NZ Police Switch To Digital Radio

[Lokivoid]

@ChaffSort101

DES or even AES is quite easily bruteforced nowadays with GPGPU's, even a 128bit key can be broken within a day. Just all boils down to how much money someone is willing to invest into the task. As for the encryption changeing, its not a hopping encryption. OTAR issues Keys that are alternated from a generally small predefined list, the list never changes. These flaws make it easily broken just time consumeing until all keys on the list have been cracked.

[Lokivoid]

P-25 encrypted radios have some major security flaws. One is theres little warning if the information is encrypted to the opperator (this has lead to confusion and accidentently transmitting without encryption). Two due to how the encryption method works it makes it vary vulnerable to DoS jamming. Three P25 Encryption has the same generic flaws of DES encryption making extreamly vulnerable to brute force cracking.

[eas17dale]

by christ! speaking as a scanner enthusiast rather than a criminal. it is a joke. the money they have spent on this project. i am from the uK so forgive the knowledge boundary here. but come on mr new zealand prime minister. you have spent all this money. how about putting more fucking police officers on the street rather than pissing about with things like this. rant over lol

[BumJungle]

@bubzzc0la01 The cops in the UK dont use P25 they use Tetra. And in the US we use a different encryption algorithm on our P25 networks that your guys. Your guys use AES, we're still using DES III.

It IS NOT possible to listen into encrypted P25 digital transmissions unless you have an authorised terminal with the latest encryption key. Then you need a session key. So dont listen to anyone who recommends any specific scanners to listen in. Waste of money.

[COMMUNISTPHILOSOPHY]

pathetic fascists

[LonesomeTroubadour]

Too bad those damn crooks make it hard on us honest scanner listeners.

[phantomdbnz]

Encryped Radio is great for privacey but what about all the public who listen in and like to phone in TIPOFFS after hearing scanner info???????? does that mean there will be a $50 increase of actuall police work........ No more DONUTS boys............... LOL silly police

[Vk1FXJC]

they say that the criminals can no longer listen in, what they won't say is how many leads, over the years, they had because of people phoning in when they did hear something over the radio scanner. Its a case of security but also shooting yourself in the foot.

[feraltex]

Its a mess Dosn't work example ChCh Earthquake... See the ChCh Press Article of 28th March 2011 Police say waste of 22 Million. as its not suitable for NZ mountains etc....Still on old systwm in 2011 in the Tasman area. AP5 or APO25 can be heard If you have a one....They still use same frequencies even in Digital.

[BumJungle]

Wow - so many armchair technology experts so much poor information being spread around. P25, as an FDMA system, has excellent RF coverage compared to other digital radio technologies. Any issues with localised RF coverage blackspots will be due to poor RF planning not the technology itself. These black spots will slowly be filled in with repeaters. Happens everywhere in the world these new systems get deployed.

[feraltex]

Its a mess Dosn't work example ChCh Earthquake... See the ChCh Press Artical of 28th March 2011 Police say waste of 22 Million. as its not suitable for NZ mountains etc....Still on old systwm in 2011 in the Tasman area. AP5 or APO25 can be heard If you have a one

[thetrippin2]

the digital network wont last forever someone out there will no how 2 out smart them then they will have to find another way again

[dcentral]

Can't the new digital scanners out there pick up such radios? I'm not just talking about trunked 800mhz. Encryption doesn't mean unbreakable signal...

[feraltex]

@dcentral yes any new udiden with APO25 can receive them

[NZpolice107]

Well the Christchurch Police have changed over now :(

As of the 01/11/10 2200 hours

[A1nzfan]

@NZpolice107 Oh you serrious. Was only there 10 days ago scanning. Seems werid. Did they all change over at once?

[NZpolice107]

@A1nzfan Yip all Christchurch channels are gone! Rural and south/north Canterbury are still in operation tho.

[A1nzfan]

@NZpolice107 Bit of a shame really. But we all new it would happen some time. Wonder when auckland starts, must be bloody soon.

[nzmedic]

@A1nzfan Auckland has all but changed over now. Happened late last week. One minute it was there, the next it was gone. All the city, west and motorways channels are dead now. Oh well, we still have fire to listen to... for a while .. they will be joining the digital network at some stage as well.

