Bad and
Good Public-Safety Services
The Government's Abuse of Encrypting Public Record
Note that criminals really like the idea that the law-abiding public or Good Samaritans cannot listen to law enforcement communications because that means less people knowing or assisting them! Criminals would vote Yes for encryption. Also, authoritarian control-freaks that like to call themselves the authorities instead of public servants would vote Yes for encryption.
In the recent past, the
inability to monitor by using radio scanners was just because of
new technology, so radio scanners took some time to catchup with
new technology. Today, the cheaper digital voicecoder
encryption makes it the final barrier for radio scanners. That makes
radio scanners useless as a low-cost mutual-aid tool. It is much safer for the public to
know what is going on and to be better informed, so encryption
definitely reduces public safety!
One of the biggest
taxpayer ripoffs are upgrades to government radio systems
that began to rapidly increase in the 1980s and continues today
at higher and higher prices. Most of the costly upgrades were
really unnecessary, but corporations profiting in radio
communications wanted bigger and bigger profits. If it is not
broken do not fix it, but they wasted your tax money anyway. The
old radio-systems worked really good but now that they replaced
and re-replaced radio systems, the FCC is making it happen again
in 2013 with narrow-banding of the VHF and UHF radio systems. You
would be shocked at all the money spent for little to no
improvement of government radio systems.
Listening to government radio communications is legal and should
always be public record by law. Thus, some voice encryption use
by government should be made illegal by law! Any government
person or vehicle that shows their government logo with marked
vehicles continuously in the public should not be allowed to use
operational encryption. Unless, you want local police and fire
vehicles to always be unmarked and public servants to always wear
plain clothes while using 24/7 encryption to keep your taxpayer
funded operations secret.
Public-safety radio systems that encrypt keep the citizens ignorant, thus it reduces public-safety. You cannot hear them dispatch using affordable radio scanners. Government servants, security services, and citizens can use radio scanners as a very cost-effective and useful safety tool. Also, cheap radio scanners make good mutual-aid tools for on-duty or off-duty law enforcers near city, county, or state lines outside their jurisdiction borders. Instead you have to pay over $10,000 for a corporate-branded radio plus its expensive programming software to program the decryption keys.
This new move to over encrypt public-safety radio communication is not wise at all. That is said with much expertise on this matter. The criminals do not benefit being able to listen-in but stand a much greater chance of being caught if law-abiding citizens can listen-in. Research this subject and you will find the benefits of open public-safety radios far out way that of closed public-safety radios.
The over-encryption of
public-safety radios is worth stopping but it takes an educated
and active citizenry to stop this problem. One example was the
formation of Citizens Against Non Tactical
Radio Encryption Evolution (CANTREE)
announced by an avid radioscanner user named Joe Mattern (WX4ADX)
in the Orlando, Florida area. You can get more educated on this
subject by visiting the links listed below and going to my other
webpage links at the bottom of this webpage.
He has recently been closed out from being able to monitor his
local public servants since Orange County started fulltime voice
encryption. He has proven how absurd the government is nowadays
with them outright denying a law-abiding citizen justifiable
access to allow their encryption of common public duty to be
monitored by a citizen's request. Now it is time to fight back:
https://m.facebook.com/radioscanning
http://www.wx4adx.com/cantree/
A great interview explaining amateur radio and later explaining
why open radio communications is more helpful than harmful:
http://www.voices.com/demo_detail/70794
Emergencies are not suppose to be secret or hidden but they are even planning to encrypt emergency responses so that the real information does not get out. Fire and Rescue including Fire Tac should never be encrypted!
Encrypting public-safety radio traffic has never proven to have resulted in crime reduction, while open radio traffic has proven to stop crimes. There are a lot of retired law enforcement and security people that want to listen-in using radio scanners. There is a general consensus that public-works and public-service employees do not need encryption capabilities on their radios, except encryption usage for some specialized personnel such as SWAT teams, bomb squads, narcotics operations.
