Joe Cadillic writes:
Across the country fire departments in Connecticut, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Illinois have begun encrypting their radio transmissions, effectively turning them into secret public safety organizations.
The latest fire department to ‘go dark’ and hide its communications from the public is the Denver Fire Department in Colorado.
The Denver Post reported that once the fire department learned that they could no longer communicate with the Colorado Police Department which also went dark; they decided they had to do the same thing.
Read more on MassPrivateI.
I don’t totally agree with Joe on this one, as I’ve heard way too much personal info being transmitted over emergency service networks over the years. Even if you don’t give a person’s name, often giving the address being responded to and the nature of the call can be enough to lead to identification of an aided or suspect. So I think I’m actually for encrypting such communications. If an issue arises such as whether there was misconduct by responders, then the transmissions are still stored for use and investigation. I think it may actually be journalists who suffer most when these channels are no long capable of being monitored for breaking news incidents.