[Scan-DC] 3 unrelated radio encryption articles this past week:

Sat Jun 11 02:29:01 EDT 2016

The Wenatchee World (Washington)

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency

June 8, 2016 Wednesday

OPINION: We can't hear them anymore

BYLINE: Tracy Warner, The Wenatchee World, Wash.

SECTION: COMMENTARY

LENGTH: 647 words

June 08--Our job is to know what was going on, and report it. To do that we often listen to radio communications between law enforcement officers in the field, and their dispatchers. For this we have a simple radio scanner in the newsroom that constantly cycles through the frequencies and stops when somebody speaks.

Listening to the "scanner" is a duty, a time-honored habit for people who like to know what's up. It's not eavesdropping. These are public conversations among public agencies, and we have been listening in for decades without apparent ill effect. I can say from experience that a scanner has been and will be invaluable in reporting the news. A few mumbled syllables on a scratchy radio will alert you to most major events, what we call "spot news" -- crime, fire, accidents, emergencies, the kind of events happening now, not yesterday or the day before, the kind of events people most want to know about. When we hear something on the scanner, we can know the type of incident, sense relative seriousness and location in seconds, and send a reporter and photographer to gather fresh details and images. That doesn't happen every day, but it happens a lot. 

Those scanner days may be ending. The governing board of Grant County's Multi Agency Communications Center in Moses Lake decided to encrypt its radio communications. All law enforcement, all but fire dispatch, is now hidden behind a digital veil. The scanners are dead. You hear nothing without very expensive decoding equipment. Gathering news on the spot is now impossible or nearly so, barring sheer luck or extraordinary cooperation. We won't know what that siren was for, or why three police cruisers were parked on West Broadway Friday night, or why that loud bang was no big deal.

The head of Grant County's dispatch agency Jackie Jones told our reporter Dee Riggs that the encryption decision was made not to "block the public." "It is absolutely for officer safety."

They could not cite an actual incident where officer safety was compromised by people listening to radio dispatches. Many members of the public have been listening to inexpensive and easily programmed police scanners for 50 years without reported troubles. Jones said encryption will keep people "from injecting themselves into a situation that's in progress or there could be somebody with bad intentions. We don't want criminals having that edge, that extra ability to follow what officers are doing."

Based on past experience, that situation is rare to non-existent. That reasoning simply reflects a desire for the convenience of secrecy. There is a tendency, especially among law enforcement agencies, to think their job is easier if the public and pesky reporters don't know what they are doing. The officials say the record of the conversations is public and they will be happy to send you a copy of the recording on request, in a day or two, but that's hardly consolation. Knowing what happened yesterday and what is happening now are two different things.

The fundamentals run contrary to the spirit of Washington law. The agencies will have more control over what the public is allowed to know about them. The public will lose another smidgen of knowledge, another sliver of access.

This will not serve us well in an age when public suspicions of law enforcement run high, exacerbated by a lack of transparency. Many law enforcement agencies are encrypting their radio traffic. Many are not, saying everyone is better off, and safer, when the public knows what is happening. Let us listen.

Tracy Warner's column appears Wednesday through Friday. Reach him at 509-665-1163 or warner at wenatcheeworld.com

Reach Tracy Warner at 509-665-1163 or warner at wenatcheeworld.com

The Asheville Citizen-Times (North Carolina)

June 9, 2016 Thursday  
1 Edition

Area law enforcement going dark on scanners

BYLINE: By, Abigail Margulis

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A4

LENGTH: 1359 words

"It creates a safety concern for our officers, which brought back into focus that people

have the technology who are committing these crimes to listen, which is very concerning."

Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan

ASHEVILLE - A switch in how some Buncombe County law enforcement agencies communicate has dampened chatter picked up on police scanners, and some argue the change comes with a cost to the public.

The Sheriff's Office moved to using encrypted radio channels in April, limiting the public and criminals from listening in on what deputies are up to, and they're not the only agency in the county to go silent.

Woodfin and Weaverville police departments went dark, too, since they operate through the Buncombe County Emergency Operations Center, just like the Sheriff's Office. 

As for the Asheville Police Department, it's still broadcasting for everyone to hear, but it plans to join the silence in the fall.

For Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan, making the switch came down to a safety issue for officers and the community.

"People listening in has caused some problems," he said. "Technology has allowed for anyone, if they want, to listen to a digital scanner."

