Does This Hack Mean You Can Listen To POLICE Radio?

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[@mbak7801]

I remember when you could pick up police communications on a standard 88->108MHz radio. I occasionally listened in and it was super useful. On one occasion a convict was on the run in the local area. A description was given with warnings. No other outlet carried any information whatsoever. Only be listening into the police could we have any idea what was going on.

[@OldCBnGuns]

In the states as in US more and more police going encrypted. Atleast I can listen to fire and ambulance still feel bad for the ones in the UK

[@drahtfunker]

Old radios with a mechanical dial were best to tune below 88 MHz. In the nineties in Germany there was a paging system right below the radio band and father below the fun began

[@hippopotamus86]

I wondered why I was able to hear helicopter pilots with an old radio. I had to turn the frequency knob slightly further than it was supposed to go.

[@Bond2025]

So do I - around 100MHz AM. They also used 154MHz AM by me for many years.

[@Bond2025]

WOW, lots of services used 88-108MHz as commercial radio never went past about 98MHz. British Gas used 106.2MHz AM. Fire Service used just below 88MHz, also AM.

[@no-damn-alias]

Meanwhile Germany police to this day uses analog radios. German armed forces recently ordered a batch of analog radios.....

[@bigdmac33]

I remember during the Northern Ireland Troubles in the '70s listening to Royal Ulster Constabulary radio transmissions. You could pick them up then at the upper parts of ( I think ) shortwave on a commercial radio set. I remember listening one night as army and police patrols were trawling a Belfast street trying to locate an active sniper. During the operation, you could hear the gunfire and you could also hear a police officer take orders from his colleagues for the local chippy. Never forgot that one!!🤣

[@Thewrighty543]

I lived next door to girdwood barracks and could listen to the Brit’s the odd time if I just got the frequency right . I’m no tecy was just a kid messing around ..

[@guywitharadio6043]

Got my hopes up then Lewis! It would be nice to hear them again.

[@andywilliams7323]

I remember the days before TETRA. My brother had a radio scanner and it was so easy for us to listen in to all the UK Police radio channels.

[@tommykarate5126]

I used to listen to my married neighbor talking to his girlfriend on his old mobile phone 😂the handheld bearcat scanner 👍

[@ukgamer9363]

@@tommykarate5126 ive still got a realistic scanner from back in the day. tandy used to sell them.

[@neilfoster814]

​@@tommykarate5126I used to listen in to late night mobile phonecalls too. Got to hear some REALLY juicy stuff back in the day!

[@jmr]

To find a purposely placed backdoor in a system this big is crazy and honestly it hasn't got much coverage outside the security community from what I've seen.

[@whatilearnttoday5295]

Wait till you find out about RSA and NSA. ;-)

[@Floppy-1235]

This is typical. Many security devices have this.

[@jmr]

@@Floppy-1235 I wouldn't call this typical. It's not the usual hard coded password left in to manage something. They actually downgraded security of all the keys.

[@JaSon-wc4pn]

Doesn't matter, corrupt cops just phone each other and leave their phones on loud speaker. So their corrupt chief can listen in during their unofficial harassment missions,

[@iammorg647]

There is no known back door in Airwave, assuming that’s what you mean by ‘A system this big’. Airwave uses TEA2, the 32bit rollback vulnerability was found in TEA1.

[@Choober65]

Just goes to show you the filth aren't there to serve and protect. In the US the radio is open so people can join in and help if needed but in the uk, the flith like to hide and think they are something special.

[@JohnKiller8622]

Very uneducated opinion. Have you ever heard of GDPR? every company in the UK by law has to oblige to it, Inc the police.

[@billienomates1606]

Although knowing how incompetent our government is when it comes to I.T. projects I would not be so sure in the next few years!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂😂🙃🙃🙃😉

[@mbak7801]

No not the government. Crapita (CAPITA) seem to win every project before screwing everything up, being years late, massively over budget and delivering a system not fit for purpose. You would almost think they have the Civil Service over a barrel.

[@barryrathbone]

In 1977 I had a new Honda Accord and it had an FM radio which at the time could pick up police transmissions. It was always an interesting listen here in Merseyside

[@SparkyTom1]

I saw that Optoelectronics R10 Communications Interceptor in the thumbnail! That was brutal for listening in on phone calls that used analog cellular. Nearly any call within sight could be listened in on. A lot of drug dealers had no clue that anyone could listen to their phone calls in Seattle in the 1990's.

