07-29-2023 02:21 PM It has been officially announced by government legislation and law makers that NYPD radio communication will soon be switching over to encrypted technology for two-way radio transmissions. NYPD has decided to initially test out the newly advanced encryption signals, experimentally at first by individual boroughs, starting with Brooklyn sometime in August 2023. Other NYC boroughs will then gradually follow throughout into 2024 as the entire system adapts to the costly upgraded equipment. Encrypted radio communication has already been implemented across the USA in many other locations, as the ongoing trend is nothing new and long overdue in such a major city as Manhattan and its surrounding boroughs. As expected, there has been heavy debate among many local political elected officials regarding the "legality" of such encrypted radio signals. Essentially concerning local residents who personally own a scanner radio which can be easily used to monitor many types of official government communications. These folks will argue they have a legal right as citizens to know and be aware of crime or any illegal activities in their community. They make a good point! Government public officials and legislators on the other hand, will argue that it's very common for many hard core criminals to use those same scanner radios just for the sake of knowing police vehicle locations and hearing the dispatcher communicate any reported incidents in that specific area. Obviously both sides of the radio encryption debate have valid points which hence leads to a heated controversy. Most likely, it's only a matter of time as technology continues to become more highly advanced, the encryption issue will certainly follow as well and create further division . Also, by the same technical advances, manufactures of electronic devices will find a way to follow suit that will adapt to the matter by bending to the will of customers satisfaction. Of course for hobby radio enthusiasts, this will eventually defeat your current high tech 2 way radio scanner, which has already cost big bucks just for keeping in step with the latest technical advancements and the inevitable cost . Bottom line, the price for another new one will go through the roof again.
Nope. Once encrypted, you are out of the loop - permanently. The Alaska Land Mobile Radio system, AKLMR, was switched over years ago. I bought a trunking / P25 scanner. Less than a year later, they turned on the encryption. That ended nay monitoring. For a short time, the PD and FD dispatch audio feed was streamed, only to have a lurid reporting of a local gang-banger arrested with his smart phone set to follow along. That was the end of streaming. Now I have a $400 sitting in the drawer.... Oddly, in the decades prior to encryption, the cops never seemed to have a problem with the public listening in....if they had anything 'private' they would just call each other on the cell phone. I would note the local Anchorage PD union has been fighting against bodycams for several years. Wonder if that is part of the ongoing issue set.
The county next to us where my daughter is a 9-1-1 Dispatcher and her husband a Deputy Sheriff use encryption which pretty much put to an end my ability to listen while they are working. I can listen on line as they stream the transmissions. However there is a 30 minute delay between real time and what you hear. And in sensitive, major incidents they terminate the on line feed until the incident is resolved. FIRE/EMS transmissions from that county are not encrypted, just law enforcement. As a retired LEO I still listen to LAW/FIRE/EMS in the county where I live since they are narrowband, analog and non encrypted.
Same here in New Braunfels, Texas. My $500. Uniden scanner is sitting on the shelf. Used to listen to several Federal agencies as well. All encrypted now. Tom WA4ILH
Just as our federal government uses the cover of "classified" to cover up unconstitutional activity (has been for many years), soon, more and more public service agencies will use encryption to cover up unconstitutional activities. The people are demanding it.
Not that they had any particular choice in the matter. I'm sure there were plenty of LE in the past who did have problems with it, otherwise you wouldn't have ended up with something like P25 encryption to start with.
Are the people entitled to listen to every single phone call a police officer makes on the job as well? How many police are currently reaching for their cellphone instead in the name of operational security. I suppose the real question is, do the people have the Constitutional right to monitoring communications in real time of the law enforcement and other government officials? I'd have a difficult time believing that right is buried in there somewhere. Regarding covering up unconstitutional activities? Having open radio comms hasn't really stopped anyone before.