There are still additional costs associated with encryption and it is detrimental to interoperability with other jurisdictions. Also, over-the-air rekeying (OTAR) causes several logistical issues. Radios out of network range or turned off sometimes are missed creating additional rekeying problems.
Governments should at least adopt a non-encryption policy on main dispatch talkgroups/channels if they are using P25, or if using a proprietary radio system (Provoice, MotoTRBO, NexEdge, etc.) to simulcast their main dispatch talkgroups over VHF-Low/High or UHF channels. This could be done cheaply by allowing skilled volunteers to set it up and maintain it as long as government provides the voicecoder key and/or interfacing radio equipment. At least, radio managers should establish policies that ensure encryption is used only when necessary.
Police Radio Encryption:
Not Secure, A Transparency Failure, A Public Safety Nightmare
http://www.arlingtoncardinal.com/2012/12/26/police-radio-encryption-not-secure-a-transparency-failure-a-public-safety-nightmare/
Who wants
secret police? Not true Americans that respect the U.S.
Constitution!
There is something very wrong with a
community that wants to encrypt routine and nonsensitive law
enforcement channels and that will not put "calls for
service" on the Internet for the public consumption!
Those who are in charge of public-safety departments that upgrade
to fulltime encryption of routine and emergency dispatch channels
need to be kicked out of office! What history has taught us back
in the late 1960s and early 1970s when big-city police
departments first tried new analog voice encryption toys was that
most people rejected and stopped supporting their local police.
Later, the police departments stopped over abusing the use of
analog encryption because overall it caused more problems than it
solved when they realized their radio communications was
important for the public to be able to hear. But now they have
new digital encryption that is easy to use and abuse.
We have a new generation of brainwashed taxpayed-government employees that forgot ethics, has little to no accountability, and have lesser morals. Thus, they pervert freedom and justice with fear, intimidation, and provocation. They have militarized and federalized all state governments and all local (city, county, etc.) to a more centralized power. The move to centralize power started way before September 11 of 2001. They have corporations involved in training police into thinking that the public is always the enemy and killing them is good. Also, some government insiders use their access to private information or "power of discovery" to blackmail its citizens. They like to think they are part of a winning team, so being bad seems good to them! Your bosses use compartmentalization to make their lower-ranking staff ignorant of the right or wrong things they are doing to other humans! Your bosses do not trust you in using open radio communications because they think you will use it improperly. They want you to be ignorant and just follow orders, even if it is wrong! It is now time to stop supporting and reject the encrypted secret-disservices.
The public will and should loose trust in law enforcement because over encryption is anti-social policing! It is also their "them versus us" paranoia of "we the people" having more power over them.
A Federal Communication Commission (FCC) rule would put a stop to the over-abuse of encryption by government. There has been FCC rules that bans Amateur Radio, Citizens Band (CB), and GMRS/FRS from using encryption. Community TV and radio broadcast stations cannot use encryption. The FCC could make a rule on encryption such as "Public-safety voice encryption must only be used for sensitive communications; all non-sensitive communications must be in the clear and accessible by radioscanners."
There is also the idea of the FCC creating a license that allows receiving of decrypted public-safety services. Another solution could be to force government by law to give out the radio key to any U.S. citizen with no criminal record who request it. Include in this new law that it would be unlawful to share the radio key and share the decryption.
Educate yourself on the
long history of openness of government radio-communications
inside the United States of America:
stepsto2.htm
The federal/military government can easily decrypt communications, so local and state governments have a false sense of secure communications. They would not allow you to have encryption to begin with if they could not easily decrypt it. There are better ways to attack it than brute force, even with AES-256, but that will not be mentioned here!
Governments in the state of Florida have taken the lead nationwide to encrypt not only all law enforcement but also fire, EMS, and in some places all departments of public servants. It is outrageous for you the taxpayer to be closed out of important public operations conveyed in realtime on government radio systems.
The Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) was sued for not closing I-75 due to thick smoke and fog, in 2012, that resulted in a very high number of casualties from accidents. If encryption was turned off, which is easy to do, you could have been the first to know by listening via radio scanners to the FHP in realtime. But not nowadays since they talk on the two-way radios using fulltime voice encryption. Why not include this in a lawsuit and sue the State of Florida and the SLERS managers for deprivation of life-saving information? Keep in mind also that Florida and all other states have numerous hazards (weather, geological, crime, etc.) and realtime audio via radioscanner is definitely life-saving information!
All drivers inside the state of Florida should know the FHP does aerial speed clocking. They will work a spot with ground markers on the interstate or a tollway using a stopwatch from a Cessna highwing airplane. This is infrequently done only when the weather is mostly clear during the day (less so at night) preferably starting their detail early at sunrise. Thus, it makes any radar detector totally useless. They also use fulltime voice encryption during this detail to keep it secret. The aircraft use the new P25 770-MHz SLERS radios patched into the old EDACS 850-MHz SLERS for the trooper radios on a unique EDACS talkgroup just for this detail.
The Florida statewide 850-MHz
SLERS is now owned by Harris Corporation. It was formerly owned
by Tyco Electronics and changed hands many times before. It has
many problems and most troopers do not like it. It
will occasionally lockup or easily overload for minutes without
any talkgroups able to use it. Also, poor
radio reception with the inability to use portable radios is a common problem. They use to have a very
reliable radio system before constantly spending money for newer
less reliable radio systems!
A no thanks to former Florida Governor Jeb
Bush, since the SLERS was fully activated and encrypted in the mid-2000s during his
term in office. He thought it was great. That means no
extra eyes and ears to assist the Florida Highway Patrol or the Fish & Wildlife Commission, which are both
a highly visible government agency! The Statewide Law
Enforcement Radio System (SLERS) uses the proprietary Provoice
plus all law enforcement on it use fulltime voice encryption. That made
Florida the very first state government to encrypt public services!
Florida's Statewide Law Enforcement Radio System (SLERS):
In 2011 Florida did some major consolidation of state departments.
The very public Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) also dispatches Motor Carrier Compliance (MCC) and Florida Road Rangers (FRR)
The very public Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC includes Marine
Patrol) also dispatches Department of Environmental Protection (DEP
State Park
Police) and Agriculture Enforcement (FDALE)
* Florida Department of Highway
Safety and Motor Vehicles / Division of Florida Highway Patrol (FHP),
4868 units;
* Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), 3168
units;
* Florida Department of Corrections (DOC), 2262 units;
* Florida Department of Law Enforcement/Criminal Investigations (FDLE),
1200 units;
* Florida Department of Transportation/Motor Carrier Compliance (DOT),
818 units;
* Florida Department of Transportation/Road Rangers (FRR);
* Florida Department of Military Affairs / Florida National Guard
(FNG), 614 units;
* Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services /
Division of Agricultural Law Enforcement (FDALE), 417 units;
* Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation /
Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco, 395 units;
* Florida Department of Environmental Protection / Division of
Law Enforcement, 391 units;
* Florida Capitol Police;
* Florida Department of Financial Services/Insurance Fraud, 331
units;
* Florida Department of Financial Services/State Fire Marshal,
285 units;
* Florida Office of Attorney General/Medicaid Fraud Control Unit,
142 units;
* University of Central Florida, 95 units;
* Florida Atlantic University, 57 units;
* Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, 31 units;
* Florida Division of Emergency Management, 29 units;
* Florida Department of Management Services, 21 units;
* Florida Office of Attorney General/Cyber Crime Unit; 17 units
* Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, 11 units;
* Supreme Court of Florida, Office of the Marshal, 9 units;
* Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University, Orlando
Campus, 7 units;
* State Attorney's Office, 2nd Judicial Circuit, 1 unit;
* State Attorney's Office, 14th Judicial Circuit;
* Florida Department of Community Affairs;
* Florida Department of Lottery;
* Florida Senate Sergeant at Arms;
* Florida House of Representatives Sergeant at Arms;
Other Current SLERS Partners:
* Baker County - Sheriff's, Fire, EMS;
* Bradford County - Sheriff's, EMS;
* Corrections Corporation of America;
* Dept. of Health - Radiation Control;
* Dept. of Health - State Medical Response Team;
* Franklin County - Sheriff's;
* Glades County - Sheriff's;
* GeoGroup, Inc.;
* Lafayette County - Sheriff's
* Levy County - Sheriff's, Police, Fire;
* Okaloosa County;
* Okeechobee County;
* Seminole Tribe of Florida;
* Social Security Administration - Investigations;
* Tampa General Hospital, AeroMed Service;
* Union County - Sheriff's Office Emergency Management;
* Walton County - Fire.
