Expanding South

[cartman]

http://www.bordermail.com.au/story/3906 ... uth/?cs=11

NSW police radio silent in the south

RADIO encryption is expected to give police in southern NSW a leg up when it comes to hunting down criminals.

Albury and Deniliquin have been flagged among several local area commands to undertake the process, which will go live by the end of the month.

The move would mean no more public access to police scanners and is being done in a bid to improve the safety of police officers.

Southern region Commander Assistant Commissioner Gary Worboys said it was being implemented for the security of police.

“This process means criminals will no longer have access to police radio transmissions and therefore they cannot follow emergency responses, which will help police solve and prevent crime,” he said.

“Policing is often a highly unpredictable and potentially dangerous job and this strategy means we’re eliminating a significant risk to officer safety.

“We welcome this process and we’ll continue to develop and implement strategies that make frontline policing as safe and secure as possible.”

Digital police radios in metropolitan Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong successfully underwent the process seven years ago.

At the time, several news outlets reported issues with delayed information and a lack of information for crime reporters.

The system has gradually been rolled out on other parts of the state over the past two years.

Media organisations will be given access to a separate, internet-based system for news gathering purposes.

Assistant Commissioner Worboys said this would be different from scanners, which would no longer be of use in the newsroom.

“We are aware of how this will affect media outlets and we will continue to assist them in the important role they play through communicating key information to the public that assists us in targeting crime,” he said.

“To facilitate this, we’ve developed and implemented the Police External Agencies Transfer System, an internet feed that has been used for a number of years to provide information on police activity, in place of radio transmissions.

“In addition, we will work with affected media organisations to ensure the new measures allow opportunities to attend operations of public significance.”

The encryption process will also be rolled out in Shoalhaven, Monaro, far South Coast and Griffith.

[cartman]

Obviously for those down south with scanning equipment that is capable of reading the radio id's etc, you have about two weeks of matchng callsigns to RIDS in Uniform and Sierra. On the 31st May the dispatcher will make regular announcements that encryption will be enabled at midday, then at the appropiate time all radios will be requested to go over to Zone 4. Based on what I have seen on the North Coast, using DSDplus and ADCR25 software the encryption key is the same one used throughout the state including the metropolitan area. It is my understanding is that TAIT P25 radios have been deployed throughout the regions some time back

[Bigfella237]

Already on it... for Sierra anyway, I'm nowhere near Uniform.

Andrew

[Longreach]

Yeah i did that with the Whiskey changeover and they changed RID's soon after.

Cheers

[Farsouthscanner]

Thanks for the info Cartman
I was about going to ask about the RIDs but don't know if I will worry about it. As Longreach said they could change at any time anyway.

[Bigfella237]

If you've got a spare discriminator tap you may as well, the only software you really need is DSD+ and that's free.

RIDs change all the time anyway, every time a vehicle is replaced it gets a different radio and portables do have a tendency to wander as well. Some members just don't seem to grasp the concept that every radio is assigned a unique ID and you can't (well, you shouldn't) just grab any old car/radio and use your own callsign.

Andrew

[Farsouthscanner]

I might give it a go just for the sake of it.
I wish I had known about the software before, would have been interesting to see where portables end up over a year or so.

[Longreach]

As i said, everything is completely different here. they're all in the 420xxx now and i wouldn't know where to start. I notice that monitoring channel S its a mix of 213/4xxx and 420xxx. when it left here it was a mix of 213/214xxx id's

Cheers

[Bigfella237]

I'm seeing different groupings or prefixes for different areas and types of radio, for example:

20xxxx are mostly vehicle radios from Romeo
21xxxx are mostly vehicle radios from Sierra
41xxxx are mostly portables from Romeo
42xxxx are mostly portables from Sierra
etc., although I suspect it's a little more general than that, I just don't have IDs from anywhere else to compare.

But there's plenty of exceptions to the above too as previously mentioned, especially the portables seem to migrate around the countryside, again people don't seem to realise that every radio is unique, unlike the old analog days.

That must be a PITA for VKG too, I'm almost certain they have IDs tagged on their consoles because I often hear somebody keyed up accidentally and Warilla knows exactly who it is these days.

Andrew

[cartman]

Yeah i did that with the Whiskey changeover and they changed RID's soon after.

Cheers

I think that is when they changed the regional areas over to Tait P25 radios ... it was just coincidental
There has been no change on the North Coast ... i check every month ie i log oscar, papa and november via the adcr25 software
I think 42XXXX are the Tait Portables

PS I was suprised when Alpha was in the clear for a couple of days in early 2015 that radios i had logged back in 2008 were still doing laps in 2015 in the same patrols