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Encryption Communications Crime Government

Lawmakers Vote To Stop NYPD's Attempt To Encrypt Their Radios (nypost.com) 71

Posted by BeauHD from the pros-and-cons dept.
alternative_right shares a report: New York state lawmakers voted to stop the NYPD's attempt to block its radio communications from the public Thursday, with the bill expected to head to Gov. Kathy Hochul's desk. The "Keep Police Radio Public Act" passed both the state Senate and state Assembly, with a sponsor of the legislation arguing the proposal strikes the "proper balance" in the battle between transparency and sensitive information.

"Preserving access to police radio is critical for a free press and to preserve the freedoms and protections afforded by the public availability of this information," state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Queens) said in a statement. "As encrypted radio usage grows, my proposal strikes the proper balance between legitimate law enforcement needs and the rights and interests of New Yorkers."

The bill, which was sponsored in the Assembly by lawmaker Karines Reyes (D-Bronx), is meant to make real-time police radio communications accessible to emergency services organizations and reporters. "Sensitive information" would still be kept private, according to the legislation. In late 2023, the NYPD began encrypting its radio communications to increase officer safety and "protect the privacy interests of victims and witnesses." However, it led to outcry from press advocates and local officials concerned about reduced transparency and limited access to real-time information.

A bill to address the issue has passed both chambers of New York's legislature, but Governor Hochul has not yet indicated whether she will sign it.

Lawmakers Vote To Stop NYPD's Attempt To Encrypt Their Radios More | Reply

Lawmakers Vote To Stop NYPD's Attempt To Encrypt Their Radios

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  • Seems reasonable (Score:3)

    by hadleyburg ( 823868 ) on Friday June 06, 2025 @05:59PM (#65432796)

    It's the way it would have been implemented initially had that been feasible at the time.

    • Re:Seems reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday June 06, 2025 @09:17PM (#65433165) Journal
      We've found that there is substantial societal benefit to having police communications public. This is an established fact.

      In theory, public police communications could cause some harm, if criminals are also listening in on the communications. However, in practical reality, I haven't heard of this ever causing harm. Until it does cause harm (maybe someone knows), then we should not stop it.

      • We've found that there is substantial societal benefit to having police communications public. This is an established fact.

        Is it?
        Can you elaborate?

        I can see the requirement of the communications having to be recorded for legal purposes, but I can't think of a case for them having to be made public 'live'.

  • Encrypt the radio with a different key every day.

    The keys must be published every day, 24 hours after they were last used.

    • The problem is that the police communicate things like people's home addresses over the radio.

      • Re:Solution - delayed key publishing (Score:4, Insightful)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday June 06, 2025 @06:35PM (#65432882)
        And? I don't know how to break this to you but your home address isn't exactly private information. It's like, right out front of your house and stuff.

        The real problem is every now and then the cops forget their can be recorded and say shit they are really really not supposed to and it would very much like to be able to say all sorts of horrible things while they're planning to beat the living fuck out of you.

        Personally I'm willing to give up a smidge of largely irrelevant privacy considerations in order to keep the people we allowed to kill you in Cold blood and get away with it under additional surveillance. Seems like a fair trade-off to me.

        • And? I don't know how to break this to you but your home address isn't exactly private information.

          Then you won't mind posting yours here to slashdot.

        • And? I don't know how to break this to you but your home address isn't exactly private information. It's like, right out front of your house and stuff.

          While my address is public information I don't need the police advertising things like I'm not home, the power is out, and a fallen tree branch busted open the back door. That's making my house a prime target for thieves, vandals, and squatters. I realize that is security by obscurity, as someone could still happen across my home to find it easy to enter with little chance there's a functioning security system, but the obscurity is still providing some security until I come home to fix the door and such.

          The real problem is every now and then the cops forget their can be recorded and say shit they are really really not supposed to and it would very much like to be able to say all sorts of horrible things while they're planning to beat the living fuck out of you.

          A

          • Re:Solution - delayed key publishing (Score:5, Funny)

            by Harvey Manfrenjenson ( 1610637 ) on Friday June 06, 2025 @10:00PM (#65433259)

            While my address is public information I don't need the police advertising things like I'm not home, the power is out, and a fallen tree branch busted open the back door. That's making my house a prime target for thieves, vandals, and squatters.

            I'm hearing Morgan Freeman in my head... "Let me get this straight. You're a criminal, and you hear cops talking to each other about how they need to go check on a house. And your plan is to *rob* that house?"

