Palo Alto Police now encypted on SVRCS

[jland138]

The Palo Alto Police Department is now running fully encrypted on SVRCS (Silicon Valley Regional Communications System). The department sent an email to news media just minutes before moving all traffic off their main dispatch channel at 2 PM on Tuesday, January 5th. The email indicated that the change was made to comply with California Department of Justice (DOJ) requirements. Presumably, this is #20-09-CJIS which set forth legal mandates and guidelines regarding the “Confidentiality of Information from the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (CLETS).”

See the CDOJ memo:

https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/info_bulletins/20-09-cjis.pdf

and local news stories:

As Palo Alto police switch to encrypted radio, newsroom scanners go silent

In a sudden move that will severely limit the ability of journalists and citizen watchdogs to cover breaking news, the Palo Alto Police Department encrypted all of its police radio communications Tuesday afternoon.

www.paloaltoonline.com

and:

Police cut off their radio transmissions to the public – Palo Alto Daily Post

padailypost.com

 

[Benkasey]

Not just Palo Alto. Sunnyvale, Los Gatos, and Sheriff are now encrypted. San Jose went encrypted last year when they joined SVRCS.
Eventually all LEF traffic under SVRCS will be enctypted. EBRICS? We shall see.

 

[leonzo]

Thank you for providing the document above. I used the information contained in that document to do a Google search on FBI CJIS and when I got to that document I read sections 4.3 titled Personally Identifiable Information also known as PII. I read section 5.10 titled "System and Communications Protection and Information Integrity. It spoke about information systems and software as it applies to computers. It referenced section 5.13 which is titled "Policy of Mobile Devices". It talks about smartphones and tablets. Section 5.13.1 is titled Wireless Communications Technologies which talks about cellphones Bluetooth, satellite, microwave and land mobile radio. Land mobile radio is never mentioned again in the entire section.

I did not look into California Department of Justice documentation, primarily because I am not a California resident. Bottom line here, any agency using the FBI document as justification to encrypt police radio traffic is stating a lie. The document DOES NOT require law enforcement agencies to encrypt. As a matter of fact section 5.13.1.2.2 titled voice transmissions over cellular devices says " any cellular device used to transmit Criminal Justice Information via voice is exempt from encryption and authentication requirements". So using common sense if cellphones are exempt and land mobile radio just like cellphones is voice transmitted via radio wouldn't it stand to reason that this section exempts them to?

DO NOT let agencies get away with this. Again, maybe the CA Department of Justice has a section that speaks specifically to two way radio communication banning the broadcasting of wants and warrants or motor vehicle registration information however, if their document is only referencing the FBI CJIS document, then the FBI CJIS document DOES NOT require police radio encryption!

 

[mmckenna]

DO NOT let agencies get away with this. Again, maybe the CA Department of Justice has a section that speaks specifically to two way radio communication banning the broadcasting of wants and warrants or motor vehicle registration information however, if their document is only referencing the FBI CJIS document, then the FBI CJIS document DOES NOT require police radio encryption!

As you pointed out, the document does not require encryption of radio traffic.

What it requires is protection of the personal data that gets transmitted.

When these agencies signed the documents to utilize the CLETS terminal system, they agreed to protect the PII. The agencies agreed to this years and years ago. The only thing that has changed is that the DOJ is now pressing the matter and requiring them to follow the contract. That contract requires protection of personal data, or the agency risks losing their permission to use CLETS.

How the agencies meet the agreement to protect PII can be handled a number of ways. End story is that they won't be permitted to share PII in the clear over any sort of media.
Some agencies are not encrypting, but changing their procedures to only run checks over terminals/cellular. LTE, by design, is encrypted and meets the requirements. That works fine and most agencies already have that in place. But there are situations where having access to the terminal is not possible. That means that an officer either needs to make a phone call, run the check over their hand held device, or forego the check all together.
Some agencies are choosing to encrypt since it gives officers more flexibility and requires less changes to their procedures. For agencies that are already on these large regional digital trunked systems, turning on encryption is an easy solution, is very low cost (radios already have the capability) and requires little or no changes to what the officers do.

I understand your desire for agencies to not go encrypted, but realities are going to dictate otherwise. I'm in the middle of this right now, and I can promise you that no agency I'm aware of is concerned about what scanner hobbyists think.

 

[jland138]

...
How the agencies meet the agreement to protect PII can be handled a number of ways. End story is that they won't be permitted to share PII in the clear over any sort of media.
...

In your case, are any agencies considering granting media-only access? That seemed a reasonable compromise for other encrypted agencies, at least before DOJ's memo.

 

[mmckenna]

In your case, are any agencies considering granting media-only access? That seemed a reasonable compromise for other encrypted agencies, at least before DOJ's memo.

Not that I've heard. Requests like that would go through the chief, and I'm not hearing anything like that yet.

That's certainly a good option, though. Allows remote rekeying (or zeroizing) of the radio. Allows killing the radio if it' goes missing/stolen. As for who pays for the radio, well, that's a decision above my pay grade.

