Well... that's promising.
San Francisco Public Safety going Digital June 2021
- Thread starter sffire
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TG 803 (SFPD A1) now active in unencrypted mode as well
I've added the unencrypted talkgroups back to the DB until we figure out which ones are going to be used and which ones aren't.
User update. The plan is for 100% encryption. But, there's issues cropping up with radios not receiving transmissions and overall voice quality. There were a few critical incidents in which the radios were all but inoperative, so the higher-ups and techs are trying to compromise to work things out (remember, too, that the radios are controlled by SF-DEM, not PD, FD, etc, so it seems to be a pissing match between entities, currently).
Do you know why the unencrypted talkgroups are still popping up once in a while?
That’s not what we were told or led to believe. Where did you hear this or get your information from?
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You should read his posting history.
For what agencies is the plan for 100% encryption?
Most likely PD
Sheriff is also encrypted, along with whatever agency is using the 1400 series talkgroups.
I can only guess that some console users aren't turning on encryption before transmitting. AFAIK, all PD handhelds are 100% encrypted, regardless of "Channel".
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Not looking for an encryption debate I'm just a little surprised by this.
If PD and SO are going to be 100% encrypted does anyone know if they made subscriber units available for the media?
I can't believe in a city like San Francisco that the public is going to go for having that kind of lack of transparency. Going with full encryption in large cities is how anti encryption laws will get passed.
If PD and SO are going to be 100% encrypted does anyone know if they made subscriber units available for the media?
I can't believe in a city like San Francisco that the public is going to go for having that kind of lack of transparency. Going with full encryption in large cities is how anti encryption laws will get passed.
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When departments go encrypted a lot of them issue "media" radios to get around the transparency issue. Being that it is the job of the media to keep the public informed of government business they are usually given access to things, like subscriber units, that the general public is not.
Also the fact that you made a statement like "The media are the exact people they don't want hanging around" makes this even more important. That is exactly why the media should be hanging around.
The media shouldn't have special access that the public doesn't, in my opinion. Everyone should be able to listen, or no one. The media isn't above anyone else.
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Thanks for mansplaining. In case you haven't noticed, PDs aren't enjoying favorable media coverage these days. It seems likely that handing radios to the media so they can show up to the popo's next huge embarrassing failure isn't on the top of the priority list.
Ask the Vegas media how encrypted LVMPD subs are working out for them.
Here is what SFPD sent out to media partners a couple months ago. You may find this useful.
California is not currently doing this, after numerous conversations with multiple departments, none have have agreed, and a lot have stated that they are simply not allowed to do this with the current mandates. However it was done before in the state, and in others. In Colorado it was recently passed as a law that requires law enforcement agencies to provide Colorado based media with subscriber radios with decryption licenses.
In reference to the other comment, the intention is not to document "popo's next huge embarrassing failure" but to be able to respond to incidents such as shootings, protests, break ins, stand offs, crashes, and other police related events that have the public's interest. While we will respond to officer involved shootings, officer involved crashes, the intention is not to embarrass anyone, but to simply document the facts as they are presented. Of course this might not be true for everyone, and often it is out of our control how the story gets told. In California, most of initial on scene footage comes from "Stringers". We are often the ones who listen to scanners, and just cover the story from the scene. It's up to the stations on how they decide to tell it, and whether their own biases, and views are integrated into the story. Obviously for all police care, they would rather release no info, have communications closed, but being an agency that has the power to take away someone's freedom, transparency is important, and that's why the constitution and the laws reflect that. From all the time I have covered breaking news, I cannot recall a time where I encountered the so called embarrassing failure. We are there to document the scene and the story, we don't sit there zoomed in on the cops waiting for them to do something embarrassing, often the stories have nothing to do with them, but with an incident that occurred regardless of their presence. If they happen to shoot someone and we got it on camera, that is a part of the story, it something that happened, and whether they are in the right or wrong is not up to me to decide. Departments in California are required to release information on officer involved shootings where someone was seriously injured or killed. Sometimes the shooting is justified. Not everything a cop does is a failure, we have seen them do more good than really anything. Just because every few months a single cop is being bashed and shamed for supposed wrong doing, that should not reflect on all incidents that we document on a daily basis.
Total darkness, where communications are completely closed, allows the public agency to spoon feed the media only notable incidents, that are both in their interest to release, as well as the perception of their city's crime statistics. I see this daily, departments bother making press releases, on incidents where they have made an arrest on and are proud of their work, versus a homicide that had nothing to do with them. If they are encrypted, and as medical communications gets more broad, we will simply not know an incident is even occurring unless the department makes us aware.
Some departments had encrypted over public safety concerns, where supposed criminals were using mobile apps to listen to police to gain an upper hand. That's why in those instances, it made more sense to give only the media access. However in other cases I have seen, departments have made a public feed, that is simply delayed, and that seemed to do the trick. California mandate had eliminated any chance of this right now. San Francisco's choice to have initial dispatch in the clear, is the biggest compromise any department in California was willing to provide. Meanwhile the South Bay sits in silence, I would love to have at least what San Francisco plans to do.
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As a current stringer (17 years in California and 10 years in Ohio) and a TV news assignment editor (10 years in California and 2 years in Ohio) this was very well said, thank you.
Many agencies are still 100% in the clear, they simply don't broadcast PII over the air in order to comply with the DOJ mandate. Other agencies have an encrypted records channel, separate from the main dispatch channel. Unfortunately some agencies are using the mandate as an excuse to go 100% encrypted. SFPD's decision to broadcast the initial dispatch and disposition in the clear is one step shy of that. So I would hardly call this "the biggest compromise any department in California was willing to provide."
The bottom line is that if agencies want to encrypt everything, they can. All of the booking logs, incident logs etc. are public records, but there is no constitutional or legal right to listen to police communications.
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