[@hakology]

DECT can also be decrypted from what I remember you can only listen to one side of the call though, best you can do with analogue these days are baby monitors :D

[@boilerroombob]

Spot on sir

[@budprepper3811]

You can put a Motorola flip phone in to test mode and also listen in on analog phone calls.

[@sheerluckholmes5468]

Same with the Icom R1, it would listen to anything.

[@RevMikeBlack]

I don't know about Britain... but in the USA, signed non-disclosure agreements are worth less than the paper they're printed on.

[@majorkonfuzion1007]

Backdoor only available to CIA,FBI, CHINA,RUSSIA ETC....

[@v1-vr-rotatev2-vy_vx31]

Many Street auditors do this in the USA,,, we used to do this back in the 1960s....

[@washburn8049]

I was in the police force for 25 years and i honestly cannot state any instance that someone listening on a scanner had any detrimental effect on day to day policing. The interesting thing now though, you cant listen but the police just publish everything via social media, ie today we have speed van at what ever location. So either way we get to know whats going on. I recall when cb first came to prominance the authorities were saying it could be used for nafarious purposes, you just need a 10 quid burner phone now.

[@RevMikeBlack]

I'm glad we have a secured trunk system in the USA. I was a police chaplain for nine years before the system was implemented. The bad guys would monitor our radio traffic, then create diversions by phoning in false reports that would trick dispatchers into sending us on fake calls. In one situation , an officer and I almost got killed in an accident due to such a call. They can't do that with a trunk system.

[@ToddHa]

I have to agree here. I don't mind if the public listens to our transmissions. I admit, a more serious risk is from the news media flying their helicopters over an active crime scene (say, an active shooter situation). Where the shooter is walking around a crime scene and there are TV & AM/FM radios playing live coverage inside the perimeter of the incident. LE deploys their assets to strategic locations within or around a crime scene to ensure that themselves and the public are not in harms way. And the TV helicopter flying above exposes on LIVE TV where all of the police officers are located on the ground on live TV for everyone to see. This is why some agencies switch on the encryption. To keep the news media from being alerted early on in the incident so that LE can get their assets into position(s) long before the news media can dispatch crews or a helicopter to investigate. Sometimes LE has to call the TV station and order them to keep their helicopters out of the air space of an active crime scene. Lessons are sometimes learned the hard way. Agreed also that the public & news media will eventually find out through a public information officer or an official social media post from the PS Agency. This is quickly becoming the norm. I also have to acknowledge that sometimes the News Media Helicopter(s) may sometimes have useful information or be in the right place at the right time to help LE with vehicle and/or foot pursuits. Where the suspect(s) find a way to fall off the radar of LE. This has been the case in LA.

[@bobroberts2371]

Publishing the location of a speed van or having one visible on the side of the road accomplishes the goal is slowing traffic.

[@Fcreceptor]

@@RevMikeBlackI’m not sure what trunking or encryption has to do with phoning in false calls. If a criminal wants to divert traffic they don’t need a scanner to phone in bogus calls. I use to listen to local police daily for years and never once heard anyone using scanners as a diversionary tactic. That’s total bullshit.

[@micjubba709]

​@RevMikeBlack do u mean p25 scanners can decode that alreadly prob a few more year it will be hacked into encryption keys found and cracked with sdr software also

[@knoxieman]

Good video Rog, Tetra will almost certainly be cracked at some point, I've a good friend who's quite a senior copper and he says he uses his police mobile phone more than the radio, I can remember listening in to the cops as a kid and never heard anything particularly of interest, if it does get hacked the UK gov won't be able to afford to change the radios but they will move any sensitive stuff over to mobiles, I guess the big danger might be ppl impersonating police in order to gather information such as the address of ppl or registered owner addresses of car reg plates etc.

[@highpath4776]

The most tricky place , argueably, might be Police Service of Northern Ireland.

[@TheMatthooks]

There's a whole new system in the pipelines that does exactly that. It moves everything onto digital mobile phone networks and smart phones. It was due to be available this year but has been pushed down the line to 2026 last I heard.

[@MrHabati]

security by obscurity. when properly secure encryption algorithms are used, there is no need to keep secret which algorithm is used.

[@glenjarnold]

I remember vividly listening into the emergency services during the riots of 1981.

[@franktuckwell196]

When i updated my vhf receiver on my stereo system, in the 1970s i used to pick up, taxi cabs and heard the Balcombe Street Seige ( the embassy raid) on it, so i must have been lucky. I didn't replace it until i moved in with my then fiance, later on wife in about 2000.

