Waterloo, Iowa: Radio switch has police signing off

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blantonl

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WATERLOO – Chuck Angel dusted off a half dozen radios from his collection and put them on a table.

The oldest was a Regency Monitoradio Executive Scanner from the 1970s that houses crystals within its faux wood grain metal case.

“That was from back in the days when scanners just started out. … I’ve still got more. I just have to figure out where they went. I’ve been playing with this stuff for over 50 years,” said Angel, a John Deere retiree who is active in ham radio and is a Red Cross radio officer.

Radio switch has police signing off | Crime and Courts | wcfcourier.com
 

slicerwizard

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Scanner apps cited again...

If nothing else, apps on cellphones are making it easy for LE to justify encryption.

Sheriff Thompson said the law enforcement agencies are moving to encryption for safety reasons now that more people than ever have access to their radio broadcasts. In the past, listening in meant buying a scanner. Now, anyone with a smart phone can pull up a free scanner app.“If you are a burglar, and you are breaking into a house, you set your phone up to scan our frequency and with a 20- to 30-second delay, you can hear the dispatch of the call, you can hear the responding unit. … You can pretty well estimate our response times,” Thompson said.

“We’ve got people that have committed burglaries with scanner apps. We’ve stopped drug dealers with the scanner apps.
 

rbrtklamp2

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I have been saying this since streaming became a main stream part of our hobby. It should be illegal to rebroadcast emergency services radio transmissions without that agencies direct consent. Keep the streams going and we will all have some pretty expensive paper eights laying around. Right around the time they stopped publishing the Police Call Books common sense about sharing what you heard on the scanner went out of the window. Most new people getting into this hobby have no idea about the communications privacy act. And unfortunately it's not enforced as it should be. Get rid of the streaming or get ready for encryption it's that simple. It's been going on for years don't say this just became an issue. Only now it's moving into more rural areas that used to just have a analog repeater and some car ro car channels. Now even those areas are encrypring. It's not a matter of will they encrypt now it's just a matter of when they will encrypt. We're going to see alot more, believe me.

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natedawg1604

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Misinformation - There is no difference in audio quality of a P25 phase 1 encrypted vs unencrypted transmission.

I'm sorry but IMO it's highly POSITIVE misinformation, it's always good to point out the many negative aspects of ENC (I.e. many people report degraded audio quality, diminished coverage etc.)
 

Radioman96p71

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I'm not sure what your response is supporting but there is no difference between encrypted and unencrypted in P25. They use the same vocoder and datastreams, one is just encrypted. Back in the days of DVP and such which was analog encryption, yes, there were nasty side effects. But with todays P25, there is no difference to the end user and if you didn't tell them it was encrypted they would not be able to tell the difference, and the fact that it's built into almost all new radios and can simply be unlocked or even just keyloaded, the question has moved from "why should we pay for encryption" to "why shouldn't we use the feature we already paid for". Not good news for scanner listeners, I'm giving consideration to dropping my audio feeds because of it and they are some of the most popular in the state.


I'm sorry but IMO it's highly POSITIVE misinformation, it's always good to point out the many negative aspects of ENC (I.e. many people report degraded audio quality, diminished coverage etc.)
 

cpetraglia

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I'm not sure what your response is supporting but there is no difference between encrypted and unencrypted in P25. They use the same vocoder and datastreams, one is just encrypted. Back in the days of DVP and such which was analog encryption, yes, there were nasty side effects. But with todays P25, there is no difference to the end user and if you didn't tell them it was encrypted they would not be able to tell the difference, and the fact that it's built into almost all new radios and can simply be unlocked or even just keyloaded, the question has moved from "why should we pay for encryption" to "why shouldn't we use the feature we already paid for". Not good news for scanner listeners, I'm giving consideration to dropping my audio feeds because of it and they are some of the most popular in the state.
Here, Here. Finally someone willing to do the right thing for our hobby.
Please follow through. Maybe it will rub off. !!
 

rbrtklamp2

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The damage is done and the major streaming sites don't care. Yes it would be nice to have that gentleman take his feed down. He is starting to get it that easy access to police communications is killing our hobby. Now if only the million feed providers or owners of these sites that provide police and fire communications streams would get the picture that would make difference. If one website went away almost 75% of the Internet feeds would go with it. To bad that will never happen as it is making to much money for the owner for him to shut it down. In the end this is what will take down our hobby. Feeds that are not authorized by the agency you are streaming should be illegal. Leave it to your Police and Fire to decide if they want there radio transmissions going out over the Web if not honor that decision and move on.