@KG4ODA , @N3RYB , Ya, doesn't seem like it'll happen. Seems perfectly safe. Seems reasonable. Any government agency should have a secure means of communications if that monitored communications can be used against them by people who are trying to hide from them. Are we entitled to listen to their communications? Maybe, maybe not. That legal theory is yet to be tested in our justice system. The military calls it SIGINT. When Blechley Park finally figured out the encryption scheme of the Enigma, that gave the allies a huge advantage and may have been one of the most significant events that allowed us to overpower the axis powers during WWII. People today seem to want less and less freedom. People are demanding more and more that their government take care of everything. In order for government to take care of more and more, the government needs more and more authority. Human nature contains many temptations. One temptation is to abuse power if you can use your existing power to hide illicit activity that'll easily increase your power and/or wealth. There's always a bad apple or two in every batch. Shining a bright light on those in power deters this temptation by illuminating the bad apple(s) or preventing some from going bad. Evil hides in the dark. Corruptions begins with the small things, like hiding what's on your private email server, destroying phones and claiming everything that was destroyed was only wedding plans for your daughter. It also begins with encrypting domestic public service radios, thus hiding what's going on. Talk to any LEO, you don't always need radios to carry out law enforcement operations. Talk to any military guy, like me... sometimes radio silence is in the OPORD--and for good reason! Having transparency in government is a fundamental of democracy. As a people, we must defend these basic principles today as we continue down the course of human events, or history will repeat. Is there anything left in our culture worth saving?
You can still have all that with encrypted police comms. Just have it all recorded and stored for review by authorized parties, just like they do with body cams. Since comms are digitally encoded already it should not be hard to divert and store voice codec data stream to storage server somewhere.
I used to listen to police dispatch, as did many others. If they were hunting for someone in my neighborhood, it was nice to know. If I saw something that matched, I would call it in. Funniest radio call heard "Units x,y,z go to 47 west Bean Street - suspect is being held at gunpoint in backyard." Seems the homeowner was also listening to the dispatch calls and saw the miscreant in their back yard. Out came the artillery and the cops got the arrest..... Most crooks would have a hard time programming a scanner for trunked P-25 comms - but stream it on a well-advertised web site and they can listen with ease on their cell phone.... BTW Anchorage, AK Is Among the Most Dangerous US Metro Areas – 24/7 Wall St. (247wallst.com) Drug rips, turf battles over drug sale territory and general asshattery (theft, alcohol related crimes) all add to the overall misery. I will admit Anchorage is still better than Las Vegas, for crime....
Really? In 42 years as an LEO and having heard who knows how many tens of thousands of police radio transmissions never once did I hear anything that came close to an "unconstitutional activity". I don't like encrypted public safety radios because even in retirement I like to listen to what goes on in my town. In my 42 years as a cop I never had an encrypted radio except when working a major narcotics trafficing case with the feds. The feds provided encrypted radios. An increasing number of LE agencies really don't need encryption as the greatest percentage of their communications is now via their MDT not via a voice radio
FOLLOW UP NOTE: Let's consider a possibility that can create another twist regarding this NYPD encryption dilemma. Many of us will recall voice scrambling, frequency blocking, and signal encryption when it was originally conceived and then became widely applied to cordless telephones and many various radio communication systems. Keeping that in mind now, there will very likely be a breed of innovative "pirate wizards" who will figure a method of defeating the technology and beat the new encryption. It will be passed along to scanner and ham radio manufacturers via some form of covert means. Those manufacturers will then quickly sprang into action and waste no time to begin marketing their latest scanners and transceivers to consumers as well as business enterprises. Remember the days when encrypted signals were first applied? It was a time when passion from scanner enthusiasts were voicing their outrage as the excitement of their hobby appeared to be doomed, although we soon learned to be rescued by the new latest models that are currently compatible. And yes, many of us took matters into our own hands to save the day. At least in many cases with regard to specific frequency segments being blocked...we boldly dug in and simply clipped a diode or two on the PC board to bring our rigs partially back to life. Truth of the matter remains that it's really anyone's guess to ponder the final results here. Fact is that there is no "final" result on the subject...it will actually just serve as a link in the chain to the next new age. So wait and see as we turn to the next page. NOTE: It is unknown at this time whether or not the NYPD plans to use the present established encryption technology or if it might be a new privately coded system.
