They actually need to focus on hospital communications. It’s scary what all you can pick up from paging systems in cleartext with a $20 USB SDR and a laptop. Patient names, rooms numbers, alert codes, everything.
I worked in a hospital, and patient names should never be paged. Room numbers and alert codes are not PHI, and generally they would say “Adult Male blah blah blah…”. Unfortunately, in concrete mazes, paging is still the most reliable (as seen by how easy it is for others to see). And when you’re as important as a doctor, you need reliability.
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I find it fascinating how in the United States police radio communications aren’t encrypted and therefore anyone can listen to them. In my European country all emergency service communications are TETRA encrypted.
Which had/has a built-in backdoor for years.
https://www.wired.com/story/tetra-radio-encryption-backdoor/
EU security forces didn’t really care as TEA2 wasn’t backdoored. It’s a mid-90s standard with different encryption levels for different actors, it should be blindingly obvious that whatever is publicly available is backdoored. You may not like it, I do not like it, but it should’ve been obvious.
The actual own goal was that while all EU security forces always had access to the secure stuff plenty of operators of critical infrastructure (think energy suppliers etc) used TEA1 as that’s what they were given. Also some EU forces bought TEA1 equipment presumably because they didn’t know what they were doing, with or without help from manufactures with an overstock of TEA1 radios.
Here’s a 37c3 talk about the whole thing, from the people actually breaching the protocol.
Aside from those encryption issues (which are finally getting addressed btw) TETRA is a great protocol, though. By now a bit dated so bandwidth isn’t exactly stellar (forget video streaming or such) but devices can talk directly to another just as in olden times, setting up a base station simply increases range, radio channels are now virtual, it’s all very sweet. Basically TETRA is to radio what GSM is to rotary phones. Which, as GSM phones don’t tend to be wired, makes a hell a lot more sense.
Wait the CCC speaks English? I thought they were German!
Projecting a wee bit, aren’t we?
Also the presenters are Dutch. The congress is bilingual though IIRC simultaneous translation is only in place for German->English.
CCC was founded in Germany. It’s not strange to assume they’d publish in German.
Oh they do. And if it was a rabbit breeder association it would stand to reason that they’d only publish in German, but they aren’t, and they don’t.
Du hast mich gefragt!
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It seems insane that they were communicating out in the open.
On the one hand, you probably hear all kinds of cool shit. On the other hand, how in the fuck are they just discussing all their sensitive shit out in the open??
They don’t? I mean, you can listen to them, they are not discussing sensitive shit because it’s public.
So what do they use to do that? Or is it that they can’t because they don’t have a secure channel?
Cell phones are a common option.
Jesus. I can’t believe they haven’t encrypted sooner. “We have a situation here, wait let me call you.”
Why would the situation need to be kept private? “We have a jumper at this and this street”, “shots fired on scene”, “I ate a burrito.”
I’m honestly curious, what vitally secret info do you think needs to be communicated over radio? They aren’t for conversations.
To keep the private info of the people involved actually private. License plates, descriptions, home addresses, personally identifiable info. It seems mad that all of that is just broadcasted out to everyone. Probably wouldn’t even be legal where I live because of privacy concerns.
I mean… Let’s just take your example of “we have a jumper at x and y street”. Is it really a good idea to have everyone know that? Do we want “journalists” to drive over their and take pictures of people in crisis (possibly worsening it).
Or let’s imagine a car chase, do we really want criminals to know that a spikestrip is set up 2 streets ahead?
Do we want information like warrant and licence checks to be held over unencrypted radio transmitions. Allowing everyone who wants to to listen in and learn about people’s criminal histories?
Just to add, I am aware that the whole idea of privacy isn’t really a thing in the US, the names and mugshots of arrested people are literally made public in some (all?) states, so you probably don’t care about the last point, but the rest still stand, and in lots of countries everyone’s privacy is considered a right, including that of (suspected) criminals.
Communicate private health information? A lot of times they still use fax machines. Information can also be stored in a secured database where access is recorded and monitored. If needed, they can always pick up the phone and talk directly with a person if you need something. HIPAA is fairly specific about this.
An encrypted two-way radio, where only the two parties requiring the information would be on the call, that might be fine as long as you’re careful to make sure someone standing nearby can’t overhear. But that’s not what NYC is building.
I think most eu countries use tetra for emergency services. it’s great for cross service group/task communications also.
Tetra?
This isn’t just bad news for citizen monitoring of the police, it’s bad news for the media as well. I worked at a news station. We had multiple police scanners going in case something big happened. The cops want no cameras around.
Yes, this is absolutely suspicious and definitely a sign of police overreach and government’s misplaced priorities.
But.
I do want to point out that, whenever a cop wants to do something shady right now, they don’t do it over the unencrypted radio. It’s not like we’re giving them a new way to be malfeasant. It’s not like they’re currently completely accountable and transparent, and they won’t be later.
