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Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests

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Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests

#111

Post by ceejayoz »

ISL wrote: post #109
kebman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't police radio usually scrambled? It is where I am in Norway. It was legal to listen to it before it was scrambled though. Not sure if it's legal to de-scramble it, if it's at all possible. AFAIK you can still listen to the ambulance channel, though, but sometimes the details are ... grisly.

It would seem reasonable to be able to FOIA the encryption keys in US locations where it is encrypted.

Doubtful.

https://www.foia.gov/faq.html

> Exemption 7: Information compiled for law enforcement purposes that: (A) Could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings

I'd fully expect other exemptions to apply if you FOIAed the White House's SSL private key or something.

Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests

#112

Post by ceejayoz »

ISL wrote: post #87
LinuxBender wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can and do, but they and the other cell sites can't up and move around. All cell sites have multiple transceivers that are directional. Each site has a unique cell ID and each transceiver has a unique ID. Your phone has GPS. If you drive around, you can find out who doesn't belong. Be careful about publicly disclosing this information.

The disclosure of facts is protected by the First Amendment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number

Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests

#113

Post by blantonl »

jcims wrote: post #106
lunixbochs wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in the speech recognition space and train my own models already. The existing open-source models aren't very good at noisy radio speech. I will specialize one of my models to this task once I have some data from the site.

As you’re well aware but HN folks may not be, it’s not just that it’s noisy, it’s heavily coded, contextually bankrupt speech between multiple parties that spend all day in contact with each other. Dispatchers in particular seem to have superhuman ability to extract information from completely unintelligible garbage. Are you doing any kind of speaker identification?

This is a very accurate description of the problem space. Every municipality has their own jargon, vernacular, and ways to communicate brevity which is key in public safety communications. The communications are often digitized over vocoders that are less than optimal, and then you have the process of recovering voice from noisy communcations channels.

This is definitely a very hard problem to solve.

Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests

#114

Post by blantonl »

ISL wrote: post #94
blantonl wrote: post #2

Hi there! I'm the owner and operator of Broadcastify, which is the platform that powers all the apps that provide police scanners and public safety communications online. I'm an active HN reader and would be glad to answer any questions folks have. It's an interesting business to be in these days...

Any surprises with the uptick in traffic? Do you see increased usage ahead of news-reports of protests? Also: Thank you! I've been listening to Broadcastify both at the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak and yesterday, to track nascent looting <2 km from our home.

The past few months has resulted in us seeing record traffic and revenue... it turns out that people stranded at home due to stay at home orders are thirsty for entertainment and information.

I can't say that I'm really surprised by anything anymore after all that has happened over the past 3 months :)

Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests

#115

Post by protomyth »

wyldfire wrote: post #99
protomyth wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this is a couple decades ago - so the play-by-play is a bit lost, one cop at a locally infamous speed trap after dark started seeing a light in the woods near the road. He reported it over the radio, and speculated it might be someone spotlighting deer. Hunting deer at night is very, very illegal as the deer freeze when the light is shined at them. He didn't hear shots, but was understandably reluctant to pursu…

> Hunting deer at night is very, very illegal as the deer freeze when the light is shined at them. Is that really the rationale? I would think risk of accidentally harming humans or property would significantly increase at night.

Its a combination, that's one of the big rationals I've always heard. Also, enforcement of rules would be really painful at night. It probably would be very dangerous to be out there with some of the idiots who think they are hunters.

Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests

#116

Post by jcims »

blantonl wrote: post #113
jcims wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you’re well aware but HN folks may not be, it’s not just that it’s noisy, it’s heavily coded, contextually bankrupt speech between multiple parties that spend all day in contact with each other. Dispatchers in particular seem to have superhuman ability to extract information from completely unintelligible garbage. Are you doing any kind of speaker identification?

This is a very accurate description of the problem space. Every municipality has their own jargon, vernacular, and ways to communicate brevity which is key in public safety communications. The communications are often digitized over vocoders that are less than optimal, and then you have the process of recovering voice from noisy communcations channels. This is definitely a very hard problem to solve.

Indeed. The only reason I know is that I tried a few years back and realized that I was asking the computer to do something that I couldn't even do. Anyone that doubts it, just listen to the NYPD feed and try to transcribe for just a minute or two.

https://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/32890

(edit: also, thank you for keeping this service up and running for so long, have been a regular user since the early RR days. Would love to have a comment/live chat option if your backlog is getting bare :))

Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests

#117

Post by voltagex_ »

sterwill wrote: post #74

I haven't done the work to sign up at Broadcastify, but if you're in Durham NC and want to listen hit http://home.tinfig.com:9999 with VLC (or mplayer or whatever you like). It's an HTTP+Ogg+Opus stream from my BCD536HP. It's scanning the local P25 trunked radio system (Durham police, fire, EMS, ops, etc.). P.S. As I write this I'm hearing chatter about responding to an airplane crash... no more details yet.

Will you have a chance to write up anything further about your setup?

Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests

#118

Post by kasey_junk »

mring33621 wrote: post #54

These digitized scanner feeds are interesting, but I worry that they can/will be used for propaganda/misinformation. What's to keep a feed supplier from injecting fake content?

You can inject misinformation directly into the radio waves in many jurisdictions.

In Chicago this weekend someone was spreading a rumor that a caravan of protesters were coming from Indiana such that the police diverted resources to check it out.

Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests

#119

Post by xxpor »

bzb3 wrote: post #4

How come LE in 2020 is not using encrypted communication systems such as Tetrapol? Yes I know Tetrapol is European, but you get the idea.

Some do, but thankfully most don't. There's really no need. It's a matter of keeping the police transparent. News orgs put up a big stink when they do go encrypted in some places.

Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests

#120

Post by xxpor »

lozaning wrote: post #45
larrywright wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any specific models/manufacturers you can suggest?

Get a Hack RF or other SDR and then just run Unitrunker on a computer.

Don't you need at least 2 to track trunked systems?
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