Concerns were brought to the sheriff's attention when the Facebook group Asheville Area Scanner Activity posted what was being transmitted during a string of robberies in November.

"They were posting in real-time what we were doing and where we were," Duncan said. "It creates a safety concern for our officers, which brought back into focus that people have the technology who are committing these crimes to listen, which is very concerning."

Asheville police plan to transition to an encrypted radio to also to ensure officer safety, spokeswoman Christina Hallingse said.

Technology has allowed community watchdogs, scanner hobbyists and criminals to listen to police chatter through online streaming websites or even iPhone apps, such as Scanner 911, which offers people a chance to listen to fire and EMS crews 24 hours a day.

After Duncan saw what was being posted on social media in real-time, he began to question whether the information was entirely beneficial to the public.

"We want to be able to communicate with the public, but we need to control that communication because not all of that communication is helpful to go out to the public," he said. "It can feed panic, and, when you have somebody involved in the event that is going on (who can listen to the scanner or check social media to see what law enforcement is doing), it's a disadvantage to law enforcement to how they are responding.

"It's really not good for us," he said.

And it can create personal privacy concerns, Duncan said.

"Part of routine business is to put out people's names, addresses, date of birth, medical history (including) mental health concerns, criminal history and that kind of thing. Some people might take that information and commit crimes with it," he said.

Logistics also played a role in the Sheriff's Office switch to move every officer to a private channel that can only be heard by listeners with the encryption code.

"Sometimes things unfold on a main channel and you're putting out information that should be on an encrypted channel, and, (for example) when it's dark and (officers are) hunting an armed suspect who has just fired shots, the last thing you want your officers to do is direct their attention to their handheld radio to switch channels.

"Once we made the move, then why wouldn't we encrypt it all?" he said.

Transparency issues

In North Carolina, as in most states, what's broadcast over the police scanner is public record, for media representatives and members of the community.

Law enforcement has a right to withhold certain information vital to an ongoing investigation, but "the contents of communications between or among employees of public law enforcement agencies that are broadcast over the public airways" are public record.

Although encrypting communication is not against the law, attorneys in public records law argue against it, seeing it as preventing access to information that is publicly available under the law.

"My position is that under those statutory provisions a law enforcement agency may not institute a protocol that prohibits the public from accessing that information," which would include encryption, said Amanda Martin, general counsel to the N.C. Press Association.

Journalists and neighborhood watchdogs also say open communications ensure the public receives information as quickly as possible, which can be vital to their safety. And they say alert scanner listeners have even helped police solve crimes.

However, the statute does not clarify if communication between or among officers needs to be provided in real-time or not, Martin said.

So, if the agencies with encrypted channels provide those communications after an incident unfolds, they're not breaking the law, but this issue is not specifically addressed in the statute, she said.

But when the law was first proposed, digital scanners did not exist nor did agencies have the ability to use encrypted channels.

"I think the intention of the legislature was to provide access to this information, so I think they should be providing it whether they don't encrypt or provide the encryption key," Martin said.

When the law was passed, legislators knew criminals had the ability to listen in, but they decided it was more important for the public to have access to this information, she said.

Journalists and scanner hobbyists argue police departments already have the capability to communicate securely and should be able to adjust to the times without reverting to full encryption.

"If the police need to share sensitive information among themselves, they know how to do it," Phil Metlin, news director of WTTG-Fox 5, in Washington, said at a meeting The Associated Press attended in 2011. "Special encrypted channels have been around for a long time. So have cellphones."

It's impossible to quantify the scope of the problem or determine if the threat from scanners is as legitimate as police maintain - or merely a speculative fear. It's certainly not a new concern - after all, hobbyists have for years used scanners to track the activities of local police departments from their kitchen tables.

Raymond Pressley, an administrator for the Asheville Area Scanner Activity Facebook group, was not surprised by the department's switch and understands the need for encryption.

"I like the idea of (chatter) not being picked up," Pressley said. "It keeps criminals from hearing what is going on. It potentially could also save the lives of officers. Sooner or later, all the organizations will be radio-silent for scanners."

Making the switch

The move required no additional cost for the Sheriff's Office, Duncan said.

In 2013, the department switched out its analog scanners with digital equipment, which came with the ability to encrypt, that sends the voice signal over the air as a stream of bits and then reconstructs it into high-quality audio. Those listening to a scanner without an encryption code might hear silence or garbled talk.

"We were advised that everything was eventually moving to encryption," Duncan said. "And it's not very expensive to buy it up front, but it (would have been) a cost and labor intensive to put in later."

