Anecdotal, but an ex-friend cop told me YEARS ago that they never use their radios for "sensitive" communications anyway, they just call each other on their cell phones so that there are no records of their conversations.
They use Signal too
Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests
141–150 of 202 posts
Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests
#142Hi 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...
I used your service to listen to emergency service radios during the recent Australian Bushfires. The fires got really close to my family's home, your service allowed me to keep up with what was going on in real time. It really helped. Thanks.
Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests
#143Earlier 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.
Even if you could, how long do you think your FOIA request would take to get processed vs. the rekeying frequency of the encryption?
Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests
#144Hi 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...
Your site helps me know what's happening when I'm in Chicago. Robert thanks you for your service and for checking those keys. o7
Same, hope that robert stays safe out there (and remembers to check his keys)
Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests
#145Look into the p25 standard. I wouldn't know but I wouldn't be surprised it many agencies use it for digital/analog data and can probably be brute forced with cheap hardware. Search for p25 DES-OFB. Now would be a great time for a rainbow table.
Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests
#146I recall being able to listen to cell phone calls on my scanner (a long time ago). One thing that it taught me was that people are generally very boring.
Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests
#147Look into the p25 standard. I wouldn't know but I wouldn't be surprised it many agencies use it for digital/analog data and can probably be brute forced with cheap hardware. Search for p25 DES-OFB. Now would be a great time for a rainbow table.
Is anyone actually encrypting it?
I’d rather folks help those that have put tons of effort into the voice demodulation of plaintext channels.
Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the United States, no. Police, emergency, first responder radio transmissions are generally in the clear. I don't know the precise history of it, but I have always assumed it is a combination of legacy (emergency radio in the United States is very old, and predates cheap and convenient electronic encryption standards), compatibility (first responder funding and maintenance in the United States is generally a local…
There are more Encrypted than you think, though most Responsible Dept will leave the general dispatch channel open and only encrypt tactical talk groups My City Encrypts 100% communications including EMS, Fire, Police and Emergency repose, it is a stupid policy but... https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Encrypted_Agencies
I understand the desire to be able to listen in/oversight during riots and conflicts between demonstrators and police. It make less sense in cases where someone is a victim of a crime or a patient being transported as such individuals are protected from the public prying eye. When recording devices and storage is so cheap as it is now it should be assumed that any communication traveling in clear is captured and stored.
Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a text transcript feature for users who may want to search through the communications? I'm curious how well those speech-to-text tools work for the audio feeds.
It's a hard problem. I'm prototyping this here [1]. Any user can tweak or vote on transcriptions, so my goal is to use the user annotations to help train models and make it better. [1] https://feeds.talonvoice.com Repo is here if you need to report (or fix) bugs in the webapp: https://github.com/lunixbochs/feeds If you want to help with development, reach out and I can onboard + give some test data.
Great to see you working on this!
I was wondering if you could estimate what it would cost to have always on recording of all these radio conversations, cost of running this speech2text ML and cost of labeling this data.
I think having these rough estimates will make donations easier for people.
Re: Thousands are monitoring police scanners during the George Floyd protests
#150Hi 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...
I just wanted to weigh in here and say thank you for this service, I have been using it for quite some time now to monitor and follow emergency services in my area to report news. A truly awesome and bad ass service.