Dave Emery wrote:
Some months ago I posted an article to cypherpunks commenting on how easy it is to intercept the supposedly secret traffic on the Motorola mobile data terminals used by many police forces to access criminal history and other sensitive information. This data is not seriously encrypted (or encrypted at all in most systems) and illustrates the kind of security by obscurity that some people would like to see continue as the only protection for such information as it is broadcast to the world on open radio channels.
You've raised a point that is similar to the issues raised in FOIA requests. Is the reason I can't get certain documents because the govt. is hiding something, or is it because they have to protect "sources and methods"? Now I understand the dispute on "methods", but sources are often real people, whose identity may have to be protected. My question then, if police go 100% to secure transmissions, is that a good thing for the public? To be totally locked out of the ability to monitor the police? Of course, since I have an AOR AR-8000, with even the forbidden cellular aliased out to the 1400 mhz area, I can intercept anything and decode it (some problems with frequency-hopping on cellular and some trunked frequencies), if there are no unusual security methods used.
From my experience so far, most of the public needs to worry about:
1. Doing business on cellular and other portable phones, where pirates are busy snooping. 2. Using a "security" company to watch your house when you're gone, since they generally talk openly on common scanner frequencies.