[TheList] Scanning in the US...

Mon Dec 31 15:32:16 AEDT 2018

Some good points, however I disagree with a couple of them.

I do agree that broadcasting forced their hand with encryption, although
DMR encryption takes literally another 15seconds of work to program into
a Motorola or Tait. So some stuff is encrypted that doesn't need to be,
ie a radio company that uses an existing codeplug and modify the
channels for another customer. I'm guilty of doing this myself. P25 with
keyloaders is a little different, but most people aren't overly
interested in p25 anyway. 

You can also use encryption to secure your own customers.. Not from
eavesdropping, but from other competitors. We've had competitors try to
get into our customers with no knowledge of what we're trying to achieve
and why. IE with one customer that we have, we're dedicating one channel
of their channels in analog mode to be the emergency group only channel.
This means that the emergency group radios will work, no matter which
site they go to - and they can't be interrupted by other users, as only
the emergency group radios get this channel - no matter how often the
manager who pays the bills demands he gets it. 

Anyone can sell you a radio and then walk away because they've made the
sale and pocketed the money - and they'll walk away when there are
problems (money is mostly made in hardware sales) a certain mill in
Auckland just recently rings a bell here. Some cowboys don't have the
knowledge to fix anything. 

I disagree with the AM band comment though. AM isn't a very good area to
be in, FM units are easier to make, and less prone to interference. Also
technology has improved, you can now send txts and job tickets out, do
GPS tracking etc via a digital channel and radio, you can't do that as
easily on analog. And digital is an easy sell for some customers, 2
timeslots means they can potentially have half the infrastructure costs
compared to a similar system in analog modes. 

In my opinion I agree that it was scanners being easily and commercially
available that shot the hobby in its foot. And then availability of
baofengs and other junk.. A uniden sds100 will cost you something like
$US750 with the DMR key. A Boafeng was what... $50? But technology has
changed since scanning started... adapt or die :)  in this case with
encryption, it's going to be very hard (and with OTAR/rolling keys -
basically impractical) to break the encryption. 

Richard

On 31 December 2018 4:33:47 PM NZDT, Martin Cook <majocook21 at gmail.com>
wrote: 

> Ref the article in the NZ Herald about scanning in the US and how there's more trunking and encryption to prevent the casual scanner user from hearing the transmissions from the emergency and utility services. 
> 
> To my mind, the scanner users have themselves to blame by connecting the audio from their scanners onto the internet so that anyone can listen - they call it feeding and anyone can listen to them. When trunking became the next hurdle, trunking scanners soon came out and succesfully tracked the signals and again broadcast the audio on the net. Of course the crims listened too - you'd be silly not to. The emergency services responded with encryption so that all that was heard was garbled audio or digital noise - but sooner later somebody will find a way of cracking it. Some states ban the use of scanners in vehicles unless they have the right licences - this is to stop the 'ambulance chasers' being rubber-neckers at incident sites. 
> 
> Now if Joe scanner had not 're-broadcast' the audio, then he/she could have carried on listening to plain old AM of NFM with no need for more expensive equipment. 
> 
> Fortunately here in NZ we have laws about 'the secrecy of correspondence' - so if you should even by accident intercept some form of communication, including ordinary snail-mail or anything not intended for you personally, then you must not tell anyone about the contents of the message or even the existence of the message and definitely not use the knowledge you have gleaned to obtain an advantage. Anyone who has been in the services in a communications field has already signed documents concerning high levels of secrecy and although you have now returned to being a civilian you are still bound by the military law. 
> 
> There - I've done my rant. Cheers and all the best for 2019!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://radiowiki.org.nz/pipermail/thelist_radiowiki.org.nz/attachments/20181231/7130eae2/attachment.html>