[MrCryptica82]

here in the U.S. Most of the have go to either the Motorola Smartzone Type II or EDACS PRO VOICE Trunked radio systems and encrypted, you can still pick up a pretty decent bit an the county sherriffs and sometimes the state police, highway patrol on the 800 - 900 Mhz FM old systems though.

[2627mhz]

Look all of the communications updating is do to the goverment not wantin people to police the police.

[scotsfire]

we have somthing simlar here in the uk but its referd to as tetra ( airwaves ) radio it fail 1 night recently in scotland leeving haf of the fire services in scotland with no radio system crews had to rely on cell phones

[AdrianMX6]

And the system still doesn't work properly. Its full of bugs and outages. Should have stuck with Tetra

[fixdeluxe1]

You can still pickup with an IP tracking device or higher-band transmitter.

[eas17dale]

in west yorkshire here in england the police are currently using airwave digital radios. i believe they are digital but not encripted just unfortunately the digital scanner movement doesn't appear to have started over here. i watched the other video where someone said that there was all sorts of problems with the system with officers finding a 5 second delay before it connecting to the coms room. so does an officer have to die before they realise they have made a big mistake?

[TheStonedSlackerNZ]

This..... Is...... BULLSHIT!

[88ABRAMS88]

1:20 what was there?

[vinto34]

My scanner which belonged to my uncle is a J.I..L. SX-200 .He used to listen to the cops all the time on it.....check out the scanner on google images it was and still is a great scanner.

[vinto34]

i have an old 80s scanner and it is amazing what they pick up...for example cordless phones.

[A1nzfan]

haha the good old unrestricted scanners. Yea, i've just got a basic conventional uniden scanner that I've had for a while. It scans everything I want it to. I dont see the need for modern digital and trunking scanners in NZ. The fact is that at the moment you dont really need them because you can scan so much thats anolouge and conventional anyway. Not just the police that are going digital anyway.

[SnrSergntNEDDY]

@A1nzfan its easy to swap the reostat n radios n get ne frequencies ya like

[SnrSergntNEDDY]

the encryption cant be broken, jst like my nieghbours wifi coz i dont have the key

[shortbusdriver1969]

They should just have gone over to Airwave, tetra

even more secure and far more advanced

[A1nzfan]

I sort of agree. The tetra based systems do seem to be very good. But the New Zealand police and NZ defence force were going to use tetra way back in 1999 when we hosted the APEC world leaders confrence. But it was to unreliable back then &they scraped it after tait couldnt garrentee reliablity with the new technology. And after the U.S and Australian emergency services moved to P-25 the NZ police decided to follow. Nd im sure nz company tait manufacturing P-25 equipment helped the system along

[rich88uk]

@A1nzfan & @shortbusdriver1969

- In the UK we had a national commercial TETRA network in around 1998, but unfortunately the company that ran it got its figures very wrong and it went into administration, twice before disappearing.

- New Zealand's unique terrain no doubt had some influence in the decision to go P25 with it allowing the use of higher powered VHF and UHF terminals. TETRA makes more sense in densely populated areas and is very infrastructure heavy.

[tafftastic]

@shortbusdriver1969 Thats not true. Tetra has over the air encryption, P25 has end to end encryption. Huge difference. The Irwave system is an 'open' network, in that it's used by every man cat and his dog, while the P25 network in NZ is a closed network, which is only available to emergence services, initially only for the police, but likely to be made available to the fire service after some time.

[NZpolice107]

There will be a way to get around the network, just wait uniden will come up with a scaner than can decrypt it.

[A1nzfan]

Wish that would happen. But I very much doubt it, as uniden relies on the big radio companys to supply them with there technology, eg motorola give the likes of uniden the technical specs on there smartnet trunking systems so they can build it into some of there mid to higher end scanners. But secure networks are worth far more to the likes of motorola and tait etc than selling there there tech specs and rights to scanner manufacturers like uniden,icom etc

[rich88uk]

@NZpolice107

Sorry but Tait are making a big deal about the added encryption layer. It will be interesting to see if all agencies will be encrypted as I believe it adds more delay to call set-up times. Only time will tell.

[nzmedic]

@rich88uk

From what I have heard, most Police channels will be encrypted, but the Fire service won't be - no real need. I did hear that only units like drug squad, CIB etc would be using the encryption - the General Duties and Beat units would be digital but not encrypted - I guess it remains to be seen.