The switch for the Asheville Police Department will come with a price tag estimated at $230,000 in addition to the regular replacement of radios, Hallingse said. The money will be pulled from the General Fund.

Even though the public can no longer listen to police chatter, the switch doesn't hinder any communication between law enforcement and other first-responder agencies in Buncombe County.

Every agency the Sheriff's Office works with has an access code for the channel, and officers still have the ability to switch to a main channel to communicate with another agency if needed, Duncan said.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

"It creates a safety concern for our officers, which brought back into focus that people

have the technology who are committing these crimes to listen, which is very concerning."

Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan

The Brunswick News (Georgia)

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency

June 9, 2016 Thursday

County 911 radio traffic goes digital, drops public

BYLINE: Larry Hobbs, The Brunswick News, Ga.

SECTION: STATE AND REGIONAL NEWS

LENGTH: 766 words

June 09--Glynn County made the switch to a new 911 emergency radio system Wednesday morning, completing a $4.5 million upgrade that brings the county in compliance with industry standards and improves communications among various agencies, officials say.

But for the regular folks who listen in on all the county's police and fire activity on private emergency radio scanners, everything went blank at 11:21 a.m. when the switch was made. 

"The public, on our system, can no longer buy a scanner that can hear us, that's correct," said Glynn County Police Chief Matt Doering.

That is because the county went to a private encryption system that blocks emergency communications to outside listeners.

"It's coded in a certain way so that only law enforcement agencies can hear it," said Steve Usher, director of the Brunswick-Glynn 911 Center.

The change has long been in the works and is loaded with technical jargon and acronyms. But basically, the 911 center switched from an old-fashioned analog radio program to a newfangled digital communications system, Usher said. The center also converted from its previous 800 megahertz channel to the more universal 700 megahertz channel, he said. The new system is called P25. It brings the county's emergency communications in line with new Federal Communications Commission requirements, and into compliance with the standards of the Association of Public Safety Communication Officials (APSCO).

"It brings us into compliance and it makes us more efficient," Usher said. "As the technology changes, it gives us the ability to move forward with it."

But as emergency agencies move forward with greater communications among each other, the listening public is left behind. Doering said the encryption coding is a feature of the upgrade package and not a design to exclude the public from listening.

"It wasn't an intent to keep the public out, it was just part of the package," Doering said.

However, law enforcement does have a second tier of encryption for special operations such as the SWAT, the Glynn-Brunswick Narcotics Enforcement Team and the Violent Crimes Task Force that is a privacy feature.

"That's a small group," he said. "Even the patrol officers can't hear that. Dispatch can't hear that. We don't want the bad guys to know we're watching them."

The $4.5 million cost of the 911 center upgrade project will be paid back over a period of 10 years by the joint public safety group, which consists of the county, the city of Brunswick and the sheriff's office, said county spokeswoman Kathryn Downs. The contract went to Motorola, with Hasty's Communications executing locally.

Improvements in the system were immediately noticeable, said Brunswick Police Maj. Greg Post. The static and fuzz long associated with emergency scanner traffic gave way to communications as clear as a good wifi signal, he said. Rather than electronic channels, communications take place with digital groupings, Post said. It expands and unifies communications, so that Glynn County officials can talk with agencies in Savannah or elsewhere during widespread emergencies such as hurricanes.

"Everything is much clearer and crisper," Post said. "It's just such a huge difference in the sound. And we're connected with agencies throughout, so it's a much more efficient system."

Jeff Emory, owner of J&M Towing, has long had a private emergency scanner in his office to help his drivers keep track of crash sites where his services are needed. He said Wednesday it was too early to tell how not hearing communications may affect his operations.

"It's just the first day of it, so I don't know how much of an impact it could have," Emory said.

The switch brought an unfamiliar silence also to The Brunswick News' newsroom, where emergency scanner traffic has long been a part of the acoustics. It is likely to stay that way, said attorney David E. Hudson of the Georgia Press Association.

"Unfortunately, there is nothing to prevent law enforcement or public safety from switching to an encrypted digital system," Hudson said. "It was just fortuitous that the earlier transmissions could be monitored, but there is no legal authority that required access. I am not aware of any (legal) challenges to such a switch, but do know that this has taken place in many communities."

Reporter Larry Hobbs writes about government, public safety and other local topics. Contact him at lhobbs at thebrunswicknews.com or at 265-8320, ext. 320.