Lawmakers Vote To Stop NYPD's Attempt To Encrypt Their Radios (nypost.com)
- Reference: 0177947744
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/06/06/2049204/lawmakers-vote-to-stop-nypds-attempt-to-encrypt-their-radios
- Source link: https://nypost.com/2025/06/05/us-news/new-york-state-lawmakers-vote-to-stop-nypds-attempt-to-block-radio-communications-from-public/
> New York state lawmakers [2]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 " [3]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.
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> "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."
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> 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.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~alternative_right
[2] https://nypost.com/2025/06/05/us-news/new-york-state-lawmakers-vote-to-stop-nypds-attempt-to-block-radio-communications-from-public/
[3] https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/A3516
Solution - delayed key publishing (Score:2)
Encrypt the radio with a different key every day.
The keys must be published every day, 24 hours after they were last used.
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The problem is that the police communicate things like people's home addresses over the radio.
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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
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He is very orange. Shoot first, ask later.
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> 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
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> 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?"
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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
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> 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: Solution - delayed key publishing (Score:2)
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: Solution - delayed key publishing (Score:2)
Well the lawyers might benefit from it being in the clear. Especially the ambulance chasing variety.
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One reason mentioned to keep the communications opened was to make this information available to private emergency services and reporters. I can see a point to this as it could mean news organizations can let the public know quickly of some immediate hazard so they can stay clear of the area. What it can also mean is something like a house fire, traffic collision, or whatever attracting news trucks, and overweight dudes with a reflective vest and a ham radio that want to "help".
The risk of having criminal
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That is a pretty big gaping hole in their argument if true, and I have no reason to not believe it. That destroys their argument that they are scared of criminals listening to communications in real time to out-maneuver the cops. Someone just fires off a jammer for the control frequency before they do the crime. Of course, the same thing could be said about someone throwing up a broad spectrum jammer or a cell phone jammer up when you rob that bank.
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> someone throwing up a broad spectrum jammer or a cell phone jammer
You mean some people swallow those things? That sounds really painful!
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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.
my local SO is encrypted (Score:2)
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.
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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.
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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.
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> Do you really want to spend your last days in your mother's basement writing this liberal shit? This is what happens to liberals when they get down to their last half of a remaining testicle.
By "last half of a remaining testicle" do you mean someone with low-T from too much soy milk? Or someone getting a bit upset because they are down to the last remnant of their bowl of rocky mountain oysters? Both of those mental images amuse me.
I wonder who these "defund the police" types believe will happen with no police force. I'm having trouble figuring out if roving bands of armed Republicans is supposed to be a good thing or bad thing, the GP post was not clear on that point to me. With 25+ states
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> I wonder who these "defund the police" types believe will happen with no police force.
For most of them, they think they'll be able to easily procure and do drugs as much as they want anywhere with no interference.
Their lower brain system sees police as an obstacle to their doing whatever they need to do to release more dopamine, so they hate the police.
Probbaly also their parents for the same reason.
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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
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> 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.
FirstNet (Score:2)
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.
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Because FirstNet is designed to supplement LMR, not replace it entirely.
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Not sure what you're saying is illegal in Germany, but almost all eavesdropping is illegal there.
Police radio in Germany has been encrypted since many years ago as it is in Great Britain, France, and just about every modern country.
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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,
implementation? (Score:2)
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 polic
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No department puts that type of information over the air now, encrypted or not.
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How do they communicate it? Some of these things need to be communicated rapidly - they can't rely on face-to-face communication.
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> 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
read the bill (Score:2)
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.
All the police have to do is (Score:2)
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
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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.
GOOD! (Score:1)
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.".
Seems reasonable (Score:3)
It's the way it would have been implemented initially had that been feasible at the time.
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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.