Encryption efforts in Colorado challenge crime reporters, transparency

https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/police-scanner-encryption.php

by mhb • 8 years ago

61 43 8 years ago

dotCOMmie• 8 years ago

It wouldn't be hard to use short term keys which could be broadcast out one hour after use. Public would be able to watch the watchers and criminals would not be able to track police response real time.

kawfey2• 8 years ago

I think this would actually be very hard, especially with the gear used by most agencies. Motorola, for example keeps everything locked down and buried behind exorbitant costs. Just a single handheld radio can cost upwards of $6,000, and re-keying the encryption among other re-programming needs can only be performed by Motorola techs.

It's much easier to just offer the media a radio that has already been programmed. This is commonplace at news agencies since they can afford it, but street journalists are frequently left in the dark, and I don't think many police agencies are too upset about that.

dsl3• 8 years ago

This would be a technical nightmare given how police radios work. However, you can submit a FOIA request for radio recordings, which basically does what you suggest but with a longer delay.

The radios do support over-the-air keying, but it is rarely used. Having physical radios come back to the shop for key refreshes provides positive control over radios, and prevents a stolen radio (which happens more often than you'd think) from listening in on a SWAT or drug operation.

woodrowbarlow• 7 years ago

basically does what you suggest

ehhh, there's a bit of a difference. if i record encrypted traffic then i am granted a decryption key later, i can be certain that nothing was edited out.

imroot• 8 years ago

I have two solutions for this:

The first one is easy: The Police agencies encrypt their Tactical channels and leave their dispatch and car-to-car stuff unencrypted. Police still have the ability to mask sensitive operations, the public keeps their "Open" access.

The second answer is a bit more complex -- give the media outlets a radio that is transmit inhibited that has the dispatch channel only on it. I believe that one city (Cincinnati) did that when they moved to P25 a few years ago.

With that said, There's only a trivial space that most radio systems use for encryption these days. In Kenwood radios, it's only 4 numerical digits. While I haven't tried decrypting someone else's NexEdge stuff, a motivated person who wants to hear what's going on, will hear what's going on.

whoopdedo• 8 years ago

Which doubles the cost of communication equipment and the cops will just use the encrypted channels all the time because it's more convenient than remembering to switch.

Journalists have to learn to do the footwork to researching stories themselves instead of camping on a scanner frequency and copy-pasting what they hear without considering that they may be publishing an innocent person's name in association with a crime. For transparency there's the public releases the sheriff's office puts out that have been written with responsible disclosure in mind. If the public reports aren't detailed enough that's a separate concern that can be addressed without exposing the private details of innocent people or exposing officers to harm.

jstanley2• 8 years ago

give the media outlets a radio

What's the difference between a media outlet and a blogger?

How do you ever start a media outlet if you don't have access to the information required to operate a media outlet?

snarf21• 8 years ago

I think the more interesting discussion here is the same cops want no encryption on user's phones or at least the ability to bypass it. The same reasons they cite are the same reasons users want encryption. While not surprising that they want it both ways, just frustrating.

I also wonder about FOI act consequences. They are using public spectrum and public dollars. It seems like the scanner should be unencrypted and if they need secret messaging use another channel and do it over the internet.

glenneroo• 8 years ago

Is it really the same cops though? I saw no mention of Colorado police being against users encrypting their phones. The FBI were the ones who were particularly upset that they couldn't decrypt Apple traffic[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...

clojurestan• 8 years ago

ACAB. They basically all have the same motivations and mindset.

dsl3• 8 years ago

The FBI, or sometimes the county Sheriffs office, are the ones who handle decryption of phones for local police departments.

There are over 17,000 police departments in the United States, it's not reasonable for them to all have these capabilities on site.

Edit: The FBI actually has walk up kiosks (in a secure area) with Cellebrite for do-it-yourself forensics.

CamperBob2• 8 years ago

Most common phrase heard on police scanners in areas with unencrypted systems: "Call me on my cell."

So the practical upshot of encrypting public service transmissions is minimal.

tantalor• 8 years ago

There seem to be a valid arguments for obscuring communications in special cases (tactical, investigative) and in general (privacy, safety) but the latter should be accessible to transparency advocates (reporters). You solve this with 2 encrypted channels, one for general use which has broader access, and the other more confidential.

It sounds like law enforcement is already using a tiered system (unencrypted and encrypted) so this is not an undue burden for them.

Then the issue is who is granted access? Anybody with a "press pass"?

whatshisface• 8 years ago

You solve this with 2 encrypted channels, one for general use which has broader access, and the other more confidential.

