[Scan-DC] Police and firefighters in Roanoke County and Salem ARE NEXT!

Alan Henney alan at henney.com
Fri Jul 6 01:48:47 EDT 2018


The Roanoke Times (Virginia)

July 5, 2018 Thursday
Metro Edition

Scanner traffic will be silenced;
Scanner chatter goes quiet as police agencies turn to encryption

BYLINE: Henri Gendreau henri.gendreau at roanoke.com 5409813227

SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. 1A

LENGTH: 811 words

Across the land, the scanners are going dark.

Several law enforcement agencies in Virginia have moved recently to encrypt
the messages they send over the radio, leaving dead air for listeners of
police scanners - long the source of information for the news media and
titillation for thrill-seekers.

On Monday, police in Richmond and surrounding Henrico and Chesterfield
counties encoded their radio signals. Virginia Beach has proposed a nearly
$5 million encryption project.

And soon, police and firefighters in Roanoke County and Salem will encrypt
radio traffic, both as part of a shift to new technology and as a
reflection of trends nationwide. Law enforcement agencies in Nevada, Ohio,
Iowa and elsewhere have already encoded channels. Earlier this year,
Colorado lawmakers struck down a bill that would have banned departments
from encrypting radio signals.

The move toward encryption is setting up a debate over who should control
the flow of information, and when.

Encryption protects sensitive communications, such as an officer's location
or a victim's date of birth, said Roanoke County Police Chief Howard Hall.

Hall said he thinks officers' safety and individuals' privacy outweigh the
public's right to know what is happening.

"Both of those concerns are valid," said Megan Rhyne, executive director of
the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, a nonprofit that advocates
transparency in government. "Neither of those concerns has risen to a level
of necessitating cutting off access."

The public has no legal right to listen in on scanner traffic.

Encryption, Rhyne added, "is part of an overall pattern of elevating
officer safety and individual privacy over public safety and the public's
right to know."

Some phone apps and websites have made it easier in recent years for the
general public, as well as criminals and journalists, to listen in on
police activity. Last week, when a gunman killed five people at The Capital
newspaper office in Maryland, more than 6,000 people were tuned in at one
online site to Anne Arundel County Fire and EMS channels.

Richmond's police chief has said the department is not trying to hide
anything by encrypting its channels. Henrico and Chesterfield have
introduced websites that list calls for police service in real time, with a
rough location, time and description of an incident. Last week, "animal"
and "larceny" calls appeared.

Roanoke County police spokeswoman Amy Whittaker said the department will
not be creating such a site. She added that the agency provides weekly
reports of service calls and a crime map, and notifies the public of major
events through alert systems and social media.

The city of Roanoke has recently held talks about upgrades to its radio
technology. Since the city will be upgrading radios in the near future, and
the county and city use the same radio network, the city eventually will
have the ability to encrypt radio traffic.

"There's a lot of city departments involved in that whole discussion," said
John Powers, systems coordinator for the city's E-911 call center. "It's up
to the police and fire department whether they think it's necessary."

Powers referred additional questions to city staff, who did not respond by
press time.

Roanoke Police Chief Tim Jones said he has not been a part of any
conversations in the department about encryption.

"As long as my radio works, I really don't care," he said.

Jones said he thinks agencies' use of encryption eventually will be
challenged in the courts, which will then "have to balance the First
Amendment need to know versus officer safety.

"I think the reasonable citizen would say, 'I don't want two people robbing
a bank knowing how quickly the officers will get there,'" Jones said.

Encryption itself won't cost the county, according to Bill Hunter, director
of communications and information technology.

"As radio systems progress in the digital world, encryption techniques have
become much easier," Hunter said in an email.

Roanoke County will, however, shell out $3.2 million for new public safety
radios, according to its budget. Hall said the department is in the process
of switching out its hardware. The upgrade is needed because updates to
existing radios are being phased out.

Roanoke's budget says the city will replace about 800 radios over the next
few years. The city's budget says the county is buying radios in bulk for
the county and city to reduce costs.

Ray Pillow, a member of the Roanoke Valley Amateur Radio Club, expressed
mixed feelings about encrypting radio traffic.

"I guess the law-abiding citizen side of me says, 'OK, no problem,'" he
said. "Back in the day, when everything was all analog, I had a scanner and
I listened to a lot of stuff, but it was just out of curiosity.

"I don't need to listen to everything that goes on out there," Pillow
added. "If you did that, you'd go nuts."


More information about the Scan-DC mailing list