The Fairfax County Police Department is moving forward with plans to partially seal off its radio communications from the public.
The department has proposed encrypting its “main channels” to both limit the disclosure of sensitive information and prevent “someone’s worst day from being used for entertainment,” officers told the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors at a Safety and Security Committee meeting this afternoon (Tuesday).
“There’s a confluence of factors that have come together that mandates that we act now to protect our community,” FCPD Maj. Brendan Hooke told the committee.
The FCPD currently uses eight primary radio channels monitored by a dispatcher and a number of side channels, including some that are already encrypted and used for specialized units, informal communications between officers, and “elevated” events, such as a barricade incident, according to the presentation.
Current plans would see the department’s eight dispatch channels — each roughly corresponding to one of the county’s police districts — become encrypted, meaning they can only be accessed by those who have a cryptographic key to do so.
The targeted channels are often used to coordinate calls for service in real time, relaying information like descriptions of an alleged suspect or the location of a stolen vehicle. Personal information, such as addresses, names, social security numbers and more, are also routinely broadcast on these channels.
“It’s unacceptable to send this information in any other format, in unencrypted means,” Hooke said. “If I were a criminal and I wanted to target individuals in Fairfax County for identity theft, fraud or scams, harassment, bullying, I could just listen to the radio and harvest that information all day, every day.”
Hooke also cited the growing possibility of sensitive details becoming widely available on the internet as a reason to encrypt, saying that incident information is often redistributed on social media “for clicks.”
“We are potentially contributing to new victims: people that call us,” Hooke added. “We don’t want people to hesitate to call us because they’re afraid of that information being broadcast out to a global audience, permanently.”
Other “side channels,” such as the automatic dispatch that provides preliminary information during a call or other informal coordination channels, would not be affected by the current encryption plans.
“Transparency matters to this agency,” FCPD Maj. Dana Ferreira said. “We are doing this because of our obligation to protect the community.”
The “very slow, very deliberate process” of encrypting the channels will take several months, Ferreira added, noting that the department is “laying the groundwork now so that we can do this over [a] phased approach.”
Once in effect, the FCPD will join numerous law enforcement agencies in the region — including the Arlington County Police Department, Prince William County Police Department, Virginia State Police, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department and others — that have partially or fully encrypted their radio transmissions.
“This data would fall under a number of regulations, including HIPAA, FERPA … at some point, our hand would be forced, potentially,” Hooke said, referring to privacy laws that protect health and student information, respectively. “We’d rather be proactive and follow what the rest of the region is doing.”
The FCPD said it will continue to share information publicly through social media, press briefings on major incidents, Freedom of Information Act requests and its online open data portal.
Photo via FCPD/Facebook