[nzmedic]

@NZpolice107

That won't happen. The security standard is DES encryption and I believe they are supported with rolling key technology. Even if you could discover the keys, they would change possibly every 5 minutes and it would take much much longer than that to crack the keys. Even the digital scanners will not give you decoded audio due to the encryption.

[tafftastic]

@nzmedic Triple DES in fact. So DES x DES x DEX = 137 billion possible session keys, and that changes every time a new call is setup

[wax333]

@NZpolice107 someone should route their scanner to a computer to try and decrypt the AES code

[tafftastic]

@NZpolice107 Wont happen. Encryption is one thing, but the thing that makes P25 particularly secure is the fact that is uses a 'key'. So while you can buy P25 air interface protcol analyzers today, unless you know the 'key' you still wont be able to decipher the comms.

[casperblackcat1975]

It will be interesting to see what happens when it comes to the media as news outlets listens to police scanners to get their police news.

[A1nzfan]

yea it will be. Ive noticed less police storys coming from wellington resently. But the police set up a media only website that they can log into and get police storys but the info is filtered and delayed. Which is not that helpful for the media

[DJBHills]

Just buy a digital scanner

[A1nzfan]

But its encrypted. Scanners can decode p-25 digital but not decrypt them if the network is secured. I wish it was that easy though

[tafftastic]

@DJBHills wont work. unless you know the encryption key and the anlyzer is specific to the P25 air interface protocol

[TheCaptainFaz]

They look like British Coppers

[chchdude88]

I do community watch so what will happen there?

Will we have to get new radios etc?

[A1nzfan]

Dont no. It would be interesting to find out. So far the police have been pretty apprehensive at letting outsiders listen or have access to the system. But on saying that they did mention that police AND some authorized people will have access so that may include you guys and possibly the fire service. But who knows. Im not that familiar with community watch groups. Do you currently work on regular police channels or have you own thats linked in with the police system?

[chchdude88]

Hello

We have access to the police channels

[A1nzfan]

Well I would be suprised if they denied you access. It would be stupid comprimising your safety just becasue of some power issues over the network from some of police managment. Well you shall know soon as the dead line is the november 2010 for the network to be inplace. If you do get access please let me know what its like to use first hand. I would love to know what the digital system is like to use minus the media hype :-)

[A1nzfan]

note: the november 2010 deadline is only for Auckland And Christchurch areas.

[haberdasheryipod]

Well the cops down here in Tauranga are still on the old system, I'll miss being able to listen into what's going on!

[A1nzfan]

Yea well its only deployed in the Wellington area at the moment. Next year it will begin its move around the country begining with Auckland and Christchurch. From there I dont no where the 4th place will be to get it. Maybe Waikato? But all I know is that its gona be sad not being able to listen like you say :-(

[NZpolice107]

Just go to Tait and buy one of the TP9100's off them. They would sell one to you!

[A1nzfan]

lol. If only it was that easy. You need the encryption unit and key which I dont think they could throw in the package.

[richardradio123]

Tait make good products, all new systems go through a period of testing and development, that's why they switch over in phases so that any bugs can be ironed out.

Tait are a home grown company that likes to build 'open' P25 systems, why not give them priority over Motorola who like to stuff their P25 systems with propriety features so the end users are forced to buy Motorola radios, then they have the cheek to call the system interoperable!

[A1nzfan]

Defiantly agreed. Motorola is renowned for there stupid propriety systems which sort of kills the whole idea of the P-25 system.

And the problems with Wellington and Hutt areas new P-25 systems haven't been as bad as some of the P-25 systems thats have been created in the likes of the U.S where the systems problems are so bad they have to shut there system down. Also Tait made sure there was a full month trial to iron out the bugs like you said. And its a Kiwi company!

[BigAussieBloke69]

Fuck Tait, I would of gone with Motorola.

LOL

[A1nzfan]

Well tait are an NZ company and have a good relationship with the police and NZ fire service etc, and have customised many products according to there needs in the past. But on saying that the police have started having problems with the new P-25 digital system (see video response) but I think all digital systems are going to have problems in the first few months, even with the experience Tait has had with P-25 systems installed in other countries.

