CAP Radio Communications Are Being Monitored!

[Gung Ho]

Are most CAP repeaters Quantar's? I think they are and Motorola cancelled that line so in a few years they will have to replace all of those any way. Maybe then they will buy what they need and not just want some salesman can make some money on

[ol'fido]

Why encrypt all of our radio traffic when:

1. One of the principles of ICS is open comms and our comms are supposed to support ops which are using ICS.

2. 99.99% of our radio traffic is ordinary admin stuff. Check-ins, lunch plans, meet me heres. We're not usually discussing plans to invade small third world countries.

Just watch what you say. No need to spend thousands of dollars to fix something that could be taken care of by keeping your mouth shut. 

[arajca]

When (not if) Big Blue says "Thou shalt use encrypted radio transmissions efective immediately", guess what? We start using them - or at least dealing with the issues that such a thing would create.

So far, the idea is that our customers would make that decision and provide us with the necessary keys.

There is a difference between open comms and plain English comms (which is what ICS supports). If the field units are using plain English comms and the transmission is encrypted between the radios, that is fine according to ICS concepts. The message itself is plain English. What ICS concepts do not support is such things as 10 or Q codes, made up 'secret' codes that CAP has been so famous for, etc. How the message is transmitted is entirely irrelevent.

[UWONGO2]

When (not if) Big Blue says "Thou shalt use encrypted radio transmissions efective immediately", guess what? We start using them - or at least dealing with the issues that such a thing would create.

When Big Blue comes down from the mountain carrying the stone tablet with the encryption requirement chiseled into it, they better be carrying a large check in the other hand because encryption isn't cheap an we can't afford it.

At the national conference comm meeting, the head comm guy for CAWG respectfully, but forcefully requested a logical explanation as to why we need encryption. After shooting down every explanation offered by the national staff with solid logic of his own, national eventually employed the secret squirrel defense. They knew why we need encryption, but they can't tell us why due to the missions being secret.

[CommGeek]

In a perfect world in ICS everyone will be non-encrypted and use plain language.  But in the  real world, you cant expect a cop that has been using 10 codes every day of his life to suddnly use plain english.  Half of the on the street radio users dont even know hot to turn on and off encryption...

The bottom line is what is your dept / agency policy on encryption / prowords.  in our case the USAF says you use encryption, and military prowords.   

One way to help inperoperability is the NPSPAC   Interop freq's.  Each band has several freqs set aside only for interoperable communications.  theoretically, when you are going to talk to another agency you would use plain english and clear COMSEC on the interop freq's.  But again, you have a police dept that used 10-23 as routine traffic stop, and another uses 10-23 as officer down.   Not a good situation.