Anyone who is trying to do something illicit (i.e. anyone who is involved in creating a newsworthy situation) is just going to use the encrypted channel. The basic problem with "tactical secrets" is that they make you more effective against your adversaries whoever they are. Sure, when the communicators are good then they only have evil adversaries, but if a user of the tactical system ever does something wrong then their adversaries become you and me.

bluejekyll• 8 years ago

I’m surprised this hasn’t happened already, or isn’t more widely being done.

One thing that I didn’t see in the article is a discussion around authentication of the radio broadcast. I don’t know anything about radio encryption, but I assume that like other forms of encryption, the receiver is able to authenticate the source. This seems like something anyone would want, like TLS for radio.

I get the desire for transparency, but that should that trump the need for trusted radio transmissions?

Also, it’s interesting to see discussion of the opposite issue around encryption. Where in this case it’s the gov’t being asked to be open, as opposed to law enforcement’s desire to have backdoors in our devices.

potta_coffee• 8 years ago

There's a module that is used to syncronize the transmitter with the receiver. The source isn't authenticated but the radios are able to decrypt because of the programming they receive from that module.

kodablah• 8 years ago

This is a simple case of the negatives of transparency in government. You gotta take the bad with the good when the good outweighs the bad. A public's right to hear police chatter outweighs their potential to misuse it. It's always sad to see misuse as an excuse for government opacity as if that's the only concern to be taken into account.

And you can't really have it both ways with loosely defined terms, because given the ability to hide only sensitive items, more items will become "sensitive". In the absence of a reasonably defined line of transparency, you have to just deal with the costs of total transparency. Then you may go to the legislature and attempt to define extreme opt outs, but when you heavy-handedly dismiss all concerns by outright hiding everything, you've basically given the middle finger to discussions.

beojan• 7 years ago

Perhaps it could be released after an embargo period then. There's no need for the public to listen in on real time.

guest2143• 7 years ago

or provide journalists with decryption tools?

kawfey2• 8 years ago

I believe encryption is a good thing so long as FOIA is followed. Big time news agencies usually have a desk somewhere that's covered in radios from the city's police, fire, ems, etc. that were bought from the agencies respective vendor with proper permission from the city. Small time street journalists don't have this capability since the radios are extremely costly and police agencies have a general disdain for people showing up with smartphones critiquing their work, as well as circumventing encryption by streaming it to the web.

Numerous agencies are getting away from standard radio systems to networked LTE-based radios...aka cell phones. It's increasingly common that even on encrypted radios, dispatch will ask the attending party to move the conversation to cell phone. Some agencies are jumping on networked VOIP PTT radios and apps similar to Zello to save costs, which theoretically would still allow a path for media agencies to listen in appropriately, only making smaller journalists more angry at the inequity when they're denied a feed.

reaperducer• 8 years ago

Big time news agencies usually have a desk somewhere that's covered in radios from the city's police, fire, ems, etc.

This is true.

that were bought from the agencies respective vendor with proper permission from the city.

This is false.

There are rare occasions when a government agency will lend a radio to a news agency as a courtesy, but this is exceedingly rare and IME only happens in small places.

Source: I spent too many years listening to scanners for big time news agencies, and the grumbling of police agencies that knew we were listening in on them.

opwieurposiu• 8 years ago

Colorado police are known for altering video evidence, and for outright framing people for murder. Encrypting their comms will simply make it easier to continue this behavior in the future.

https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2018/12/22/mother-man-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Hettrick_murder_case

CLETMP• 8 years ago

You posted two stories there.

In the first one, the police department simply blurred out the face (and maybe some gore) in the video that they released? While I disagree with this, I don't think it's some nefarious plot lot you're suggesting. They seemed surprisingly patient with the armed party (by US standards) and only shot him when he charged them with a knife...

As for the second link, that's definitely a travesty of justice. That said, the case unfolded over literally decades. I don't see how encrypting comms would change that sad situation.

adrianhel• 8 years ago

This protects the privacy of victims, offenders and innocent suspects. All of them should have a right to privacy, except convicted offenders in matters affecting the public.

JChase2• 8 years ago

Agreed, to an extent. It's incredibly frustrating for things as small as a paraphernalia charge that was thrown out ending up on a local news site, especially for employability reasons. It'd be nice if there were a way to redact names and still provide access to police activity.

colejohnson66• 8 years ago

Isn’t that the intent behind the EU’s right to be forgotten?

wool_gather2• 8 years ago

except convicted offenders [emph. mine]

No. Accusations (and court proceedings) need to default to being public. This is an important check on the power of prosecutors and judges.

yorwba• 8 years ago

Presumably that check is intended to protect the accused from secret prosecution. But I think in many cases, the potential reputation damage of a false accusation is so bad that the accused would prefer to make the decision about whether it should be published or not.

dsl3• 8 years ago

Almost all agencies have a policy of communicating potentially sensitive information via cell phone. There is already a balance of an informed public and protected privacy.

tyfon2• 8 years ago

The Norwegian police solved the transparency problem by tweeting the newsworthy stuff they do.

