NYPD faces backlash as it prepares to encrypt radio communications | New York | The Guardian

Why are they encrypting their communications? Do they have something to hide?

If they've got nothing to hide, then they've got nothing to fear.

Or so I've heard, anyway, right?

Aside from the transparency issue, did you see how much it's going to cost?

Four hundred million dollars! The city is cutting back on pretty much everything else but wants to spend that on police radios.

Everyone has to tighten their belts while the thin blue line gets fatter and more dangerous.

They actually need to focus on hospital communications. It's scary what all you can pick up from paging systems in cleartext with a $20 USB SDR and a laptop. Patient names, rooms numbers, alert codes, everything.

I find it fascinating how in the United States police radio communications aren't encrypted and therefore anyone can listen to them. In my European country all emergency service communications are TETRA encrypted.

Yeah police radio should never be encrypted.

This isn't just bad news for citizen monitoring of the police, it's bad news for the media as well. I worked at a news station. We had multiple police scanners going in case something big happened. The cops want no cameras around.

Surprised it's not encrypted in the first place. You haven't been able to listen to police communications in Finland since the 90's. I would assume most of Europe is the same way.

Yes, this is absolutely suspicious and definitely a sign of police overreach and government's misplaced priorities.

But.

I do want to point out that, whenever a cop wants to do something shady right now, they don't do it over the unencrypted radio. It's not like we're giving them a new way to be malfeasant. It's not like they're currently completely accountable and transparent, and they won't be later.

Right now, they just use their cell phone when they want to do something shady.

i'm all for full transparency regarding all police activity - i'm not for full realtime transparency regarding all police activity.

active shooter scenarios, violent crimes and everything that invites rubbernecking (read: situations where MORE people are a bad idea, which is most police/ambulance business) should probably not attract people; a 24h delay for release would be enough tho.

my inner cynic already tells me - without searching - that noone thought about automatically releasing the info after a delay. :-(

Are they switching to use Whatsapp?

What is the purpose of encrypting comms?

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear (or something like that)

I'm surprised it was nos encrypted already.

Any one can silently hear their frequency. I looks like an easy way to know if police is coming your way, and how avoid them.

It's insane it hasn't been encrypted ages ago. Bizarre

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The New York police department (NYPD) is facing serious backlash after announcing additional details about its plan to encrypt its radio communications system, which experts warn will limit transparency and accountability.

The entire “upgrade” to a new, encrypted radio system will be completed by December 2024 and cost an estimated $400m, a hefty price tag as several city agencies have been forced to swallow major budget cuts.

Maisel said that during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when more than 200 people died, he was able to provide public safety updates on social media by listening to the police radio.

The encryption plans also have support from Mayor Eric Adams, who said during a July press conference that “bad guys” are listening to the police radios, the New York Times reported.

Cahn added that police have been unable to provide “concrete examples” of criminals abusing the radio system, especially to justify citywide encryption.

“I really do think that we have a fundamental rule-of-law issue under Eric Adams, where the NYPD continues to be enabled to lawlessly pursue this surveillance agenda without abiding by the protections that already exist under law,” Cahn said.

The original article contains 918 words, the summary contains 190 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

just the police doing everything they can to make sure that no one ever knows what they're doing because they're such great big heroes that we normal people just can't handle their awesomeness

Capitalism is evolving into an almost worldwide police state.

They're not encrypted? What? That's a gigantic security hole.

Damn, are these guys up on modern tech or living in the 90s?