Right now, they just use their cell phone when they want to do something shady.
i’m all for full transparency regarding all police activity - i’m not for full realtime transparency regarding all police activity.
active shooter scenarios, violent crimes and everything that invites rubbernecking (read: situations where MORE people are a bad idea, which is most police/ambulance business) should probably not attract people; a 24h delay for release would be enough tho.
my inner cynic already tells me - without searching - that noone thought about automatically releasing the info after a delay. :-(
I genuinely like this idea, because it would allow to reach both goals.
The problem I see is that this would probably go down the same as the bodycam idea, with inconvenient recordings vanishing due to “technical issues”.
You’d need an independent third party doing life recording and delayed release. Subjectively, the US don’t have a great track record with these.
Easier idea: Just publish last week’s encryption key. Probably won’t happen because some tech supplier will lobby for a more expensive solution.
They already find any reason not to release body camera footage. You really think they’re gonna release all policy activity after 24 hours?
What is the purpose of encrypting comms?
To keep criminals from monitoring the police and getting a head start
Lol the police are a response team. The criminals always have a head start.
Not with a hidden investigation.
You wanna leak comms while undercover?Who’s dumb enough to use comms at all while uc? If so why aren’t u using aliases. Smooth brain thinking right there.
In prior articles on this, religious nutjobs would listen to police radio and visit the active crime scene and start praying in the middle of the chaos. People and police started getting really sick of their shit during an emergency. Other flavors of morons would also show up to watch shit go down. Sometimes, private information would also get said on the radio such as names or addresses, which could lead to harassment or true crime nuts showing up to private homes.
I kinda get why making channels private for everyone but reporters (for transparency) is happening.
I kinda get it, but at the same time I think it should be our right to monitor police. I’m not sure how to reconcile the personal info part though.
Agreed. But I think the right to monitor the police doesn’t have to mean real-time access to police radio. The radio could be recorded, like body cam footage, and released on demand with FOIA. FOIA allows redactions when needed, so sensitive information like victims names and addresses could be redacted.
ok bootlicker
How is he bootlicking?
We live in a society. Compromises need to be made. If they end up being in the wrong direction, then we correct.
The answer to solving this problem isn’t to burn the system to the ground, and it’s also probably not to keep letting the crazies get involved in crime scenes. It’s also not to give police carte blanche or obscure the information of it’s needed.
His suggestion was a reasonable first step.
Now. Can the NYPD be trusted to do the right thing when they get a FOIA request? Probably not without being forced. They don’t have a great track record of transparency. But that’s no reason to remain stuck in the past.
Tell me, has the currently unencrypted radios kept the cops from doing shady and unethical shit so far? No? Well then it seems like they already have ways to break the rules outside of what the citizen is currently capable of monitoring, yes?
ok bootlicker
Such an edgy “rebel”
ok cringelord
I think it says the idea of allowing media or a delayed stream to the public was talked about but nothing was decided.
Imagine an active shooter situation where the shooter was carrying or had access to a police scanner and could listen in on what they knew and their movements. I don’t like this idea because I think cops need more media scrutiny than less. But I do understand why it may be necessary in some scenarios.
Surprised it’s not encrypted in the first place. You haven’t been able to listen to police communications in Finland since the 90’s. I would assume most of Europe is the same way.
Apparently Americans feel like this is a way of keeping taps on what their police do.
It’s interesting. One argument for encrypting is that it keeps private info of the people involved private. But some retort that they can just use other means to communicate that info. But wouldn’t that mean that it doesn’t help keeping taps on the police doing shady shit since they can just use those more secure means of communicating anyway?
They’re getting away with shady shit now, via the unencrypted channels, hiding behind qualified immunity and get away with literal murder.
The question should be how successful is it holding the police accountable based solely on their radio communications. I’d imagine the answer is “not fucking likely”.
Yeah police radio should never be encrypted.
I suspect it would be helpful for protecting sensitive situations. Currently (at least with EMS) they call each other’s cellphones for that, not ideal.
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear (or something like that)
Are they switching to use Whatsapp?
Switching?
It’s insane it hasn’t been encrypted ages ago. Bizarre
Capitalism is evolving into an almost worldwide police state.
What good is power without control?
I’m surprised it was nos encrypted already.
Any one can silently hear their frequency. I looks like an easy way to know if police is coming your way, and how avoid them.
just the police doing everything they can to make sure that no one ever knows what they’re doing because they’re such great big heroes that we normal people just can’t handle their awesomeness
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The New York police department (NYPD) is facing serious backlash after announcing additional details about its plan to encrypt its radio communications system, which experts warn will limit transparency and accountability.
The entire “upgrade” to a new, encrypted radio system will be completed by December 2024 and cost an estimated $400m, a hefty price tag as several city agencies have been forced to swallow major budget cuts.
Maisel said that during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when more than 200 people died, he was able to provide public safety updates on social media by listening to the police radio.
The encryption plans also have support from Mayor Eric Adams, who said during a July press conference that “bad guys” are listening to the police radios, the New York Times reported.
Cahn added that police have been unable to provide “concrete examples” of criminals abusing the radio system, especially to justify citywide encryption.
“I really do think that we have a fundamental rule-of-law issue under Eric Adams, where the NYPD continues to be enabled to lawlessly pursue this surveillance agenda without abiding by the protections that already exist under law,” Cahn said.
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