[@raystewart6524]

Frank..Balcombe street was a different op..the Embassy was Princes Gate..Op Nimrod

[@boilerroombob]

Great video Lewis we all miss listening to the law.....the only civilian tetra police receiver I know of is in the cctv control room of the local council.....boy I wish I could take it home 😅

[@dasy2k1]

Yeh although I did hear of somone who ended up with an accidentally lost police radio. They called 101 and we're told to bring it into the station the next day but apparently the message didn't get through... That evening their door was put in with the big red key as a dozen armed response officers with an emergency Warrant were sent to recover the radio (tracked using it's inbuilt GPS location tracking)

[@user-bh1oy8kj5q]

@@dasy2k1 wow scary

[@jplacido9999]

​@@dasy2k1 Ignorant person. Battery of would do it... But only a specialist would take advantage of a lost police radio. And yes, TEA2 radios have been clonned and the guy got away with it (police and FCC equivalent agency never catched him). Backbones are the main source of 3 letter agencies intercepting everything...

[@user-cw4io5cd5m]

We all knew the answer would be no but HAD to watch it anyway.

[@MikeWestBastion]

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear. Well, thats what they keep telling us.

[@mehballflickbean]

The police obviously need to hide communications. Imagine OCGs knowing their every move and the massive data protection issues with anyone lisenting to person details/criminal records etc! It's common sense.

[@eadweard.]

Who tells us that?

[@stackersmbe852]

Would you like your personal information being listened in on if you ever needed the emergency services? The transmissions are all recorded and auditable so don't look for conspiracy theories where there are none.

[@daviddavidson2357]

@@stackersmbe852 What personal information gets transmitted by radio? It's just used for dispatch and asking for assistance. Police radio in the US can be listened to anyone with a scanner, or scanner app on their phone. You can get one and listen in. If you contact EMS they're not going to radio out your name and other personal details. Just that they are needed at an address and maybe the details of an injury if it's an ambulance. As for "recorded and auditable" so members of the public can get the recordings? Auditable by whom? Somehow I feel like it'll be auditable by the police themselves so it's a case of "we investigated ourselves and found no evidence of wrongdoing" as is the usual case. We need some openness within our police system and society in general. The UK is quickly slipping into soviet like conditions.

[@daviddavidson2357]

@@mehballflickbean Listening to criminal records? You think that is broadcast over handheld radio? As I've said above, police dispatch radio is openly available for the public to listen into in most of the United States. It's even broadcast online or through scanner apps. How often do you hear of serious data breeches from that? If I pay taxes to employ these police I don't want to have their activities shrouded in secrecy. Our government is currently trying to get rid of encryption for public use (apps like signal, telegram etc) if we can't have it (and have only really had it easily accessible for the past 7 or 8 years) then the police certainly shouldn't have it. They're public servants, not MI5.

[@JDOTVegas]

Las Vegas police encrypted their radios after the Sheriff was called out about police traffic not matching up with the big Mandalay Bay shooting.

[@Sam-bz1hr]

used to love my scanner

[@captainscarlett1]

I used to work in law enforcement and our radios could listen to anyone, local cops, feds, anyone. The encryption keying was never changed. For a crim it just meant getting your hands on a radio and you too could listen to everyone.

[@owensmith7530]

Once it is known a particular TETRA radio is lost it can be prevented from accessing Airwave (or any other network) in a variety of ways.

[@ramjet4025]

Amazing explanation. It may also be incredibly easy. In other countries, "interoperateability" means they have to go plain digital rather than codes just so they can talk to each other. The British government still lives in the past when it comes to radio secrecy etc, and odds are they will opt for privacy over the ability to operate.

[@user-yn7ll3qz1p]

Interoperability does not mean what you think it does, it means the government are forced to use specific systems depending on what the masters in Washington and Tel Aviv tell them...

[@rEdf196]

Back in the fall of 1985 in Vancouver Canada, there was an major world headline incident involving police scanners where the some Vancouver police drug squad were doing a hit on some drug dealers house who had several VHF scanners tuned to the same VPD frequencies, but the dealer was already aware he was the target and when the police entered he blasted one cop pointblank with a shotgun until another officer shot the dealer dead. The other one head officer also died from the dealers gun assault as well. This was front page news all over Canada and the US and Europe. I was already a huge police listening scanner enthusiast myself, but after that ! I knew future encryption was just a matter of time. I do still listen to VHF aircraft and local fire dept, Highway Crews, railroads and HAM but I did completely lose interest in police monitoring by the mid 1990's, it felt like, at that time I was in a lifeboat and there's my beloved RMS Titanic with her bow getting a little lower, and lower still. Today all radio police frequencies are encrypted using digital P25enc and Pro-Voice

