I'm not against encryption, but I do feel like it is being used to hide from the very public being served, as if everyone is presumably a "bad guy" running from the law.
So how does one determine who out of those in scanner/streaming land is a "bad guy" and who is just "scanner guy"? Answer: one cannot. The only way to protect users on a system is encryption. The same reason you encrypt your Wi-Fi connection. You'd have no problem with allowing your family to use your network, but you certainly don't want the kinko the kid loving clown nearby to surf for his kiddie-porn on your connection, so you encrypt to protect.
Sensitive talkgroups should be encrypted, if only for the duration of the traffic being passed. Let everything else be in the clear.
How do you propose to do this? So you're telling me that operations folks have to add more work to enable/disable encryption during/after incidents? Been a while since you stepped foot into a 911 center I see.
It's difficult enough getting users to change talkgroups for a planned system upgrade. Adding more workload to already taxed dispatchers just so it makes it easier for someone to tune it with a scanner or for streamers to blabber what they hear on anti-social media somehow doesn't make sense to me.
But what do I know. According to the so-called industry expert here, all I do is "drop templates into radios all day"...
I really appreciate being able to listen to my local jurisdiction, in case there's a call to my elderly father's house, or any other family for that matter.
I get that, but wouldn't you not rather your local jurisdiction
notify you on your cellphone that they are rolling to your folks' place? I mean it would be much more relevant and less intrusive to get alerted this way. And at least if your local jurisdiction was encrypted, you wouldn't have to worry about some busy body blabbing that your pops got drunk and fell down the stairs LOL.
Encryption only obscures the audio, it doesn't always keep the teenage kidwith too much time on his hands from trying to put a hacked radio on a system. Subscriber authentication can handle that.
Yup, you're correct. The morons can still clone an active ID and affiliate on the system. But they will also stick out like a sore thumb to guys like me who, ya know, only "drop templates into radios all day" at the local county/city radio shop...and they still won't be able to hear any traffic, which is what the whacktards want: to walk around with a po-po radio with PD traffic blaring out of their eBay parts built APX. Gives them a rise in their Levis.
I didn't forget about certain incidents in the Atlanta area involving people putting unauthorized radios on certain systems. But those are the exception, not the rule. Had they simply enjoyed a scanner, they might have stayed out of trouble.
Happens and is happening much more than you may think. But you are right, had they not actually accessed a government communications system without authorization and acted like a jackass, they'd wouldn't be in the dire straits they are. But they also pointed out a weakness in a system, one that will soon be corrected. That's life.
I see the encryption craze as one more piece of the puzzle in the move towards Fascism in our country. We're supposed to be a free country, let's be about it, not just talk about it.
That's a great tin foil hat conspiracy theory, but baseless and without fact. Cite a specific example where encrypted government radios system were used to facilitate the commission of a crime by those authorized users. Waiting...
