ScanRiverside.com

This forum is focused on Riverside County, but perhaps some of you will be interested in the recent developments in San Bernardino County's upgrade to P25. Yesterday the board of supervisors approved a contract with Motorola Solutions to design and install a new countywide P25 system to serve as a replacement for the county's aged and disparate analog trunked systems. The following link includes a fairly detailed report by Motorola describing the existing systems and the plans for the new one.

http://cob-sire.sbcounty.gov/sirepub/ag ... mid=226158

It appears the system will be P25 Phase 1 to start and will use Motorola's 7.14 release. A total of 6 simulcast cells are planned, including west valley, west central valley, east central valley, east valley, mountain, and upper desert. A total of 32 standalone sites are planned to provide coverage in the rest of the county. Agencies may continue to use their existing XTS and XTL subscriber units, and new replacement XTS and XTL units will be purchased. The report does not mention APX subscriber units.

But what about encryption? Though there is little mention of encryption in Motorola's report, encryption was mentioned in the ISD presentation to the board. As expected, encryption is planned for this system (they're planning to purchase 9,600 encryption boards for the subscriber units) but it remains to be seen how extensively it will be implemented.

Well looking at what I've seen of the system so far, nothing seems to be encrypted. Only the Narc and CID stuff, but that seems normal I should think.

After the political nightmare that ensued by thousands of people listening to the internet feed who were not familiar with their lingo assuming they meant to torch Christopher Dorner by referencing "burners" I believe they are pushing encryption pretty hard. Not to mention the likelihood that Dorner may have been listening to the feed as well.

N6AJB wrote:After the political nightmare that ensued by thousands of people listening to the internet feed who were not familiar with their lingo assuming they meant to torch Christopher Dorner by referencing "burners" I believe they are pushing encryption pretty hard. Not to mention the likelihood that Dorner may have been listening to the feed as well.

Given what happened in Pasadena, they might lighten on the encryption. Like I said, so far no law enforcement talkgroups are.

cvrules, you keep mentioning Pasadena in regards to encryption. What exactly happened with them? I can't find anything in news other them going to encryption and other stories about them being corrupt.

sp1989 wrote:cvrules, you keep mentioning Pasadena in regards to encryption. What exactly happened with them? I can't find anything in news other them going to encryption and other stories about them being corrupt.

Back in Janurary 2012 when they went encrypted, there was a big scandal boo from the media because it meant they couldn't listen to the police radio to update the public on important happenings. Round the end of Q1, they decided to open the traffic to allow the public and the media to hear the initial call to keep the public informed.

If I can find a news story on those issues, I'll post it.

Thanks! Somehow, I don't think RSO is going to be so user friendly. That was a big sellng point of EDACS 20 plus years ago, that no one was supposed to be able to listen it. They've wanted to hide out since way back when.

sp1989 wrote:Thanks! Somehow, I don't think RSO is going to be so user friendly. That was a big sellng point of EDACS 20 plus years ago, that no one was supposed to be able to listen it. They've wanted to hide out since way back when.

They're all already encrypted full-time on the PSEC. Technology does improve so what you think is true 20 years ago won't neccessarily be true as the 20 years go by.

I remember showing one of the first trunking scanners set up for RSO to a sergeant that had something to do with the EDACS transition from the old VHF-high system, and he freaked out that you could listen, he was the one that told me that no onc could listen was a big selling point. Many moons ago, RSO relied heavily on scanners to keep up on what local agencies were doing, they even used to provide a lit of frequencies. Patrol units still have Uniden scanners as pat of their standard equipment.

It is kinda wierd. You're trying to follow both radios. Still, good so you can help. But it's bad when you need to monitor your agency's primary radio. It's just like those stereo feeds on Radio Reference.