[@davidburton2732]

Plus the fact that Tetra is due to be superceeded anyday now (which is a bit of a joke as it is already years behind schedule)🤣

[@Bluelagoonstudios]

When analog, security services were upset that radio rooms used the net for getting food. And people could listen the menu from their day. 🤣

[@davidburton2732]

@@Bluelagoonstudios Pre -Tetra in the late 90's, our bugbear were the Dutch trawlers in the North Sea in the early hours on UHF. We could talk over them, but it was a pain. Apparently it was more of a hinderance to the Control Room, than it was to us lot out and about.

[@pjohnwilliams6941]

I miss listening to the plod back in the day on 400mhz i think it was, beep,beep,beep good old days

[@james-5560]

It would be fascinating to listen to, I think I'd be listening all the time just to be nosey and see what's going on in the local area.

[@colinreece3452]

Years ago as mentioned you could, used to hear all the local comings an goings, it was interesting a lot of the time, as already said though most people like myself just listened out of interest but the criminals it was an early warning system, if they were up to something they knew to get away quick, they used handheld scanners to listen.

[@paulsengupta971]

The only time I listened was when the police helicopter was out. I could then listen to both the police frequency and the ATC frequency to try and figure out what was going on.

[@MMID303]

I used to listen to my dad on the police scanner all the time. The last year he was on the force they went encrypted.

[@jesselton5648]

I remember vhf emergency radio in the UK and it was fun to listen to the police as you could tell thay were doing something not sat on there ass!!! Like it is now

[@01cthompson]

I suppose itmay have already been breached and the breacher has stayed quiet. Many years ago the Washington DC police used non digital encryption on their radios. Then they discovered that people could make very cheap descramblers with parts from Radio Shack.

[@Berkeloid0]

Presumably the backdoor was to allow government agencies to listen in to commercial broadcasts, so makes you wonder how many organised crime outfits with connections and money got hold of that same tech to listen in on the police. Or maybe they just got copies of whatever keys the police were using and listened in that way...

[@ZGryphon]

And now we know the real reason Radio Shack was driven out of business! #TinfoilHatModeEngaged

[@modtwentyeight]

@@ZGryphon There's always Digikey. 😉

[@sholtodepuma]

I remember hearing the police on the kitchen radio in the early 90s

[@owensmith7530]

Typical that it was a Motorola radio that the algorithms were extracted from. Motorola and TETRA have always been uncomfortable bedfellow.

[@AkiraHDR50]

I would have loved to hear the talk from one time i was driving to work and saw 10 police cars driving to a location i didn't know about until i read the local news on the internet on my break about a mad Arab situation.

[@Jack-hk4nn]

If I recall correctly, an 8 bit key was in use in some cases (not the U.K.) - and the algo wasn’t really battle tested, rather security through obscurity

[@dasy2k1]

Currently the only police traffic you can reliably hear is the police CCTV control room speaking with various retail security via the shop watch radio systems. My local one is digital (DMR) but not actually encrypted and perfectly recieveable with DSD+ or even my anyone DMR radio

[@AndrewMurphy1]

I used listen to this all the time in my city before I moved to Canada. Theres some interesting things out here too. Biggest difference is the emergency services use P25 instead of Tetra. I don't think anyone has managed to break that yet either.

[@DJIInLondon]

What DMR radios work on amazon mate?

[@AndrewMurphy1]

@@DJIInLondon any DMR radio will work. Most of these systems are usually UHF however you'll need to know the talk groups and colour codes. I have the Retevis RT8 and with custom firmware you can monitor all talk groups. The way to find these out however is with an SDR and DSDPlus

[@nlckolteen]

@@AndrewMurphy1 I've got a Beofeng DMX DM 1702 config that can listen in on all CC's and TG's on a couple of RX's at the same time. I use it to listen in on the local pub watch and shop watch chatter and some local businesses and the taxis (some taxi companies still use radio rather than mobiles). You hear some interesting things, especially on the weekends. Back in the day, I loved earwiging on the police before they went to TETRA. Yes I get the need for encryption, but it was good to hear what was happening in and around your local area. USB dongle, some software and an aerial can help yourself find active channels, there are some good DMR sites out there that also update channel info.