            • The image I had in my mind was the police roaming about town to investigate storm damage. They'd roll up, call in an unoccupied house with damage, then roll on to the next house. Once the reports are coming in from a different neighborhood the coast is likely clear. With enough chaos like that there's room to rob a few houses with little chance of getting caught. I've seen such chaos before, people were bold enough to steal generators from backyards. Given the prevalence of people moving generators for

            • And your plan is to *rob* that house?"
              Nope, you run now out of that house.

          • I don't need the police advertising things like I'm not home

            You don't know how many times I've been at the water cooler discussing the events of the police scanner. Is that on NBC or ABC now?

            Almost all of your arguments are insane logical fallacies, btw. Slippery Slope, Strawman (numerous), false cause, middle ground, on and on and on and on.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Also a problem is the police finding a medical emergency and risking that the information they provide to dispatch over the radio is a violation of HIPPA

            Spouting nonsense like it was a fact again? Try learning about HIPAA instead of waving it around like a privacy magic wand.

            1. It's HIPAA. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996
            2. The covered entities are Healthcare providers, Health plans, Healthcare clearinghouses, and business associates.
            3. Permitted Uses and Disclosures includes law enforcement and other public health situations.
            https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/php/r... [cdc.gov]

        • It isn't the address by itself. It's the address associated with a report of SA or DV or drugs or mental crisis or whatever.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by clovis ( 4684 )

      Or just record all sound on each endpoint before it's encrypted and transmitted and after it's received and decrypted.
      Upload and store it when the officer ends his shift.
      Dispatch would have it all, anyway.

      I can see no benefit whatsoever in rubber-neckers, thrill seekers, and the idle curious hearing about accidents, school shootings, and disasters in real time.

  • Coincidentally I started listening to them only a few days before they went encrypted, and then obviously I stopped.

    There are multiple public safety interests served by allowing access, and only some of them are related to police malfeasance.

    • and there are multiple public safety issues created by allowing access. delayed access is really the better solution. you can't access real time communication but it is visible 24 hours later.

      • Re:my local SO is encrypted (Score:4)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday June 06, 2025 @06:37PM (#65432888)
        The problem with delayed access is that it becomes very easy to make that into no access. With delayed access every time the cops do something really nasty those records just go missing. Just like how every time they want to kill somebody in Cold blood the cameras get turned off by accident.

        You are giving somebody the right to kill you and get away with it, you should probably be a little more concerned about oversight.
        • A possible solution is for the encrypted signals to be automatically stored by a third party, a kind of escrow service. The public would automatically gain access to the stored material after a certain amount of time. The police would be able to flag certain communications as requiring longer term secrecy (say those containing the identities of confidential informants). Those desiring access to communications flagged as not to be released could appeal to something like a Freedom of Information panel, which
          • Every nasty little thing they do gets flagged. And the third party will very quickly get buddy buddy with the cops because that's where their money is coming from and they'll be more than happy to help the cops evade consequences.

            If you want to have a free society you are just going to have to accept some measure of risk.

            And that means that sometimes the cops aren't going to be able to keep secrets. Even if the risk to them and yourself and the public at large increases.

            You can of course give up

        • The problem with delayed access is that it becomes very easy to make that into no access. With delayed access every time the cops do something really nasty those records just go missing.

          It should be pretty easy - and fairly cheap - to make receivers which will record the radio traffic in its encrypted form and then play it back unencrypted when given the appropriate key. For people who don't own such a receiver, an independent agency could record all the radio traffic, then decrypt it whenever a request is made. That sounds like a natural service for public libraries to offer.

          • Then it's going to get hacked in no time. And if it is rolled constantly then every time the cops do something nasty they will just shrug their shoulders and say sorry, we lost the key. And the public at large will let them do that because about 42% of the country thinks the cops should be able to do abs the fucking anything they want at any time.

            You can't have freedom and transparency and a secret police. And the more you let the cops hide things from the public the closer they get to being a secret po
  • If/when New York City police adopt FirstNet, which is LTE, the entire notion behind this suit falls apart. Police communications will be inherently encrypted because the communications tech stack will be encrypted. I don't understand why NYPD is spending money on encrypting radios when they could have been moving faster to FirstNet.
    • Because FirstNet is designed to supplement LMR, not replace it entirely.

