomery County when they were on Low VHF communications was much more reliable. And if you talk about the PA State Police, their system still doesn't work too good.

Subscribers are TxWARN are programmed with high power on the portables (3 watts) and low power (15 watts) on the mobiles. There is no FCC requirement for 5 watts on 800 MHz. The mobiles are capable of 35 watts on high, but are kept at 15 to help reduce interference on the network from frequency reuse across sites.

800 MHz is actually one of the best bands for in building coverage due to its ability to penetrate structures, low band is the absolute worst. Even CHP does not use low band for anything other than mobiles and relies on 700 MHz on the hip to talk to their extenders in the car. Low band (or even VHF high) would be a horrible choice in Montgomery county unless all you needed was outside in the woods coverage.

As a side, ALL of the wrecker drivers we have chatted with are convinced if the new sheriff is elected he is going to turn off the encryption. Thoughs?

As for high priced, if you want sticker shock, go check out the price of the only current low band radio on the market from Kenwood. Its higher than its 700/800 equivalent and is only sold as a second deck. If an agency wanted low band today they have to purchase old used radios, which may not be an option for them.

 

[KevinC]

@W5NIO Any update on this?

 

[W5NIO]

@W5NIO Any update on this?

So I got in contact with one of the other candidates for Sheriff. He states that he believes that the public should listen but understands and believes that some sensitive ops require encryption. He clearly states that he has intentions to roll back dispatch and other routine operations. Will not mention the candidate here for obvious reasons, but he is worth checking out.

Unfortunately MCSO admin never came to a consensus on giving media orgs the option to purchase a WAVE subscription. However, for my needs, their PIO is a great guy and me and my organization have managed to have a great relationship with them. I’ve come to terms with their decisions and understand that there are probably valid reasons for it that we don’t even know.

There’s a chance that encryption would have never hit MCSO dispatch at all. But in March of 2021 someone decided to show up on a SWAT scene and allegedly impersonate a chaplain, and learned about the incident via their radio. The D4 captain (who sadly recently passed away) learned of this and within two months, they rolled out encryption. It sucks, but shows that one person acting a fool can ruin it for the rest of us.

 

[KevinC]

So I got in contact with one of the other candidates for Sheriff. He states that he believes that the public should listen but understands and believes that some sensitive ops require encryption. He clearly states that he has intentions to roll back dispatch and other routine operations. Will not mention the candidate here for obvious reasons, but he is worth checking out.

Unfortunately MCSO admin never came to a consensus on giving media orgs the option to purchase a WAVE subscription. However, for my needs, their PIO is a great guy and me and my organization have managed to have a great relationship with them. I’ve come to terms with their decisions and understand that there are probably valid reasons for it that we don’t even know.

There’s a chance that encryption would have never hit MCSO dispatch at all. But in March of 2021 someone decided to show up on a SWAT scene and allegedly impersonate a chaplain, and learned about the incident via their radio. The D4 captain (who sadly recently passed away) learned of this and within two months, they rolled out encryption. It sucks, but shows that one person acting a fool can ruin it for the rest of us.

Thanks for the update. The actions of a few...

 

[kmartin]

Face the facts , Montgomery county LE encryption is there to stay as far as the scanner listener is concerned , it won't change

 

[W5NIO]

Thanks for the update. The actions of a few...

Yep. One person can ruin it for the rest of us. See page 4 of this document. It is actually pretty bad and the Sheriff's office actually sent out a report to all of their patrol deputies with information on the individual. Charges were briefly pursued but the DA didn't think the case would stick https://www.ci.willis.tx.us/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_04302021-77

 

[KevinC]

Yep. One person can ruin it for the rest of us. See page 4 of this document. It is actually pretty bad and the Sheriff's office actually sent out a report to all of their patrol deputies with information on the individual. Charges were briefly pursued but the DA didn't think the case would stick https://www.ci.willis.tx.us/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_04302021-77

I wonder if they did an investigation into how that person was able to convince LE he was a chaplain? I'd think that would be a big story and sounds like reprimands should have happened...but that's just me.

 

[W5NIO]

Face the facts , Montgomery county LE encryption is there to stay as far as the scanner listener is concerned , it won't change

I do agree, regardless of what any politician states. It is more work to decrypt than not. And from a political standpoint, it isn't really worth going through the hassle of changing everything. No one cares except the once a year incident that happens on their street.

Especially ID returns- It previously was a HUGE privacy issue. DL numbers and DOBs were sent over the air. DOBs are heavily protected and if you submitted a PIA request for some radio recordings, they would have to redact all DOBs under state law. MCSO implemented a policy where all deputies have to wear earpieces. I could see them having shifted towards giving more information over the air such as juvenile records etc. NCIC/TLETS information is arguably more strict than HIPPA (especially with their 2020 memo on shifting telecom to encryption), so if I were them, I would not even bother rolling back encryption just due to the risk of the potential for someone to leak info that should not be leaked over the air since they became used to it. Also, it is 2024. Why roll back a security feature that was previously implemented and does you more good than harm?