[@mpol701]

I use anytone handheld can't recall model number but mostly sds100 sds200 ubc3600 uniden scanners lots of good stuff out there and still a fair bit of analogue as well, fire uhf still use analogue and dmr, always good to hear them still, then as said police and pcso on shop watch, pub watch cctv nets at times as well

[@csrrjefflloyd6496]

The back door from a hypothetical standpoint might be how the villain in the James Bond movie, “Spectre” was able to blow up the MI6 headquarters natural gas system.

[@captaincat1743]

I knew several criminals who were using scanners to monitor the police back in the 1990s. Of course the Drugs Squad were never stupid enough to use the targets' names or addresses over the radio before doing raids. It would always be code words, but the uniforms who often went on the raids as support to DS and CID would sometimes be stupid enough to let information slip over the airwaves, such as their location and this gave the dealers a clue what was happening, giving them time to take some mitigating action. The police scanner was standard furniture in every drug dealers house alongside digital scales and various weapons back in the 1990s and there was a pretty good reason for that.

[@RT-qd8yl]

I monitor my statewide P25 network daily and have for years ever since it started going online, and more and more agencies are starting to use full encryption. It's a scary thought to imagine soon police in the US and in my own hometown will have absolutely no civilian oversight... I hope we happen upon a miracle sooner or later. Listening to the proprietary channels has shown that an awful lot of them don't have our best interests in mind...

[@Fcreceptor]

Many cities are still in the clear, but some places have established expensive systems that are part of a network. A lot of California agencies are still on analog radio, and California has the money and ability to go dark. Their mountains/terrain have made using digital system difficult. My city is large but rather open and we still have garbled transmissions from digital that would have been clear on analog. A lot of our local traffic is also encrypted but we also utilize a lot of CAD (computer aided dispatch) and now 5G. The greater Phoenix area will soon be a total dead zone for scanner traffic.

[@larryward3876]

Now there’s a surprise

[@user-yn7ll3qz1p]

There is no oversight, NATO regimes are the new fascism...

[@stuartjohnston7364]

Your outro music always gets me groovin' man! A1 video

[@ChrisW2024]

here in new zealand i have been listening to my local police in my town on a baofeng uv5 handheld radio

[@arunta5]

That's because its UHF and not diigital yet (and encryped) like Police radio in Australia. Probably a funding issue until they change over eventually.

[@OxfordShortwaveLog]

Hi Lewis, I used to listen in all the time when I was a kid! Another great vid. 73

[@John-hk8ek]

Had a uniden barecat trunk tracker scanner back in the day could pick most of the met police with it good times

[@eddiejones.redvees]

When I first started working for GPO now openreach in 1980 most of the gang wagons had two way radios fitted so we could keep in touch with the local office and theme use just in case something went wrong with the network for instance some one may be digging and go through a trunk cable or pole my be knock over but most of the time it would be used to book a late lunch just In case one the boss spotted you some time in the 80s we were told to stay off them because they were Interfering with the Emergency services they were removed from all the vehicles and were given pages then mobile phones

[@user-bh1oy8kj5q]

Nice aerial view of Brookway Court at 2:17. Good stuff!

[@RingwayManchester]

Well spotted

[@sonyp180]

How to write this without implications to myself😂. A "friend" was and still interested in radio scanning but less so nowadays. For reasons unknown when Essex police helicopter is out. You can hear them on analogue VHF. But a few times they had talk through enabled where you could hear Tango units (traffic units in chase) assumed relayed through the helicopter. Last time i heard this round a "friends" was about 2014

[@chockeypucks24]

lol it’s so funny they encrypt their…nothing at least in my town. I mean if only encrypt stuff if I had something to hide like a fake police job in a town with no crime. They don’t want to let us know they’re just chillin.

[@mehballflickbean]

UK Police use TEA 2 encryption. Even if this is eventually cracked... they'll be on ESN (4G) soon.

[@wisteela]

Or 5G

[@jplacido9999]

That is way more vulnerable than Tetra....😂

[@jplacido9999]

@@wisteela 👍👍

[@fraggit]

I remember the good old days in the 70s, 80,s and 90's when you could listen to many emergency services, mobile phone and security radio with a Realistic scanner. You could even listen to the police with an ordinary FM radio in the early 80s I used to live in south London and could pick up Heathrow airport security handhelds, which was mostly boring. Some of the best ones were listening to the Wimbledon tennis TV talkback and hearing the colourful language of Des Lynam, and other presenters, between live broadcasts, I wish I'd recorded them. Also listening to the mobile phone frequencies, like the time a woman had nicked her husbands car because she'd discovered him in bed with another woman and him trying to convince her to come back. Most of the mobile phone traffic was as boring as when I was a BT engineer overhearing conversations while working on the network. Listening to the car chases of the Metropolitan police were good though, I do miss those days,. I moved to the Isle of Man in 2002 expecting to be able to listen to their emergency services, only to find they'd gone over to Tetra, most disappointing.