Before they encrypted things even the SSNs of people not convicted of anything was transmitted for all to hear and the emergency radio channels were streamed online.

It might suck for the curious but I think privacy of the population should trump government transparency in this case.

jstanley2• 8 years ago

The Norwegian police solved the transparency problem by tweeting the newsworthy stuff they do.

How does that solve the transparency problem? They're only telling you what they want you to hear. That's not transparency.

tyfon2• 7 years ago

Well, the stuff going over the radio doesn't really help transparency either it just outs individuals.

There is an independent "police force" outside of the police here that handles all "police crime". The regular police hates them and have pushed for their disbandment from time to time.

It works pretty well, the biggest story in the news right now is an under cover cop that got too under cover and he was caught. Open radio would neither help nor hurt.

josefresco• 8 years ago

Story time: I was outside this past weekend and heard lots of sirens. Wondering what was going on, I downloaded one of those "police scanner" apps and listened in to my local fire/police force.

Curiously, they had two channels - one that I could listen to, and one for "onsite" that I could not. I know this because they talked about this other "channel" on the one I could listen to. They did this for organizational purposes as there were quite a few units from multiple towns responding and needed to "clear" the main line for big announcements.

I have no idea if this is relevant, but I found it interesting, and IMHO appropriate given the sensitive nature of the event (house fire).

Joe8Bit• 8 years ago

This is a really interesting to read as someone not from the US.

In the UK (and all the other countries I've lived) emergency service radio traffic has been encrypted for a very long time. I was always surprised (even shocked!) when I visited the US and could hear everything the Police were doing.

coolspot2• 8 years ago

LEOs usually use two channels - public unencrypted and tactical encrypted.

For example police patrol would request ambulance for a car accident over unencrypted channel, while SWAT team storming house of another streamer would communicate over encrypted channel.

nqr2• 8 years ago

Why wouldn't they all use encrypted channels?

nqr2• 8 years ago

Same. Here all LE corps use encrypted radio, TETRA iirc

mschuster912• 8 years ago

I do not understand why the US (and Germany, which switched only a couple years ago to TETRA, as one of the last countries in Europe) took/take so long to encrypt EMS communication.

I get the argument that people have a right to information - but at what cost? The data that is spoken on open frequencies is incredibly private: names, addresses or what a person is suspected of having done, or which car belongs to which person (=transmission of license plate, followed by the name on the driver license). All out in the open, ripe for all kinds of abusers to be harvested just like arrest data. Not to mention that criminals can also take advantage, e.g. by having one or more dudes off-site who simply listen to the police comm to inform if and how much police will be responding to a bank robbery or a theft.

And if you want to see examples of how this fucks up peoples' lives, just read this article or dozens more about such schemes: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/05/1...

Fun fact: a friend and I used to listen to German police years ago. You didn't even need a scanner, just an iPod with the FM radio receiver and the region set to Japan so that the lower FM radio ranges could be listened to (which happened to match with part of the EMS channel range). We picked up all kinds of shit ranging from addresses, names and plates to tactical information (e.g. during a knife stabbing). Now we just laughed our butts off when they announced to dispatch they're logging off for grabbing a burger, but if we were evil we could have done a lot of damage to innocent people.

detaro• 8 years ago

At least in Germany, it wasn't a transparency thing (even if easy, listening to responders comms is illegal), but a tech/admin thing.

The switch to digital and adding encryption both add complexity that you need to be sure your people understand and can handle, even in crisis situations: analogue gear has it's own failure modes, but is more forgiving in other aspects. Add the general organizational issues of introducing large tech projects, coordination across many different organizations that all need to switch and be able work together at all times, and it's not too surprising it took long...

mschuster912• 8 years ago

even if easy, listening to responders comms is illegal

Yeah but it was difficult to prosecute - the only way to get into trouble was if police directly caught you in the act of listening in. Possession of scanners and frequency tables itself was made basically legal in 1998 by a court in Wuppertal, so unless you turned up to a crime scene with a scanner in your hand or got caught streaming the feed into the Internet, you couldn't get prosecuted (even if you admitted doing so on the Internet).

coordination across many different organizations that all need to switch and be able work together at all times

Indeed, but now there are a number of success stories worldwide from which the US could learn on how to implement a switch to digital encrypted EMS communication. In the US however people still want to have the ability to snoop, or to distribute arrest records to the permanent Internet record, and I just ask myself why.

Encryption efforts in Colorado challenge crime reporters, transparency

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