[BigAussieBloke69]

Yeah I know what u mean, but i'm not saying their shit or nothing. I'm just saying that I would personally go with Motorola. And yes ur right all systems have problems, just look at the vids of Motorola in the US police forces, they had major fuck ups, but its fixed now. :)

[A1nzfan]

aaahhh the joys of digital. lol

[BigAussieBloke69]

LOL

[SNRMrogers]

The reason the number was blurred is because each individual portable radio has its own number so in the event one is stolen, the radio can be made obsolete so it will no longer work.

[m1ctkdave]

Is it legal then to listen in it is so in the UK anyway ro when we could now all gone to tetra digital radio

[A1nzfan]

yea. scanning must be pretty boaring now in the UK now. Its legal to listen to uncyrpted in radio transmissions from anywhere as long as you do not act on the information or comit a crime in nz. Thats the main reason theve gone digital. Is'nt it illigal to listen to anything other than public channels and amateur radio in the UK?

[A1nzfan]

yea it is a bit of a sad time for scanning at the moment. People think its terable that the police are going to a P-25 encrypted system as you can not scan then but they tend to forget that we here in nz at the moment are still lucky enough to be able to listen to fire,ambulance,rail,transport companies etc unlike you guys in the UK with the unscannable tetra system. It seems only us loyal scanners will be monitering soon as alot of people just listen for the police nd are opting out of scanning

[3233623]

There's usually a way to hear them still. I don;t know if its bull but I think a few of my cousins mate's have hurd the p-25 in town, In Kapiti we are classed in the wellington reagon so we to are on digital. I have to listen to palmerston north. Sad sad day.

[A1nzfan]

might not be bull.They may have been testing the system without the encryption just to see how it goes which can be recieved on a p-25 capable digital scanner. But yea it sad if you live anywhere in the wellington region. I imagen Auckland and Christchurch will be feeling the same next year.

[A1nzfan]

Tv3 have blured the number on the radio at 0:45 on later videos(see video responses) they have done using that footage for some reason. any one know why that mite be?

[armachamtc]

This is gay, i never used my scanner for anything illegal, just so me and m8s could c what they were up to.Best bust was a guy who was drunk and stoned and hadnt rego'd or warranted his car for 19 years!!!

[A1nzfan]

hahahahaha yea same here. Its crack up as some of the jobs they go to though.

[ExtremeFireRisk]

would you still be able to listen if you bought a Digital Scanner?

[A1nzfan]

Nope thats the point of the system. That even with new p-25 capable digital scanners you can't pick up the the audio due to the encrytion code on the channel that needs to be broken in order to listen. Which is highly unlikely to happen unless you have a ton of money, technology and time.

[ExtremeFireRisk]

This really pisses me off! Them damn Criminals are ruining it for us enthusiasts.

Now im gonna have to listen to Americans online.... GRRR

[A1nzfan]

yea tell me about it. Im gona really miss listening to the police for the hell of it. Its not just the incidents that are great to listen, but also you get a real insight into what the police do during a shift and how much work is accualy involved in policing. And the not so glamourous bail checks, stops and general radio chat etc. Something that the likes of motoway patrol don't show.

[armachamtc]

lol, where u go to do that? whats the link?

[ExtremeFireRisk]

For Live Air Traffic Control radio from all around the world (apart form nz, because its illegal to stream radio messages) google LiveATC. Message me if you want more info on ATC or other police, fire radio streaming

[BravoBigscreen]

I should have said the satellite reencryotion was cracked within days, not months. This is great NZ technology and I take nothing away from it.

[BravoBigscreen]

The COPACOBANA machine is able to decrypt DES relatively quickly. Although it cost USD $10,000 and has no currently viable port to desktop computers, it is possible with the exponential rise in computing power that such a decoding mechanism could be available for common usage within a short period. US satellite providers were sure their PPV streams were solid, too ; but they were cracked within months by Canadian Uni students. Digital power is everyone's power. More to come on this story, I bet.

[A1nzfan]

Yea its going to be interesting what lengths people will go to decrypt the frequencies. But its probably more likely an AES 256bit encryption code which is more secure than DES. But on saying that tait arent stupid and has an OTAR (over the air re-keying) system which the police will most likely be using, that can change the encryption code on all the radios on the channel from a single computer to keep the channel secure and hard to crack. :-(. Yes deffiantly one to watch.

