[FedCom] clear comms = training & Encrypted aircraft

[Signal500 at aol.com]

I can confirm that there is no training going on in Missouri when the  
government agencies are transmitting "in the clear".  I have noticed that  most of 
the time it is because of three reasons; different agencies  participating in 
the surveillance using a wide variety of radios, the  agents have not been 
correctly trained on how to use the radio or  the encryption keys are not the same 
in all radios.  
 
Chris, I am sure your explanation of the "in the clear" aircraft  
surveillance is correct.
 
Signal500 





In a message dated 11/11/2007  10:11:21 A.M. Central Standard Time, 
chrisparris at monitoringtimes.com  writes:
Absolutely right Ben!

Over the years I've been able to  correlate surveillance activity,  
both clear and encrypted, to many  real world events. I've even known  
people involved in the operations  (on the law enforcement side, not  
the suspect side) and was easily  able to prove that adage about clear  
communications being only  training as totally wrong...

You also bring up another interesting aspect  about encryption that I  
have noticed over the years. I've monitored  many surveillance  
operations in which all the participants on the  ground were using DES  
or AES encryption on a simplex frequency, but  the observation  
aircraft was always in the clear, analog mode. I was  never able to  
confirm why this was with the particular agencies, but I  always  
thought it was due to the background noise of the aircraft  making the  
encrypted voice even harder to understand that usual.  Recently I was  
able to copy some surveillance traffic in which  everyone was using  
P-25 radios, and again the aircraft was not  encrypted. The IMBE  
vocoders in the aircraft radio were just going  nuts with the  
helicopter turbine noise in the background, trying to  digitize the  
whine and rotor noise. It was interesting to hear how any  sort of  
background noise on a digital system can be problematic for  some of  
the users. My guess is that the same situation could occur  when  
trying to use digital encryption on an analog channel. One of  the  
laws of unintended consequences, I guess... :-)

-  Chris


On Nov 11, 2007, at 6:55 AM, Ben Russell wrote:
>
>  I can assure you that is not the case.  I have linked several big   
> ops heard in
> the clear on FBI, DEA, and ICE channels to press  releases and news  
> articles
> about major busts.  With  the newer radios, I'm always surprised  
> that radios are
>  not set with the encryption strapped (full time on). On the local  
>  FBI digital
> repeater it is usually the aircraft side of a surveillance  that  
> turns up in the
> clear.  Every now and then, a  ground unit can be heard, but it is  
> uncommon.
>
>  Ben
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