The Official Thread: Live audio feeds, scanners, and... wait for it.. ENCRYPTION!

[drdispatch]

...Also, is there any benefits of writing to county commissioners vs law enforcement?

My first thought would be yes, because the commissioners control the purse strings.

 

[BinaryMode]

Does anyone have a sample letter they could share that you have written to the local authorities about encryption concerns. I really need to send a letter to my local law enforcement, but not sure what it should say!

Also, is there any benefits of writing to county commissioners vs law enforcement?

Try ChatGPT. Just specify what you need and it'll spit something out. Then edit to your liking. You may have to regenerate a few times if you don't like the generated output.

https://chat.openai.com

My first thought would be yes, because the commissioners control the purse strings.

Yeah, the law enforcement department will just laugh. I tried that routine already. Got the same run around about "officer safety."

sonm10, you should state in your letter to the effect that TAC channels NEED to be encrypted, but dispatch shouldn't. And should be open to the public not only for transparency, but for public safety concerns. This is why Orange country fire reversed their decision on encryption. You get an earthquake or a nuclear melt down or something and it's kinda nice to know what's going on. Especially the Press room. Or at least provide a feed to Broadcastify with a 5 minute delay.

 

[buddy119911]

Itll never happen. What's done is done

Yup, quite right until the Chinese crack upcoming 512 with our own equipment and sell the radio's for $25 here. Don't believe it? Look what they've done already.

 

[BinaryMode]

512?

 

[Citywide173]

512?

DES512

 

[BinaryMode]

I see.

 

[jthorpe]

Yup, quite right until the Chinese crack upcoming 512 with our own equipment and sell the radio's for $25 here. Don't believe it? Look what they've done already.

What does that have to do with police departments giving up encryption?

 

[dudeagle]

What do rocks taste like.

 

[N4SRN]

I’m the Ham-Shop resource manager at our local Makerspace. We help people get licensed and have a UHF/VHF club station to help new Hams get comfortable on local nets.

I brought in my SDS200 programmed to scan local signals in Manchester, NH, with a desktop discone antenna inside by a window. A new member seem to be all about regulatory compliance, expressing concern about access (It’s an exempt old mill building), fire extinguishers (we meet code, but he thinks we should we have more) and trip hazards (yes, the bases of our mill, lathe and drill press are not painted orange).

His latest rant is that our SDS200 doesn’t pick up all the PD/FD he want to listen to in Manchester. NH. I let him know that Manchester and Nashua are encrypted, so whatever he wants to hear, he can’t hear. He claims he’s hearing them. I tell him it’s just the encoded interagency stuff he hears, but he thinks the SDS200 can received encrypted PD/FD.

Tell me I’m not stupid…

 

[cavmedic]

You aren’t stupid, he is and tell him to go pound sand.

 

[ki4hyf]

he thinks the SDS200 can received encrypted PD/FD.

He sounds like a jerk, but he's right if it's Basic Privacy. Search for openscanner.

 

[Firebuff66]

My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw AES 1024 being used at 31 favors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

 

[exkalibur]

My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw AES 1024 being used at 31 favors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

Hello.

I have seen this in a very rare SP version of the Motorola Spectra.

 

[INDY72]

What about me being you father's cousins second wife's best friends free bookie who swore you couldn't hear my frs with no pl tone,.... nahhh never mind. Darn you Lonestarrrrrrrr!

 

[12dbsinad]

My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw AES 1024 being used at 31 favors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

Would you still like Mr Peterson's daytime phone number??

 

[Outerdog]

Would you still like Mr Peterson's daytime phone number??

 

[AK9R]

My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw AES 1024 being used at 31 favors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

I hear that their family is very close.

 

[buddrousa]

Their Family Tree is a Telephone Pole with no Forks.
But there has been Forking somewhere.

 

[stevenyorkz]

i've not read a valid argument for encryption. LE is just daring us to shut it off and force a downgrade attack, or a side channel attack, and when they know how cheap and easy the whole radio system can be shut down, then they'll regret the vendors who set them up for failure. and it's better off avoided for all sorts of technological reasons. I met dozens of people like myself at defcon who already automate attacks. encryption is unwise. it's certainly not the secrecy they're after. i just wouldn't dare the hardcore long time radio crowd.

 

[Echo4Thirty]

i've not read a valid argument for encryption. LE is just daring us to shut it off and force a downgrade attack, or a side channel attack, and when they know how cheap and easy the whole radio system can be shut down, then they'll regret the vendors who set them up for failure. and it's better off avoided for all sorts of technological reasons. I met dozens of people like myself at defcon who already automate attacks. encryption is unwise. it's certainly not the secrecy they're after. i just wouldn't dare the hardcore long time radio crowd.

Ill refrain from posting why this is a bad idea, but if you think a downgrade attack will work on an encrypted radio system, you clearly do not understand how encyphered P25 (or DMR, or NXDN for that matter) emissions work. As for a side channel attack, I am curious as to which method you think would have any success in recovering the key. There are methods that could be utilized, but so far you have not named a single one that would be of any usage on a P25 signal (I am not talking about brute-force either, as by the time you could recover a typical AES key, the agency has EOLd the system and is now on whatever is next and we are long dead). Thinking it through, the method I have read about that could have any chance also took forever and I do not remember if they were successful. This was an experiment where someone took an encrypted P25 signal with a key known to them and made a raw IQ recording of it. They challenged anyone to either tell them the key or what was said in the recovered audio. There were several individual transmissons in the file so plenty of data to work with. IIRC, no one got either. He did tell them the Algo and KID as those are both data someone could get access to.

Regardless, any attack that requires you to emmit RF would result in your location being very quickly triangulated. The FCC is EXTREMELY efficient at this with their mobile systems. They once found a cell phone in Houston traffic, while it was moving and in the back of the trunk. I mean pinpointed which car it was coming from. This didnt take days... we are talking hours from "hey we need to find this cell phone" to "its the black car right there".


As for why they encrypt? Working with several different agencies on various different state/local systems, it boiled down to a simple concept: People external to the agency who could listen couldnt keep their mouths shut, including the one time one of them served a warrant and their was a scanner that just happened to not have the tac talkgroup in it. The bottom line is that its never as a result of those who have a scanner and just want to listen. Its the ones that take that data and either throw it on facebook or somewhere else. Or show up to harrass them.