SLERS Interoperability Partners:
* Amtrak Railroad Police;
* Broward County Emergency Management;
* Clearwater PD;
* CSX Railroad Police;
* Eglin AFB Fire;
* Hillsborough County SO;
* Jupiter PD;
* Leon County SO;
* North Miami Beach PD;
* Orange County SO;
* Pinellas County SO;
* Regional Domestic Security Task Force - Region 1;
* St. Johns County SO;
* Sumter County SO;
* U.S. Department of Justice - Bureau of Alcohol, Tobaco, and
Fire Arms Enforcement;
* US Forestry Service LE (Baker County Area);
* U.S. Navy - King's Bay and Jax NAS Fusion Center;
* U. S. Marshal's Service;
* National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration;
* U. S. Forestry Service Law Enforcement.
County and local government radio systems getting worse!
County and local government radio systems, listed by Florida counties, that are open to serve the citizens or closed to disserve the citizens. These closed government services are places you should not live and places you should not spend your money. The color is coded from black, yellow, orange, to red as the government services get worse into becoming a secret-safetyless disservice:
List as of May 30, 2016
* Alachua - open but new system Sheriff to encrypt?
*
Baker - closed Sheriff's dispatch and all services on SLERS
* Bay - open
*
Bradford - closed Sheriff's dispatch and EMS on SLERS?
*
Brevard - open until
new system in 2014?
* Broward - open
* Calhoun - open
* Charlotte - open
*
Citrus - new
system now closed Sheriff's dispatch
* Clay - open
* Collier - open
* Columbia - open
* Dade - trying to close Miami and all of Dade county
law enforcement in June 2014 but encryption failed
* DeSoto - open
* Dixie - open
*
Duval - closed all county and Jacksonville-area cities law-enforcement
routine plus hospital emergencies encrypted - also some fire/rescue
encrypted. This corrupt county was the first
local government inside Florida to encrypt dispatch voice from
its citizens!
*
Escambia - closed law enforcement dispatch encrypted
*
Flagler
- closed
Sheriff's dispatch
encrypted
*
Franklin - closed Sheriff's dispatch encrypted on SLERS
* Gadsden - open
* Gilchrist - open
*
Glades - closed Sheriff's dispatch encrypted on SLERS
* Gulf - open
* Hamilton - open
*
Hardee - closed Sherriff's dispatch
* Hendry - open
*
Hernando - open until
new system in 2014?
*
Highlands - open but
new system on 9/2013 all law enforcement encrypted
*
Hillsborough - open
but new system in 2014? City of Temple Terrace police and fire
routine encrypted but
could go non-encrypted on new system
* Holmes - open
* Indian River - open
* Jackson - open
* Jefferson - open
*
Lafayette - closed Sheriff's dispatch
now on SLERS as of 8/2014
* Lake
- closed Sheriff's dispatch and all cities law enforcement
encrypted as of 10/2010 - fire closed as of 8/2014. Another
corrupt county!