 

[jland138]

Mountain View PD announced today that they will enabling encryption on their SVRCS dispatch channel in March.

City of Mountain View - News Details

www.mountainview.gov

 

[jland138]

Los Altos PD announced today that they will be encrypted on March 1, 2021.

Radio Encryption | City of Los Altos California

 

[nokoa3116]

In your case, are any agencies considering granting media-only access? That seemed a reasonable compromise for other encrypted agencies, at least before DOJ's memo.

Not that I've heard. Requests like that would go through the chief, and I'm not hearing anything like that yet.

That's certainly a good option, though. Allows remote rekeying (or zeroizing) of the radio. Allows killing the radio if it' goes missing/stolen. As for who pays for the radio, well, that's a decision above my pay grade.

I am with the Media and not a single department was willing to grant any media personal access to their radios. The document states that no one but authorized representatives of the department are allowed to hear certain PII and records. So I suppose it includes the media. I would like to hope that once this goes into affect in LA it would prompt some bigger responses and “fights” for access as it is relied on heavily there for media. Several departments who had encrypted in the past granted access to Media either through an official online feed and some were given radios. Motorola radios on P25 trunked systems can be easily inhibited remotely, and the radio will become a brick.
I don’t think that this will last. But only time will tell, and it will take time.

Orange County Fire Department encrypted their radio traffic, they quickly realized it was a mistake, but according to their cheif it will be years long efforts to reprogram all the radios. 2 weeks to turn on encryption, years to turn it off. We will not see SVRCS in the clear any time soon. There’s been some fights with Palo Alto PD over this, they have yet to fully complete the transition.

 

[jland138]

I am with the Media and not a single department was willing to grant any media personal access to their radios. The document states that no one but authorized representatives of the department are allowed to hear certain PII and records. So I suppose it includes the media.
...

Thanks for the reply. Yes, we heard the same thing from the PAPD command staff. No media access will be available via radio.

Command staff proposed a "Pulse Point" type app for media access to CAD data, similar to what's being done by the Palm Springs Police:

Radio silence: As police encrypt dispatch transmissions, questions build on the public's right to know

Police departments throughout the Midpeninsula are following Palo Alto police, which on Jan. 5 abruptly announced it would immediately encrypt its dispatch radio communications, to protect certain private information.

www.paloaltoonline.com

(image of the Palm Springs web page is on page 7 of the print edition - https://www.paloaltoonline.com/morguepdf/2021/2021_01_29.paw.section1.pdf)

Both Atherton and Menlo Park announced they will also be encrypting, but likely not until 2023 because of pending equipment upgrades.

 

[russbrill]

Thanks for the reply. Yes, we heard the same thing from the PAPD command staff. No media access will be available via radio.

Command staff proposed a "Pulse Point" type app for media access to CAD data, similar to what's being done by the Palm Springs Police:

Radio silence: As police encrypt dispatch transmissions, questions build on the public's right to know

Police departments throughout the Midpeninsula are following Palo Alto police, which on Jan. 5 abruptly announced it would immediately encrypt its dispatch radio communications, to protect certain private information.

www.paloaltoonline.com

(image of the Palm Springs web page is on page 7 of the print edition - https://www.paloaltoonline.com/morguepdf/2021/2021_01_29.paw.section1.pdf)

Both Atherton and Menlo Park announced they will also be encrypting, but likely not until 2023 because of pending equipment upgrades.

NO Public, NO Media, NO OVERSIGHT!!! We get to do what we want to and CONTROL the flow of information to the unsuspecting tax payer...

 

[b52hbuff]

Both Atherton and Menlo Park announced they will also be encrypting, but likely not until 2023 because of pending equipment upgrades.

I was curious about this. SVRCS is pretty easy to encrypt. What are the peninsula departments that are primarily on T-Band going to do?

 

[nokoa3116]

I was curious about this. SVRCS is pretty easy to encrypt. What are the peninsula departments that are primarily on T-Band going to do?

There is a trunked P25 Phase 1 system in San Mateo County only a few departments are on it. I haven’t seen any plans indicating the departments are going to move to it. Or if upgrades will be made to the system. It looks like at least for EBRCS they are supposed to upgrade to TDMA on that system before they enable encryption. SVRCS is TDMA, and San Francisco has a future system that is also TDMA. Maybe San Mateo County is going to do the same but I have no idea. Most departments in the county are UHF with Kenwood UHF radios. The trunked system is 700mhz. As mentioned I saw that a news paper mentioned Menlo Park and Atherton also plan to encrypt, but I couldn’t find if they posted anything about it. I couldn’t find any contracts, proposals or any information about future radios. From my understanding departments were required to submit a plan on how they are going to comply with the CA DOJ requirement but with no date of when they must implement it. I assume it will take a couple years at least until they actually have all the equipment and everything gets set up in the county. Probably gonna be trunked p25 phase 2 like all the others.
Again I am only speculating because I really couldn’t find much recent information about this.

