Dave The Web Guy
Great Balls Of Non-Encrypted Fire
12/14/2022
Encryption if it is an available technology is tough to de-justify. The best justification for not encrypting in American law enforcement is that open broadcasting was part of the original fabric of police radio communication technology.
Early AM radios were capable, indeed marked with tuning guides, to specifically tune into city wide police broadcasts.
You bought a floor radio and it was expected that you would be able to listen in to police calls as easily and directly as you would to Amos N' Andy.
However unintentionally and however wrought by lack of technical sophistication this was possible, it's because of this that open public safety broadcasting has been a fundamental component of policing, reflective of our culture's commitment to individual liberty and our angst against the potential for government tyranny and totalitarianism, for most of time.
There are excellent reasons to not encrypt if you first accept American exceptionalism as a real thing in terms of freedom and liberty.
Any other nation on earth with the technology to encrypt its public safety communication would logically and immediately seek to do so -- assuming affordable. The same cultural consideration we have in the USA simply doesn't exist to such level elsewhere. Even early UK radios probably had the ability to listen in to police calls, but they never had the American spirit that led to us splitting up from them in the first place.
Open public safety communication is one of America's unappreciated birthmarks. It makes little sense to foreign countries who balk at our liberties and independence. I would expect encryption to swell within all other nations, but I would expect the fight to NOT encrypt to roar in the United States.
Like anyone reading this, I am not optimistic. What I have concluded and what I am now promoting is a flat-out balls-to-the-walls replacement for police scanning, which would involve the evolution of a parallel human network of enthusiasts, working journalists, activists, and good people roaming or spotting in their cities and regions, and reporting on public safety drama in a very concentrated and channeled way. These spotters would have their own openly broadcast radio network that would be scannable by regular people everywhere and anywhere.
Regurgitation of my post in a Radio Reference thread. Please review my regurgitation policy.
By Dave for for BuffScan.
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Giving Local Media Police Radios Resolves Nothing
05/07/2022
One of the most bizarre compromises to emerge between public safety officials and open broadcasting advocates in some areas, is the idea of giving designated media houses access to encrypted police communications, but not to what they consider the general public.
While such a compromise somehow feels apt given the supposed professional foundation of the mainstream media and of the people who work within, the premise collapses instantly on the idea that the mainstream media can somehow be trusted more in principle to never sensationalize or to somehow commodify the police radio traffic they maintain privy access to.
Sensationalize and commodify are what they do.
All these types of agreements would likely wind up doing is creating an alignment between government officials and local brokers of the news, with access to the police radio traffic turning into the "currency of compliance" between them. If the local sheriff finds himself bothered by a probe into its practices by a pesky reporter for a newspaper, for example, that sheriff might find it all too easy to "de-classify" said newspaper as a legitimate media outlet, and pull the newspaper's plug. The newspaper would be at a significant disadvantage against its media processing competitors.
There's that, and then, there's the outdated presumption that anyone operating a media center is doing anything exceptional anyway. In 2022 everyone is a journalist, and those we would deem journalists it turns out, are just people. Vulnerable, greedy, and biased.
Giant media houses are just profit-suckers who happen to present a more polished and frequently agitating tweet than your crazy uncle might. Filled with cheap-to-produce superficial insight and biased interpretations and positions which are often designed to invoke ever-profitable conflict, it makes zero sense to make every city and jurisdiction dependent on them for information.
By Dave for for BuffScan.
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Replacing Police Scanning With Human Networks
05/07/2022
Public safety radio moving to encrypted systems has left me trying to self-formulate and explain what a replacement for public monitoring looks like. I have yet to articulate an idea well, let alone document it. And, unfortunately, I have to assume that's because I haven't yet imagined or conceptualized a solution well first.
What I do have are a loose array of outlines going in one direction or another, with the idea that most excites me being that of a human-based reporting network. That is to say, I hope that as average people lose the ability to eavesdrop on police or fire radio signals, they will form human networks of radio teams that "patrol and report", spotting on and contributing to local newsfeeds in real-time of various sorts and platforms. Digital tools for that exist today in off-the-shelf social media tools like Twitter and other platforms, as do cheap analog radio backbones such as old-fashioned CB radio.
Linkage
- Encryption trend continues as does resistance...
- YouTuber Perspective on Public Safety Encryption Systems...
- Goodbye to police scanner chatter (story from my birth town county newspaper)
By Dave for for BuffScan.
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Facebook as the Murderer of TikTok Found in the Parlor
03/30/2022
Boom yah!
My hunch that news stories on the negative effects of social media on teens or anyone are astro-turfed has proven largely correct in this Washington Post piece, Facebook paid GOP firm to malign TikTok.
Specifically prescient to the news above I wrote last December:
I'm surprised by none of it of course. I'll just fall back on my mantra that this happens because the more social media is discredited, the more value old school media retains. Important because the value and authority of mainstream media are deflating at an unbelievable rate.
There's just one twist to the specifics of my conspiracy theory, though -- it wasn't the legacy mainstream media doing the turfing. It turns out, at least according to the story linked above, that it was Facebook that was secretly pushing the narrative. A social media competitor.
Or so it seems. As we consider the story we must also consider that the revelation is being brought to my attention from an entity of the legacy mainstream media itself, The Washington Post. And, I was tipped off by an old-fashioned TV station's tweet.
So, is it really Facebook, or is this an example of legacy mainstream media cleverly attempting to conquer social media by dividing its industry players?
Folks, this thing may run deeper than any of us imagine.
By Dave for Personal Blog.
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Keeping Social Media Bad and Dumb
12/19/2021
I love this Tech Dirt article, Which Went More Viral Challenge: Local News Stories Or TikTok School Violence 'Challenge'? . The question puts mayonnaise news media on the spot about so much coverage over something that wasn't actually happening.
Worse, it makes the mainstream media look complicit.
I'm surprised by none of it of course. I'll just fall back on my mantra that this happens because the more social media is discredited, the more value old school media retains. Important because the value and authority of mainstream media are deflating at an unbelievable rate.
The collective strategy of giving so much coverage to every threat circulated on TikTok or whatever, in my view, is to highlight the dangers of low barrier publishing and to accent its unreliability. That it also provides cheap content for them is just a side benefit.
You may have noticed you pay attention less to overworked local media folks pumped into uniform productions by their corporate overlords. The mainstream media knows that you are and that's why it's important for "bad" social media examples, and the WWW by native extension, to find their way to the daily news cycle.
It's okay you can admit it, mainstream news houses are no longer an authority.
By Dave for Personal Blog.
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