[@winstonchurchill6506]

Billions it's only our money then i demand a radio

[@andie_pants]

Luckily most of the LE channels around here are unencrypted P25. Love listening in with sdrtrunk!

[@jplacido9999]

Unenkrypted P25 has great audio

[@stephenjones9153]

There 1 thing that always surprised me is when you drive past local Banks there Printer's come up on my phone's Bluetooth just waiting to be hacked into by Scammers. 😱Crazy.

[@m7trsradio]

Lewis this is such a shame. I used to enjoy a Friday and Saturday night on the scanner with the police in the north west.

[@Britfood]

I remember being able to listen to The Northumbria Police on a standard FM radio in the early 80s. It’s what got me into scanners.

[@megamanfan3]

Hacking any system just means that there are still plenty of flaws in the security.

[@arunta5]

IN NSW (Australia) Police use encrypted digital I think its Apco-25 based and secure. They have their own system and do not use the GRN network used by most other state agencies.

[@DJIInLondon]

Lol as kids playing dares, making somebody do a prank call at a phone box under CCTV and the others listening in to see if they got caught or not :) Was fun times indeed. Yes people did get caught lol

[@dougle03]

Depending on which underground channels you listen to, Tetra was cracked a number of years ago and anyone with the right amount of money can and do get access. Money will always talk no matter how clever the technology is. State sponsored espionage is just as rife today as it's ever been and Tetra is but one casualty in a long list of such false safety nets...

[@user-yn7ll3qz1p]

yep, the cracks are all online... it was not just one backdoor either...

[@4258678742]

you have always been legally allowed to listen to emergency broadcast but not legally allowed to act on that information

[@RingwayManchester]

In the UK it’s always been illegal to even listen

[@mpetrovic030]

I really doubt that the technology that is 20+ years old only has a few flaws that are getting constantly fixed, while the tetra itself is being broadcasted in the air 24/7 and you can't protect it's hacking like on the internet where you can lock account against bruteforcing, for example... Also, sky app which claimed that your conversations will be deleted after 24 hours and were supposed to be end-to-end encrypted has been hacked and those conversations are now used in courts. And in the end, someone wants to tell me that in the current war Russians can use tetra radios set to one password, Ukraninans to another and everyone can go ahead with his business?

[@BobHannent]

I long speculated if you could use an SDR array to map the instantaneous data from the Tetra terminals. Providing a map of where the emergency services were

[@DJIInLondon]

Yes its being sold already in car units,

[@BobHannent]

@@Antenna101 the last time I checked, the Kraken SDR can't do positioning on instantaneous pulses, it's a limitation that was widely discussed. Although they did say they'd look at improving it.

[@virtualizeeverything]

it is truly sad that the gov can and fells the need to hide from its people

[@MementoMori-xx5qo]

The radio is encrypted because the main thing that is transmitted is victims and offenders addresses, and updates from jobs relating to those people. The general public have no business nor right to any of that information.

[@matthewday7565]

The dangers of security through obscurity, if knowing the algorithm compromises security, then there is something wrong with with the algorithm .. or the key

[@EvDelen]

The schadenfreude from the very police agencies that advocated for backdoors in public encryption being hit by a backdoor in their encrypted communications is delicious.

[@ElectricityTaster]

The easiest way to listen to Tetra is to watch youtube videos of auditors getting in trouble with the police. You can then hear the police speaking into the walkie. It is not encrypted when they speak into it.

[@owenmccullagh3462]

There is always a back door system left in any computerised system so as to allow the technicians get into any secure network to allow them to fix any problems - it’s like you having a key hidden outside some where you know it is just in case you loose your door key.

[@sootyjared4208]

I was waiting for this video when this was announced, a few years ago some ‘questionable people’ were trying to find a way to break it so that they could listen on the police for raids on weed farms. They couldn’t get past the encryption however.

[@jamiemoo2000]

The UK EMS Airwave Service use the TEA2 encryption algorithm which is extremely secure with all of the authentication protocols in place.

[@scousedavies565]

It has nothing to do with encryption etc. The principles of a Trunked Radio system mean that subscribers (portable/mobiles etc) have to enabled and allowed onto the system. If you are not in the database and enabled, a Push To Talk will get you nowhere. You will not be allowed onto the system. ex Motorolan (25 years, including the roll out of the Airwave system plus many others across Europe).