 

[Benkasey]

Even if the news "media" were granted access to public service encrypted radio so they could fully report on local crime, it wouldn't happen. The days of a reporter in tag with a camera guy listening to a scanner in a van chasing down crime news (ala "Lou Grant") are long gone. The days of armies of newspaper reporters combing the city for stories, dressed in trench coats and hanging out in Irish bars is long gone. What passes for news these days is a carefully crafted script commented on by "analysists, contributors, and pundits" citing "unnamed high level sources."

A few decades ago TV news departments were reorganized to report to the Entertainment Division. They closed news bureau after news burea. Cut the budgets. Consolidated. Failing newspaper chains bought other failing newspaper chains. Cities went from having 2, 3, 4 competing newspapers down to 1. There is basically no competition in the newspaper business anymore. And scant competition in the television "news" (entertainment) industry. ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NPR. That's it. Six network control the flow of information to 350 million people.

The public doesn't know what the public doesn't know. The magnitude of crimes that are investigated but go nowhere aren't reported. "Gunshots fired". Does that show up as a crime statistic if the lead goes cold? No. There may not be victims, but gunshots going through the wall of an apartment building is crime, even when news media doesn't report it. These are leading indicators of crime. Gang graffiti, random gunshots, catalytic converters cut off cars, shoplifting at Walgreens/CVS/Target/Ross/Luckies/Safeway, windows smashed. These unsolved/dead-end crimes don't show up in crime statistics, or if they do show up, they are lumped into some generic category. If the store doesn't press charges on a shoplifter, there is no crime. You may haver heard about it on the unencrypted police channel, so YOU are situationally aware. But your neighbor isn't. Once it goes encrypted you are totally in the dark.

The last thing the people in charge want you to know about is crime trends going in the wrong direction. A total lack of planning to turn things around. Is there any American city where gang activity is actually going down?

You think it's a mere coincidence that politicians reclassify crimes as misdemenaors? No, it's brilliant. They can't do anything about crime, so they just redefine it as non-crime. Everybody gets to keep their job. In fact, they get a promotion and salary raise.

Democracy dies in darkness. That's the line isn't it? Except that the people in charge are working overtime to keep things hidden in darkness.

 

[ndalporto]

There is a trunked P25 Phase 1 system in San Mateo County only a few departments are on it. I haven’t seen any plans indicating the departments are going to move to it. Or if upgrades will be made to the system. It looks like at least for EBRCS they are supposed to upgrade to TDMA on that system before they enable encryption. SVRCS is TDMA, and San Francisco has a future system that is also TDMA. Maybe San Mateo County is going to do the same but I have no idea. Most departments in the county are UHF with Kenwood UHF radios. The trunked system is 700mhz. As mentioned I saw that a news paper mentioned Menlo Park and Atherton also plan to encrypt, but I couldn’t find if they posted anything about it. I couldn’t find any contracts, proposals or any information about future radios. From my understanding departments were required to submit a plan on how they are going to comply with the CA DOJ requirement but with no date of when they must implement it. I assume it will take a couple years at least until they actually have all the equipment and everything gets set up in the county. Probably gonna be trunked p25 phase 2 like all the others.
Again I am only speculating because I really couldn’t find much recent information about this.

TDMA has nothing to do with encryption. TDMA is strictly a digital channel access method. When implemented, you gain additional talkpath capacity because each 12.5KHz wide voice channel is now divided into two slots. Systems like San Francisco will be natively TDMA because the system was specified and is being built out that way. Additionally most systems have talkgroups as Dynamic Dual-Mode (DDM) so when a FDMA-exclusive subscriber affiliates to a talkgroup it brings the talkpath the talkgroup is using down to FDMA so that subscriber can be used.

There is plenty of encrypted talkgroups on the 38D system right now, which is still FDMA. It's just about setting up the talkgroups correctly and appropriately keyloading and programming subscriber units.

In regards to Menlo and Atherton PDs, I would suspect they are doing a conventional buildout in the T-band simply consisting of updated site equipment, subscriber units, and dispatching equipment at their respective centers to support P25 encrypted voice. A new 9600 trunking system buildout for either of those two departments that is TDMA would reach into the dozens of millions dollar wise, not to mention it would be massively overkill to do such a system for 1-2 talkgroups.

Now, they could also go on to 38D and encrypt their talkgroups, but I don't think that's the plan. There could be concerns with talkpath capacity and availability due to adding additional departments depending on the overhead the system was originally designed with.

 

[Ravenfalls]

Every law enforcement agency within Santa Clara County will be switched over to encrypted transmissions by the end of this year.

 

[jland138]

This was in today's edition of the Palo Alto Daily Post:

 

[mmckenna]

This was in today's edition of the Palo Alto Daily Post:

Ha!

Where's the one about broadcasting peoples personal information out over the air? Gotta tell both sides of the story.

 

[ndalporto]

Yeah, if you think that spot in the paper is going to change anything I've got some bad news.

 

[jland138]

The City of Santa Clara Police Department has plans to transition to encrypted radio channels on April 26, 2021.

Community Notification of Update to Santa Clara Police Department's Radio System | City of Santa Clara