NZ Police Switch To Digital Radio

The New Zealand Police have begun there move away from there current analogue radio channels and radios to a new Tait manufactured P-25 encrypted network that is near impossible to scan even with new P-25 capable scanners.

Currently only the Wellington region has the technology for general duties police work, but the technology is being released in Auckland and Christchurch next year before being rolled out across the country.

The Police want to have Digital radio in the main centres before the Rugby World Cup Here in 2011.

Tech stuff
The radio network is an American developed standard called Apco Project 25 (P-25) Digital system.

The P-25 standard is used mainly in North and South America, parts of Asia and Australia and now New Zealand for digital radio.

P-25 can be used with or without Encryption.
Only non Encryped P-25 can be scanned with a P-25 capable scanner.

Europe mainly uses a standard called TETRA for its digital radio for Emergency Services.

The radios have been manufactured by Christchurch based company Tait communications

The NZ Fire Service, Ambulance, Customs, MAF and Fisheries have all agreed to move from there analogue systems they run now to the new P-25 in the future although there have been no dates set for the change over for these agencies.

Advantages of digital two way radio
-Easy to encrypt
-Better sound quality
-Better coverage in City areas

Disadvantages
-Doesnt work as well as analogue in rural area when it comes to reception.
-equipment is more expensive
-Radios must be designed to the same, compatible standard
-Only one conversation at a time can occur on each channel (bad if a cop accidently sits on his radio talk button and then no other officers can get though)

UPDATE MARCH 2010: The New Zealand Fire Service are belived to be trialing the system with there own talk groups in Wellington. Looks like Fire will go encrypted (why?) and just piggy back off the police system like they do now in most areas.


If you have any questions or comments, both for and against the new digital system, please use the comments section as a bit of a forum if you want.
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Thanks and Full Credit to 3news for running this story.

http://3news.co.nz

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[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.

[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.

[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.

[SnrSergntNEDDY]

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

[SnrSergntNEDDY]

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

[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.

[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.

[COMMUNISTPHILOSOPHY]

pathetic fascists

[LonesomeTroubadour]

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