[@wisteela]

But is that the same for receive?

[@georgeprout42]

​@@wisteelayes. I was involved in a roll-out and would process them in batches of a dozen or so. They display No Service and are effectively bricked, until they're authorised onto the network. Any that weren't collected I'd get deactivated again. Paperweights. The policy for a lost or even misplaced radio was to immediately report it so it could be rendered inactive. It takes seconds to enable or disable at the operator console. Integrity of the network was far more important than "wasting" an operator's time. Complacency almost certainly would have crept in, but the theory was good. It was a sad day when I had to radio in my own code for deactivation. I had access to way more channels than most, including the ability to make international phone calls 😂

[@digital4282]

@@georgeprout42 It is not the same case for receive. If that was the case companies like Uniden and Whistler wouldn't exist. If the RF is sent out unencrypted there isn't anything at all keeping anyone from listening to it.

[@wisteela]

@@georgeprout42 Great stuff 👍

[@georgeprout42]

@@digital4282 Well obviously the RF is there for anyone to sniff. But the deactivated handset won't help you. Good luck following the particular packets of encrypted voice/data (same thing these days really) that you want to eavesdrop on. Not to mention E2E encryption if calling another handset directly (if they use that facility. We often did, saved a fortune on phone calls)

[@ericmoeller3634]

in my country the USA we can listen to our police department radios as long as it is not a encrypted digital signal if it is analog or a unencrypted digital signal it 💯 legal to listen hell my town i live in dont even use a digital signal at all its analog idiots or they don't care

[@minibikemadman]

our city police still has 2 non encryped vhf channels i know they have encrypted stuff but still cool to hear a small amount of thier chatter.

[@Boodieman72]

Where there is technology, there will be hackers.

[@Fcreceptor]

You can’t hack AES 256 bit encryption, and that is what is now in use almost everywhere.

[@Boodieman72]

@@Fcreceptor You can hack anything given enough time, or just getting lucky. Having the radio in hand would make it a lot easier than trying to decrypt just a message where you don't have one of the keys.

[@aidentaggart1037]

Wish there was a way to listen to P25 stations in the U.S

[@NichoTBE]

You can still listen to cops in the USA but not Europe it seems.

[@csrrjefflloyd6496]

Not true. The county sheriff where I live switched to an encrypted system several years ago. As far as I know, no scanners can decode it.

[@nunyabusiness9013]

No digital security is 100%. As Dr Raid once said, "Any box can be popped with the right resource."

[@Zodliness]

YAY! We can tune into 'corruption live' again! 🤔😉

[@BamaChad-W4CHD]

Our emergency services went to p25 here. A huge interop system. I hated the switch. I enjoyed the cheapest of scanners being useful for fire, police and ems. A cheap sdr and some serious reading can easily turn a computer into a p25 scanner at least. P25 radios and scanners are pretty expensive. Like 400 and up. Luckily the sdr dongles can decode most of the digital modes. It's simple for police to send encrypted traffic when needed so I can see why they started using it. The coverage is pretty much one hundred percent for their radios now and that has to be nice for them. My local first responders still keep the old uhf and vhf frequencies as well. They keep them as a backup I imagine. The p25 network wouldn't be very useful if the power grid went down for a long time.

[@Flipdrivel]

3:55 "P0LICE" 🤣

[@mariaviklund4546]

What you failed to mention is that the TEA1 encryption is only used by commercial users. Governments uses the TEA2 or even higher encryptions and those has never been breached, and never will. What those researchers managed to "hack" is on par with figuring out the correct ctcss tone. TEA1 is the absolute bare minimum of encryption.

[@VaporheadATC]

We saw alot of our systems here in the US go to this trunked method after 9/11. No more listening to police, etc. Really stinks.

[@JosephRedfern]

I’ve not watched yet, but reckon Betteridge’s Law of Headlines might apply here!

[@eadweard.]

Not heard of that law. But is it similar to "Great historical questions to which the answer is no"?

[@JosephRedfern]

@@eadweard. indeed! It’s something along the lines of: “any headline that ends with a question mark can be answered with ‘no’”!

[@mattbates6887]

We really don't want anyone unauthorised in the UK, listening to emergency services communications on a scanner or otherwise. Times are very different now, to what they were in the 70s and 80s, when listening to emergency services comms was relatively easy, and didn't result in a threat to national security like it would these days. Interesting video, brings back a few memories, when you could listen to the police on the VHF FM broadcast band as it was then way back in the 70s.