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thunderr10

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What's wrong with a really long delay, like 30 minutes or even more. I have a scanner here at my house to listen to the local stuff. And listening around the country on a long delay would not bother me at all. They need to make it law and enforce it.
 

janicew

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Lost channels on feed

Would it be possible for the Black Hawk County Iowa feed owner to put the Police and Sheriff channels back in until the end of broadcasting?
I believe it is feed 791 (ctid791). Thank you so much
 
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bemyax

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Janice,

Thanks for your initial comment. I was glad to see Lindsay's post and naively hoping for a genial discussion. Pulling Law Ops from the feed was an attempt to "stir the pot". Thom Bicket's comments were true, but there's more. The people at the top in law enforcement seem to be completely oblivious to the amount of obfuscation I provided whenever officer safety or operational effectiveness would be impacted. A casual listener might not have noticed, and certainly not the sheriff's "burglars". Only someone attentively listening to a live scanner and the feed would have realized how much content was temporarily missing.

Additionally, I've received virtually no comment from listeners about the current content. Listener counts have stayed high. What the heck?

If any local parties have ideas on how to shape the reasoning the commission is using, let us know.

David
 

janicew

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I do see counts are about the same. Maybe it is something wrong on my app? I am only hearing fire, and ambulance. And a couple other friends have noticed the "information" is only Fire and EMS frequencies listed too. But others with actual scanners are hearing calls. Just thought I'd inquire.
 

janicew

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I can't figure out how to post the screen shot from 5-0 radio.
Basically says Black Hawk County Police and Sheriff is off line.
Black Hawk County Fire and EMS is the only radio running.
Sorry to be such a pain, but I miss the scanner...
 

bemyax

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I can't figure out how to post the screen shot from 5-0 radio.
Basically says Black Hawk County Police and Sheriff is off line.
Black Hawk County Fire and EMS is the only radio running.
Sorry to be such a pain, but I miss the scanner...

a) Hmm. My connection to Broadcastify has been up for over two days. And the Scanner Radio app on one of my smartphones has been continuous for two and a half hours.
b) I miss the utility of hearing Law Ops on the smartphone, too. Like the other evening when a gang of kids on bikes was throwing bricks at everything about a block away. It helped me decide to come back to the house a different way. I mean, seriously. :mad:
 

bemyax

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Or, let me put it this way...

c) I was out having a smoke on my front porch when someone emptied a clip at a car going by on Vinton and one of the slugs entered the white house on the corner and struck a little kid inside. Or, a couple of blocks up the street a guy was gunned down. After about fifteen minutes, I walked up and talked to some of the folks up there. I understand why people won't talk to the cops. But anyone who listens to the feed all of the time could learn which ward cop is a good guy and can be trusted. To use an overworked term, it's about transparency, not just infotainment. The homeland security folks are trying to protect the law enforcement folks from some hypothetical armed terrorists and management swallows the whole thing. The Sheriff and police chief need to come down out of their ivory towers and live in the dirt with the rest of us for a while to understand why we need to keep in touch any way we can. For their benefit and ours.

... end rant/
 

eaf1956

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If nothing else, apps on cellphones are making it easy for LE to justify encryption.

Sheriff Thompson said the law enforcement agencies are moving to encryption for safety reasons now that more people than ever have access to their radio broadcasts. In the past, listening in meant buying a scanner. Now, anyone with a smart phone can pull up a free scanner app.“If you are a burglar, and you are breaking into a house, you set your phone up to scan our frequency and with a 20- to 30-second delay, you can hear the dispatch of the call, you can hear the responding unit. … You can pretty well estimate our response times,” Thompson said.

“We’ve got people that have committed burglaries with scanner apps. We’ve stopped drug dealers with the scanner apps.

If they got caught it didn't do them much good did it?
 

RadioDitch

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I have been saying this since streaming became a main stream part of our hobby. It should be illegal to rebroadcast emergency services radio transmissions without that agencies direct consent.

Amen! This isn't sour grapes and tin foil hats. Agencies are flat out citing it as a weighing factor in the decision of whether or not to go dark.
 

princessthelus

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This all sounds like what the Schutzstaffel would be proud of, in this country. Give up what I consider transparency and freedom in the interest of "national security". I think the old saying cops lie about is, "You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide". Apparently they have things to hide.
 
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