They're public employees. Their privacy is non-existent while on duty. There is actually no reason for police radios to be encrypted. The only reason police feel even a modium of responsibility to the public is because they are able to be constantly watched by citizens, and their unencrypted comms is an important part of that.

ETA: I get what you were saying and adding onto it, not trying to contradict

I don't quite get these comments, I think our emergency services went encrypted a while back in Vancouver Canada and I'm surprised NY wasn't already encrypted?

What about keeping the communications encrypted for the privacy and safety of people involved, and storing the records for a set amount of time. Anyone with access to the live feed can access the backups during that time, and report issues as needed.

I'm not familiar with the issues with the police department, so maybe a better compromise would be to open up the feeds publicly after a set amount of time?

When I was in the USCG Auxiliary in Boston in the 90’s they used the same VHF radio as all boaters for most comms, but they also had an encrypted radio they could switch to if they needed to discuss anything sensitive. The encrypted radio was crap though and only worked over short distances. But they’d use it when relaying personal details of boats/people they stopped, dealing with drunk boaters, etc.

As time progressed they switched to using mobile phones when they wanted privacy. Cell coverage along the coast proved far better than the proprietary encrypted radio…

Where I live it's partly to protect the privacy of the people involved.

No matter what it costs, we will shield police from accountability.

Name a price and go fuck yourself.

I worked in a hospital, and patient names should never be paged. Room numbers and alert codes are not PHI, and generally they would say "Adult Male blah blah blah...". Unfortunately, in concrete mazes, paging is still the most reliable (as seen by how easy it is for others to see). And when you're as important as a doctor, you need reliability.

Which had/has a built-in backdoor for years.

https://www.wired.com/story/tetra-radio-encryption-backdoor/

Well, for starters, European police are actually trained professionals (in general, much more so than American police) and have different oversight. American police also handle a wider variety of things that really aren't law enforcement - things that should be handled by other kinds of professionals.

EDIT: American law enforcement agencies are also home to some of the highest rates of domestic violence perpetrators and right-wing extremism.

American police shoot and kill 3-4 people each day. That doesn't take into account deaths that occur in jails and prisons due to negligence.

Not all llaw enforcement or emergency services are in the clear. The Feds are all encrypted (except for some intentional in-the-clear channels for open comms).

One of the biggest criticisms after 9/11 was the lack of easy comms across agencies because of radio set ups, different 10-codes, etc.

Hopefully this is something they are accounting for with this change.

Also $400m doesn't seem that crazy for an endeavor like this given the size of NYPD.

40k officers and staff + backhaul + tower upgrades + vehicle radio upgrades and installation /$400m

And is that $400m entire lifecycle cost? Over 5-10 years or whatever that's really not insane.

It seems insane that they were communicating out in the open.

On the one hand, you probably hear all kinds of cool shit. On the other hand, how in the fuck are they just discussing all their sensitive shit out in the open??

I suspect it would be helpful for protecting sensitive situations. Currently (at least with EMS) they call each other's cellphones for that, not ideal.

I genuinely like this idea, because it would allow to reach both goals.

The problem I see is that this would probably go down the same as the bodycam idea, with inconvenient recordings vanishing due to "technical issues".

You'd need an independent third party doing life recording and delayed release. Subjectively, the US don't have a great track record with these.

Easier idea: Just publish last week's encryption key. Probably won't happen because some tech supplier will lobby for a more expensive solution.

To keep criminals from monitoring the police and getting a head start

In prior articles on this, religious nutjobs would listen to police radio and visit the active crime scene and start praying in the middle of the chaos. People and police started getting really sick of their shit during an emergency. Other flavors of morons would also show up to watch shit go down. Sometimes, private information would also get said on the radio such as names or addresses, which could lead to harassment or true crime nuts showing up to private homes.

I kinda get why making channels private for everyone but reporters (for transparency) is happening.