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

[Steve]

Gets worse by the month.  Anyone interested in buying a RS Pro 197 in great condition with programming cable?  Seriously - I don’t use it at all these days.

Steve, N4EUK

> On Jul 6, 2018, at 01:48, Alan Henney <alan at henney.com> wrote:
> 
> 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."
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