* Lee - closed Sheriff's dispatch and cities law
enforcement encrypted
* Leon - closed Sheriff's dispatch and Tallahassee
police encrypted
* Levy - closed Sheriff's dispatch and cities law
enforcement encrypted
on SLERS - fire unencrypted but all could be going to a new TRBO
radio system in 2014?
* Liberty - open but pending SLERS radios for Sheriff's
dispatch?
* Madison - open
* Manatee - open
* Marion - open but Sheriff's silent dispatch non-emergencies on
Verizon cellphone Mobile Data Terminals (MDT)
* Martin - open
* Monroe - open
*
Nassau - closed Sheriff's dispatch encrypted
*
Okaloosa - open? SLERS?
* Okeechobee - open
*
Orange - closed Sheriff's dispatch
and all cities law enforcement closed in the county - City of
Orlando police encrypted, Apopka fire and police encrypted,
Winter Park police encrypted, Disney's Reedy Creek fire encrypted
- Orlando fire and
county fire open
*
Osceola - closed all law enforcement
Sheriff's dispatch, Kissimme police, St. Cloud police encrypted but fire open
* Palm
Beach - new system
2014? open but closed
City of Palm Beach, Palm Beach Gardens, and Jupiter dispatch on
OpenSky but OpenSky is
a flawed voice system
* Pasco - open but new system in 2016
*
Pinellas - mostly open
on a new system but Tarpon Springs PD and Largo PD closed
* Polk - Lakeland police switching encryption on then
off now back on new
system 06/2013
* Putnam - open
*
Saint Johns - all law enforcement closed on new system 03/2013
* Saint Lucie - open
* Santa Rosa - new system now closed law enforcement
*
Sarasota - open?
*
Seminole
- open and new system
07/2014 staying open
*
Sumter - as of 12/2012 all public-safety closed Sheriff, Wildwood
PD, The Villages security patrol, all fire, public trans and
works - very corrupt county "officials" taking money
from federal grants and the large retirement community
* Suwannee - open
*
Taylor - open but
pending SLERS radios for Sheriff
*
Union - open? EMS
SLERS?
*
Volusia - open but new
system in 2015?
* Wakulla - open
*
Walton - fire on SLERS?
*
Washington - started
using a TRBO system
You must get rid of the heads (Sheriff, Police Chief, Mayor, Manager, etc.) and their executive supporters that favor their closed radio communications!
More of a global list, but
not entirely complete, is available at:
http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Encrypted_Agencies
Encryption by public
services creates a more nontransparent government. It is pushed by the consolidation of rules from international, federal, and state on down to the level of local government. It is a big
clue of an impending technocratic tyranny and a tyranny
always results in just the few in authority having secrecy and
privacy, but all the rest of you having none.
Notice that the United Kingdom and its former empire that are now its Commonwealth countries of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore, and Hong Kong love to keep its citizens below its authorities instead of being public servants to its citizens. Also, most of the European countries are the same un-American way. Now, it is the United States of America that is being Europeanized again. Folks, this was why we fought the British and created the greatest constitution this planet has had so far. It was to keep the European royal monarchies and aristocrats, with their centralized power, from getting their influence inside the governments of the U.S.A. and to give you more fairness, justice, and individual freedoms!
They already made their move to
disregard the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights! Stop them or
be a sheep like animal, instead of a human, like they have done to
most Europeans. They will call you an animal because it
is written that way in some of their laws. Do
your research and you will find it in the law!
That violates freedom of religion because the Holy Bible says you
are a human, not an animal.
Laws that define the People to be “animals”:
http://adask.wordpress.com/category/man-or-other-animals/
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&as_epq=man+or+other+animals&as_sitesearch=adask.wordpress.com
Make everybody see the evil of their ways or they will try to eliminate most of us (population reduction) with their developing new technology (technocracy) and with the money (centralized power) by big international bankers! A technocratic tyranny forming in this new Digital Revolution. This is just one of many urgent warnings to you written on my webpages.
This is a big deal and you have been warned so that you better put a stop to it!