The dangers of encrypting Chicago police radio transmissions

Never worked in Government and like you spent my entire career in IT deploying routers/switches and voice related products and given your career you should know that regardless of the system, problems with administering the system will happen regardless of the technology.

If the lazy ass government employees are having issues with the system I submit the issues are independent of the technology and the problems would be the same regardless of the system installed

My wife was complaining at dinner last night. Since the building re-model moved dispatch to a new office, her computer setups have been botched. The most egregious is that her Outlook desktop client is not properly configured. She must use a web browser with OWS to access the Outlook mail. Attachments are improperly rendered. She had a double protection order to process last night and half of the first page wouldn't render. The IT support organization hired by the city is clueless. This has been dragging on for months.

Last night I suggested going to Settings->Apps. Find Outlook and see if the "repair" option is accessible. I suspect that might be enough to fix the problem. I have no access to the city system. When I last had to work about that level of support, I was an admin for the Army Corps of Engineers. I had full access to the Active Directory. My daily tasking was around doing security scans checking for vulnerabilities and identifying systems needing the latest patches. 12,000 desktops checked weekly. 1200 servers as well.

Monday evening I renewed my CompTIA Security+. Expiration is now May 20, 2026. Just a few months before my 70th birthday. Good enough.

In the late 70s, I had 180 tuna boats plus their shore side radios. The Fall was especially busy as all the boats were back for maintenance. In addition to the marine systems, the electronics needed to be repaired and emergency radios had to be inspected and signed off by the local district FCC engineer. My job was to fix all the electronics, put them back on the boat and ensure 100% readiness for the next fishing trip AND the FCC inspection. I had to be present as the owner's rep with the FCC engineer for the inspection and sign-off. The boats sailed on January 1st.

Fixing gear on the bench with a very controlled power supply, dummy loads for transmitters, very stable frequency counters, signal generators and scopes was the ideal environment. It was easy to put the gear back to factory spec. All of that goes out the window on the boat. Dirty power. Antennas affected by salt water. Onboard sources of noise (power systems, other radio gear). The field environment isn't anything like the test bench.

Brief anecdote. The navigator complained of an awful buzz in his fine radio receiver in the pilot house. I turned it on and confirmed the noise. Fortuitously, I had another co-worker on the boat. He had climbed to the crow's nest to check the antennas. I need to call him using the phone on the boat. I picked the the handset and the "dial tone" had a "buzz" that was exactly what I heard in the radio receiver. I pulled the schematics and found the dial tone circuit for the phone. In the circuit, I saw a diode in use to "clip" the dial tone amplitude. I popped the cover off the phone controller and found the diode. I had an .01 uF ceramic cap in my tool box. I bridged the diode. The noise disappeared from the radio, but dial tone remained in the phone. Powered off the phone and soldered the cap in place. Problem solved.

That’s how the county and state police operate here, and I don’t think anyone should object to keeping some operations like tac and detective talkgroups private through encryption. While it’s not very exciting to listen to them run license plates, a week or so ago I heard a high speed (130mph) chase going thru town and that’s kinda exciting to hear (especially the part about “stop sticks” being deployed. They got the idiot for attempted murder after he tried ramming a squad car). To me, listening give a sense of what the police have to deal with and appreciation for the risks they take. I just don’t see the justification for 24/7 encryption. As your example shows, even with encryption only radio silence can prevent a bad guy from hearing radio traffic.

My wife was running radios on a SWAT operation. The suspect was holding a woman and two children in a trailer. He had a 12 gauge shotgun and 357mag revolver. He blew holes through the side of the trailer with the shotgun. One officer took a 357 in his back. If not for his vest, it would have been a perfect heart shot. Instead, just a nasty bruise. He took a 2nd round that broke his right clavicle. A 2nd officer ended up with a 357 slug in the butt. Inoperable. We still "kid" about being a lead ass. It was decided to de-escalate. The suspect left the trailer and allowed the woman and children to remain unharmed. He was apprehended in a nearby country and taken into custody without further incident.

I was working in my upstairs office with my windows open. It was a warm evening. I heard all the gunshots, but didn't know the details until my wife returned home in the morning. Good opsec. She received a commendation medal for her role in the operation. It was all "tac" and encrypted.

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