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Mr. Me Too
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Albertville, MN
Drives: Suzuki GSXR
Posts: 999
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POLICE SCANNERS IN THE DIGITAL AGE
More and more municipalities are switching to digital communications, creating access problems for media.
By Kathleen Kirby for July/August 2001 Communicator
With increasing frequency, I've been hearing from RTNDA members about a problem we've monitored for the past several years: the move by police departments and emergency personnel across the country to convert to digital public safety radio.
For more than half a century, the media and the general public have been able to tune in to emergency communications by using relatively inexpensive scanners. Indeed, the squawking of one, or more typically several scanners, has been a staple in the newsroom for as long as most journalists can remember.
In many areas, however, police, fire and EMS units are moving to digital radio communications systems. Instead of sending analog signals over the airwaves, municipalities are sending digital signals over higher frequencies. The digital system converts the voice into tiny bits of data. All you'll hear when trying to pick up these transmissions with a normal scanner is a hiss. To listen to them, you need a digital scanner.
Digital scanners are expensive (while analog scanners run about $300, digital scanners cost more than 10 times that), and, from what I've heard, they're pretty much unavailable to reporters and scanner enthusiasts. The real rub, however, is that even if you get one, it's useless if the messages are encrypted. You need the police to give you the codes they use to program their radios before you can pick up their encrypted communications. Police and/or other emergency personnel may be willing to give you the code for some types of transmissions, but not for others, and they can "turn off" communications selectively.
What can we do? Many electronic journalists wrongly assume that FCC rules require police, fire and rescue transmissions to be open. That is simply not the case. There are no federal rules that provide a general right of the news media or others to monitor police and fire or other public safety radio communications. Your best bet is to protest the adoption of digital transmission/encryption on public policy grounds, and to work out an agreement with local police or other public safety officials.
The likelihood of success in reaching a compact with local officials probably depends on your state and whether you can make the case that your FOI laws presume access to police records and communications. Where access laws contain many police record exemptions, for example, you may have limited ammunition in your fight against denial of access.
Still, the policy arguments against blocking police, fire and rescue dispatch communications are strong. While law enforcement officials argue that open radio communications put officers in danger and permit suspects to hear law enforcement tactics firsthand, few have offered concrete evidence to justify why these concerns would outweigh the long-established public interest in maintaining openness in government activities. Inevitably, there are some who will listen when you tell them that putting the system undercover conflicts with your jurisdiction's values and commitment to open government, so don't be afraid to broach the subject.
Make clear to decision-makers that closing off dispatch information will make police, fire and other emergency services (and the elected officials who oversee them) much less accountable to the taxpayers who employ them. This is not just a media issue. The secrecy that results from encrypted public safety information also impedes residents' right to know about matters of public interest. Monitoring public safety transmissions allows the media to respond to news stories and emergencies, and to provide information--often information of critical importance--to citizens quickly and efficiently. Using scanners, stations often obtain facts integral to protecting the public, whether about a toxic spill, a traffic accident, a gas leak, an at-large criminal or a weather emergency. In a disaster or other dangerous situation, the lack of, or delay in receiving, such information can create a public safety risk.
From all reports, law enforcement officials are very much in favor of the move to digital transmissions. Many argue that the transmissions are much clearer. And of course they stress that digital communications will facilitate secret operations when necessary, a point that resonates in this era of increasing concern with privacy. But government agencies are already adept at quietly conveying or hiding sensitive information. They don't need to rely on digital transmissions for that. The news media have an obligation to pass on what they learn to their listeners and viewers--in other words, to the taxpayers. This watchdog function helps to maintain public confidence in the professionalism of law enforcement and fire and rescue agencies. Relying on spokespersons paid by government agencies offers no substitute.
As a consequence--whether intended or unintended--of the move to digital communications, municipal officials will control the information local television, radio and newspaper outlets may monitor, as well as which news operations will be granted access at all. The battle against newsrooms being "locked out" of public service dispatch and other communications will largely be fought at the grassroots level. It behooves all journalists to protest a blanket move by public safety agencies to communications that the public cannot hear, and to force police, fire and other emergency service personnel to justify keeping their transmissions secret. Urge agencies not to make a decision of this kind without fully and fairly discussing the ramifications. In many cases, the move will hamper the media's ability to report quickly and accurately, compromise public safety, and undermine the citizenry's trust that police and other public officials are behaving as they should.
--Kathleen Kirby is an attorney at Wiley, Rein & Fielding in Washington.
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