I will note that some departments are moving towards encrypted real time communications and then time delayed text transcripts. This is under the guise of "officer safety" but really they hate the fact that civilians were actively monitoring them and calling out possible issues in real time on the bird site and other social media.
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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THE POLICE PROBLEM
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Yep! So at this past Def Con, sally who makes yachts gave a really good presentation that touched on this. Even with voice encryption, the amount of information you can get from just the meta data is incredibly useful.
I lack the technical knowledge to add anything meaningful to this conversation, but sally who makes yachts is a damned cool non de plume.
That was my first thought when I saw the talk come up!!
Sadly most police in high-urban areas are moving to encrypted radio so for anyone living near bigger populations they might not get as much use out of it. Personally I usually only get some backup frequencies and maybe sheriff dispatch or fire department, otherwise most emergency services are switching to the same system (high-band Motorola networks) for ‘disaster preparedness’. I still encourage people to check of course and if you’re anywhere else you definitely should be able to listen in on local comms.
Once all departments make the switch to LTE we'll basically lose that entire monitoring surface, which is why it's really important to develop novel ways of tracking them now.