[MrKiwionline]

Tait is Kiwi so this is good

[A1nzfan]

too right. Glad they chose the christchurch based company. Another good kiwi company that provides radio equipment all over the world.

[sparktastic1]

Oh dear, more digital crap!

I feel sorry for the poor buggers that have to work and listen to the poor audio quality that P25 offers, for 8 hours a day.

Lets see, P25 offers worse audio quality, worse coverage, more complex linking and base infrustructure, higher call setup delays and the radios cost three times the price. So,

remind me again, why are we the taxpayers buying these syetems? Oh yeh, thats right to support the Taits and Motorola's of the world!

Audio

[A1nzfan]

well funny you say that, as tv3 news tonight reveled that the system is having big problems in wellington.Police can't transmit for 5seconds after they press the talk button and the digital signal cuts out in the hills around the wellington and hutt region and also in concreate buildings. So its not as smooth sailing as they expected. A big sacrifice for some encyption code.

[sparktastic1]

P25 based systems are good for one thing only and that is voice encryption. P25 does not even offer any improvement in bandwidth efficiency and for those spruikers out there who say otherwise, imagine how bad the recovered audio quality is going to be when P25 goes to the proposed 6.25Khz channel spacing with it's even higher audio compression rates! P25 a dud. The call delays are unacceptable, the audio quality is awful to listen to and the fringe signal performance is dreadful..Wake up people.

[Chrism3fbp]

Here in England the Police, Fire brigade and Ambulance have moved to a nation wide encypted digital radio system. my scanner is very quiet these days :-(

Hope you can still find things to listen to guys.

[A1nzfan]

Yea that bloody TETRA network you poor guys have in the U.K. At least here in NZ at the moment Ambulance, Fire (dispatch and incident simplex channels) and many other services are still on analogue. But when the likes of fire move to digital, hopefully they will go to an unencrypted (they dont have any thing to hide like the cops) P-25 network which you are able to scan with a p-25 capable scanner. But it makes scanning a bit more difficult :-(

[Jackcc5]

What we Always have to Remember we can't beat them they always have the advantage on us always

[A1nzfan]

Yea unfortunately, but oh well scanning will go on.

[Jackcc5]

yea but it will be pointless if we can't listen to police that's the only reason i got a scanner

[LEOENFORCEMENT]

Good find...

Here in Texas will be making the move to the new P-25, also. All depts. must make the switch over by the year 2011.

[A1nzfan]

Yea similar story here In New Zealand and over in Australia I believe. Theres a push by police bosses and the police association to bring P-25 quick for officer safety. How many departments in Texas are already on P-25?

[LEOENFORCEMENT]

I only know of one town around me that is on P-25 now, but I would think a lot more are. Our dept. will have P-25 around the first of next yr.

[Jackcc5]

just found a article on google they cracked the key within 7 days but its illegal and it took a hell of a lot of money and work

[A1nzfan]

Yea I think I may have read that some where as well and there has been a suggestion that police should change the Encryption codes regularly. But the chance of that happening is probably low as it would be a pain to have to keep doing. And there are many different code types out there eg.DES, AES etc, as well. So you would have to ask your self weather its worth even bothering to try.

[TheFireRescue1]

Yea a bit sad for the good guys who listen in just for the sake of it.

[A1nzfan]

yea like me. The police don't seem to relise that. I've heard guys with scanners accualy helping police with locating people after theve heard the description on there scanner. But hay if it's going to lower crime, well then thats a good thing for everyone. still a year or 2 before they digitize my area though :-)

[wax333]

lol many years to crack he is full of it thats what they said about wep and wpa

now look its crackable in under 5mins so this will not be no different

[A1nzfan]

wouldnt get my hopes up as there rumours going around that tait have used a 256bit AES encryption key which is much more secure than wep or wpa. And they can change the key at anytime if it is broken, Which kind of sucks as I will miss listening to the cops for the hell of it.

[wax333]

bahaha will do :P

[Jackcc5]

they will how law radar detector's soon you watch and they will have Radar Detector detectors. to detect our radar detector's in our car's they are really going to fuck us over big time. i don't see why they just don't switch to channel 2 i can never here channel 2 can you?