[@mpol701]

We had a big fire recently near me had 5 channels in use mix of dmr and analogue

[@nicholasr39]

It became O2 Airwave after BT demerged its mobile phone business

[@owensmith7530]

It's not a backdoor! TEA1 has to meet export restrictions so the algorithm for that weakens the key to meet late 1990s restrictions for export anywhere in the world. Blame the politicians, it wasn't someone technical sneaking a backdoor in.

[@tocsa120ls]

Honestly I am surprised it took this long to crack it. It's not a satellite encryption so it's not as ...financially interesting I guess.

[@poggs]

Apologies if I'm talking complete crap, but the 'trunked' part of TETRA plays a part in its security here - if there's no handheld on the talk group you want to listen to on the cell you're monitoring, there's no way to listen in. Not all talk groups are broadcast from all sites at all times!

[@Subgunman]

I know that in the USA any encryption standards that are currently in use and those under development have back door keys that have been available to the NSA from day one of release. This is a mandatory law that very few individuals know about. Now as for the Big M, years ago they established a R&D facility in Israel and had a small manufacturing facility in Ramallah. They closed the manufacturing facility but kept the research division. Guess what the specialty of the research department is? This division Carries the Big M name but is a independent subsidiary of M. Therefore this division does not have to release back doors to the alphabet security center in the US. Sweet eh?

[@peegee213]

Not much TETRA here in the US. P25 both phase I and II and MOTOTRBO Also still alot of conventional. Plenty to still listen to here... for now

[@steveng5503]

Was said Nagra3 (for example) could not be “successfully worked” in a similar manner as your topic here suggests, however it was and is. Successfully so. EVERYTHING is designed with a “back door”. Always for engineering purposes and discoverable with more than one depending on the complexity which in turn determines the amount of vulnerabilities. The deciphering of encrypted signals or data streams is not the vulnerability… the “back doors” however are. When an operational piece of kit lands at a determined mind and one which has knowledge (and “equipment”) of such “technologies”, then time is the only obstacle. This is the reason why such pieces of kit, as shown in your video are always “decommissioned” before being destroyed in a controlled fashion at end of life… usually by the manufacturer who own the “kit” along with the software. That’s the paranoia of the “game” and one that shall always exist as long as us monkeys exist. That’s in our nature and why we are progressive and beautiful living things.

[@Aviator747a]

I am really not surprised with this at all. Even with the old N2 cards, alternate providers were setup on the cards to allow access back into the cards after they were provider locked. The people who figure it out are a lot more tight lipped as they don't want wildfires again. It's not like the dishnewbie and iid discussion days.

[@Johnyrocket70]

Someone should file a lawsuit. There's laws in the US that for freedom of information and public oversight. I can understand police detectives or special weapons teams having encryption but main dispatch should stay public. A lot of US police are changing to encryption. I live in a large city of almost a million people so the police frequency is on the business band you can hear with a Baofeng. It woke cost millions to change all the police radio's.

[@petermainwaringsx]

From listening since the sixties, most of the traffic was for "domestics" and as such, dead boring. 😴 I suppose now it's for misgendering somone in a Tweet.

[@snakezdewiggle6084]

Cheerz Lewis. Very interesting. Anything made by man ...

[@rath6599]

A British encryption algorithm called TEA1? o_O

[@nottjohn9418]

How many will be patched though? Just because patches may be made available doesn't mean they'll be implemented.

[@kingsbury26]

So we still have Chinese involvement in critical infrastructure through Motorola. This is the real vulnerability that needs addressing. I wonder if it will happen.

[@Porty1119]

Motorola Solutions is not Chinese. They sold their consumer electronics business line to the Chinese, but not the two-way radio line.

[@kingsbury26]

@@Porty1119 Thank you, I didn't know that.

[@danj3789]

I remember the move over to TETRA, it was a couple of years after I picked up a decent radio for airspace monitoring but soon ended up listening to other things. Great days, was sad when it changed but was for the best in the whole scheme of things.

[@qorrro]

The OpeanEar app for Windows has a tetra demodulator. Is that not enough to listen to tetra transmissions?

[@user-do7jy7lo6f]

Has it ever really bin that hard to listen to the police radio broadcast I use to listen in when I was a kid all I had was a walkie talkie

[@edwardcullen1739]

Keeping the encryption algorithms "secret" is a red flag - encryption should be robust enough so that it's still secure even if an attacker knows what it is. There aren't many encryption schemes and they could probably have worked out it was TEA1, just by brute-force. 🤷🤦‍♂️