I really hate to stray away from the topic of maintaining open government communications, but I want to address a couple of points. No one has messaged me about this, by the way.
Even if the agency in question does not seem to bear the expense (i.e. it gets a grant), the expense
is indeed passed to the agency. One must remember that expense is essentially opportunity cost. When money is spent on one thing (i.e. unnecessary radio equipment), there is an opposite: Less training, less emphasis on other equipment, less money kept by the public (which likely leads to more crime). Those grants could be offered for more prudent activities, or, as previously mentioned, not be offered at all since we are spending our great great grandkids money so some folks can talk in "private."
If someone has to buy encryption modules, it is expensive. If you upgrade your system entirely so you have have the latest encryption, it is expensive. And even if you have the latest system, encryption is still expensive. Are the incremental gains from all of this worth it? Is it really money well spent (/\/\ and |-| execs would say "hell yes")? If we are already dedicating the money to a department, is it really a better use than additional training?
Here's an example of the cost from the public records of a government agency:
Of course, no one at the meeting even questions a
Hospital District spending $50,000 to conceal their communications. Meanwhile, people are dying due to inadequate emergency services.
Interop does suffer. You mention incredibly complicated ways to make it work. And when the agencies are on different systems, it makes it essentially moot. Again, private message me for clarity. This is not the topic of the thread. I challenge anyone to produce evidence that all of this has prevented a single instance of injury or loss of life.
What the OP, two years ago, was initially concerned about was LTE, and it's something that must be on our radar.
First Responder Network Authority This is the sort of stuff, hidden in stimulus legislation, that is occurring today. Our money is being used to create separate networks the government can operate on when ours fail (or are turned off by the feds...). Instead of working to make the universal networks more secure and robust, millions are spent to create networks we can't monitor. Can anyone brainstorm situations where such a network could be utilized to the full extent by the state? Is this sort of supreme communications technology something we really even want in control of the state? From the point of view of some in our country, every communications network is first and primarily a government system (i.e. your regular LTE network will preference the "official" uses). In an event or catastrophe, your emergency is not worth communicating. You don't really need to organize family or friends. Your basic human right to communicate is trumped by that of the government official, who is obviously benevolent, acting in the best interest of society without any other motives or agenda.
I'm sure many of us who scan have noticed continual discrepancies between what really happened during an incident, what the agency publicly releases, and what the "news" media reports. While maintaining some sort of accountability is important, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that one day we might wake up unable to listen or communicate at all, with those in power assuming the ultimate control by holding the only effective communications technology. If this seems far fetched, check out North Korea, Iran, and a number of other jurisdictions our leaders continue to pander to. Just as we have the Second Amendment to hold the government accountable to the people, we should not allow the domestic communications infrastructure held by the government to be separate and supreme to that available to the general citizenry.
To make any of this thread worthwhile, it means that each of us must take action. I would love to talk with anyone about what you can do. A good place to start is to open records request the recordings of the encrypted traffic. Have samples of what is really communicated in the dark (i.e. that it's not sensitive), as well as examples of unprofessionalism. Start attending every government meeting. Organize others to take action with you. Get a job as the agency's radio tech, expert, or consultant. Run for office. Help place true public servants in key positions. Develop cheaper and more effective communications technologies and control their implementation (i.e. that they be open). In this situation, the media is likely to be on your side (unless they have a special radio that gets to listen) since they too want to be able to monitor to do their job. Use this to your advantage. There is so much that could be done, but I am not aware of anyone who is actually taking action on this. I admit, I, too, haven't done much... but I'm working on creating change in other areas at the moment. We would be more productive shifting the conversation to what we should do and
then taking action to reform our current and future government and society.
