During a city-wide sweep for gang members and drug dealers last week, the Oakland (Calif.) Police Department confiscated several cellular phones loaded with an application that could stream the department’s police radio system. The software app is one of several available for iPhones and other smartphones that stream public safety radio audio obtained from scanner radios via the Internet. OPD has not said if the apps were actually running on the smartphones, or if any suspects were able to avoid arrest from hearing police radio broadcasts. However, in a bulletin notice to officers, the department warned officers that criminals are able to monitor the city’s 800 MHz trunked radio system from smartphones, and to use caution when transmitting confidential information.
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This is dumb. First, were the phones seized because of the app or for other reasons? Is having a mobile scanner illegal in Cali? If so, a smartphone is not a scanner.
In the end, what is the big deal? I have a scanner app and while fun to listen to there is really no way to follow a specific incident as they flip all around. Any self respecting gangster will have a trunking scanner–so what is all the uproar in Oakland about? Moreover, why would OPD even consider that their trunking system was secure in the first place?
I stream the Stockton Police and San Joaquin County Sheriffs department for other to listen to 24/7, I feel it is the right of the people to hear what is going on in their area, if these bad guys from Oakland have the technology to listen to scanner traffic, that is no ones fault but the drug dealers alone. No site that streams media wants their site to be used in criminal ways, but these guys could also have their own scanners streaming over the Internet without using a site that offers streaming scanners. There are some great sites out there that people have worked very hard to build a place where people for free can listen to scanner radio traffic in almost every State in the US and some foreign countries, this revelation should not be an issue of those types of sites, but should be an issue with the drug dealers who choose to use scanner software while in the commission of a crime which is a criminal offense.
I say keep the scanner sites up, and keep it public information, understanding that at times it is appropriate to block some traffic for certain circumstances, but not for 99 percent of the traffic.
Richard
If the best these criminals can do to listen to law enforcement is use an iPhone app, then they’ll get caught eventually. I do think it is important that law enforcement personnel KNOW these apps exist, but they are a HUGE difference between them and having a scanner. One issue is the DELAY between live and when you hear the sound on a phone (and the delay is not consistent).
Even if a criminal has a scanner, it is not going to automatically tell them where cops are or what they are doing. Clearly someone who has the profession of journalism has tried to oversimplify this extremely complex issue; there is a LOT more to it.
[...] of these links are discussed in this thread on RadioReference, started to call attention to an article describing a California police department which issued a [...]
If he were smart, he would have kept his mouth shut instead of “warning” and gotten warrants to track the gang members through the cellular telephone companies’ locational technology. The better title here is “Dispatch Magazine Warns of Technologically Impaired Police Chief.”
If the Police are that worried about their communications being intercepted:
–Promote legislation to make reception illegal as has been done with monitoring cellular phones.
–Use encryption.
–Switch to a system that cannot be currently monitored.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” –H. L. Mencken
If the criminal has a phone, even a plain one, someone back home with a scanner could relay the info by phone.
Here is a different one.
Posted 6/16/2010
Chesterton Tribune
Man charged with unlawful use of a police radio
A homeless man was arrested Tuesday on charges of unlawful use of a police radio and false reporting, Portage Police said.
Indiana Code 35-44-3-12 forbids a person from possessing a police radio unless specifically authorized to do so. Exceptions include law enforcement officers, a public service or utility company, those with amateur radio licenses issued by the FCC, a member of the news media, or a person “who uses a police radio only in the person’s dwelling or place of business.”
http://www.chestertontribune.com/PoliceFireEmergency/man_charged_with_unlawful_use_of.htm
Does anyone have the link to the Oakland Police Scanner feed?
Sensitive transmissions should not be in the clear, to begin with.
Since scanners are legal, so are scanner feeds to Smartphones.
I have this app on my phone it’s not illegal it’s on our phone for safety n I love it lol
The Communications Act of 1934 allows private citizens to own and operate radio receivers. To use the information obtained therein for criminal acts, however, is a violation of US Title Code and subjects the violator to possible federal prosecution. In other words, its OK to listen but not OK to use the information to escape authorities or commit crimes.