    • My understanding when they pitched FirstNet out here was that it ran over LTE, but basically is supposed to prioritize communications. The idea being that if there was a mass casualty event or something of the sort, FirstNet traffic would be prioritized. So heaven forbid the next time some jackass pulls off a 9/11 at least some communication will stay up for people that need it to do their (disaster response) jobs.

      That is an interesting idea, though. If they could get the reliability issues under control,

  • Some information should not be made public, e.g. the identity of confidential informants, the existence of (legal) wiretaps, details of ongoing operations. The bill acknowledges this. How is this information going to be kept secret while most information is not? Are police to have to remember to press the "scramble" button when they want to say something secret? Are they going to have to use their phones for secrets and their official radios for public information? I'm all for careful oversight of the police, but it is far from obvious how this is to be implemented.

    • Re:implementation? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Known Nutter ( 988758 ) on Friday June 06, 2025 @08:04PM (#65433041)
      No department puts that type of information over the air now, encrypted or not.
      • How do they communicate it? Some of these things need to be communicated rapidly - they can't rely on face-to-face communication.

        • How do they communicate it? Some of these things need to be communicated rapidly - they can't rely on face-to-face communication.

          No, the identity of an informant or the existence of a wiretap do not need to be communicated rapidly. Those are planned and known in advance, so they are discussed in person at the police station. In the rare instance that any kind of information related to those things needs to be sent over the radio, code words would have been picked ahead of time.

          • How about a situation in which the police are monitoring an informant or undercover police officer who is with the criminals. They're waiting for something to happen before they enter to make arrests or search, or they're ready to go in and protect their CI or undercover officer if things go wrong. What if one officer wants to tell another that he thinks that the bad guys suspect the informant and they should prepare to move in? He may not name the CI, but if the criminals hear this, bad things will happen.

    • e.g. the identity of confidential informants, the existence of (legal) wiretaps, details of ongoing operations. The bill acknowledges this. How is this information going to be kept secret while most information is not?

      The same way it is now. You don't transmit that information over the radio. You ask below how do they communicate this? The answer is simple: Locally. This isn't information that needs to be transmitted over distance. It's something that is handed out in briefings, or discussed locally on location of an incident.

      Remember: Not having encryption was and is for many the default. Any scenario you can think of for lack of this encryption is something we literally have already dealt and have extensive experience

  • It doesn't say they can't encrypt. It says they have to make the comms available in real time to other emergency services and to "professional journalists." The approval process for access can take up to 5 days. So encrypt. Let "approved" people buy a radio and have the department program it and disable xmit in the process. BTW NY state already outlaws monitoring police when in a vehicle.
  • When they need confidential communications is switch to using their cellphone because cellphone frequencies are blocked out of scanners available to the public, I doubt making communications in the clear will solve corruption in the police department

    • It's worse than that. They can carry the official force-issued cell phone and keep their own as well. And presumably if they're bad enough, there's no record of the personal phone because they bought it with and top it up with cash 'just in case'.

      But police radio's been getting quiet and less interesting for years now anyway as they switch to mobile apps for the majority of dispatch uses.

  • The ONLY encrypted traffic should be "undercover" officer types transmissions. Over 20 years ago, our radios went from VHF to UHF and also had encryption. Our sheriff at the time said other than drug officers or undercover officers, he would FIRE any "regular" deputy if they used the encryption. When asked why by the media he said..."the public has the right to know what we are doing.".
  • My first "real" job as a young man was at a radio shop; I installed equipment (including these new-fangled things called "car phones") and did minor bench repair work. We had contracts with local police departments, too.

    I would want to see evidence that analog radio scanners are often helping the bad guys (in the US, that is), because there are tradeoffs involved: Encrypted radios cost more money, use more electricity (squad car gasoline), are more difficult to repair (more $) and are arguably slower

  • In Germany it is illegal to listen to police radio.

    I think meanwhile it is encrypted.

    It is actually illegal to listen to conversations that are not intended for you. E.g. if a ship has a "phone call" via a coastal radio station, you have to leave the channel.

  • Encrypted police radio isn't a violation on free press. The problem is that press is interfering with police actions and having open police radio makes it much easier for criminals to act on it. Having the communication encrypted is no problem for free press as they can arrive later on or act on it, and as someone already suggested, make they key public after 24 hours, so press can use the communication for investigative 'journalism'. Also they should make it illegal to have encrypted police radio equipment

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