2021-02-17

Scanner silence: Bridgewater Police Service joins agencies moving to secure communications

Public receivers once able to monitor Bridgewater Police Service radio traffic will fall silent in the weeks ahead.

The town's municipal police department acquired new radios, which will temporarily replace hand-me-down equipment received from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics when those items were deemed surplus.

Roughly two dozen radios - a mixture of portable, mobile, and base varieties - arrived in November, and a telecommunications provider is programming them before they go into service, likely by spring.

The new-to-Bridgewater gear are also hand-me-downs, surplus RCMP equipment made available through an existing deal between the Mounties and the province.

The radios were supplied to municipal police departments in Nova Scotia, such as Bridgewater's, without secure radio communications, enabling them to more easily voice encrypt their chatter. An agency in Colchester County is expected to make the switch soon, with others including Kentville and Annapolis Royal following suit.

"The transition in Truro is going in the latter part of February, and they're first," Scott Feener, Bridgewater's police chief, told LighthouseNOW. "We're right after that, so I'm guessing the month of March we'll all be transitioned by then."

The change will mark the first time in decades that radio scanning devices won't be able to eavesdrop on Bridgewater's police calls. It also means law enforcement won't have real-time voice ability for the public to help with information as an investigation unfolds, as it has in the past.

"We will lost that capability," Danny MacPhee, Bridgewater's Deputy Police Chief, told LighthouseNOW about the future lack of "scannerland" assistance. "The balance on the other end, with the other agencies, is going to offset that."

Other agencies, such as the RCMP, already operate under voice encryption capacity via the provincial Trunked Mobile Radio system. The Mounties in Nova Scotia have had secure communications since 2014. Radio (TMR) traffic from the province's ambulance service went encrypted last year.

The safety of emergency services personnel and the ongoing exchange of private information are key reasons why radio transmissions are going unscannable.

Volunteer radio club hobbyists contacted by LighthouseNOW declined to comment publicly about the changes, but lament the proliferation of internet live audio, and recording and re-broadcasting of calls, which is what they believe is fast-tracking scanner silence.

Texas-based Broadcastify, considered the world's leader in live-streaming radio communications data and audio, defends its role as a provider of public safety traffic.

"We believe that this information provides a valuable resource to the communities that are covered," Lindsay Blanton, the founder and chief executive of Broadcastify, told LighthouseNOW in an email.

"There are some agencies that do not like the general public listening to their communications online, however there are many agencies that are pleased to involve the general public in their day-to-day operations, and even broadcast directly to us so that citizens are able to hear their public safety officials at work."

Blanton said the company doesn't allow broadcasts of communications which could endanger the safety or security of law enforcement, and others in similar jobs.

We implement a very restrictive set of terms of service which restrict what broadcasters can broadcast," Blanton said.

"Broadcasts that cover SWAT incidents, narcotics, detectives, and surveillance operations are examples of highly sensitive communications that are prohibited from being distributed on our platform. We have a dedicated administration team that strongly enforces this policy."

The news media commonly use scanners to learn about emergency incidents in the communities it covers but, in the current environment, reporters are at the mercy of official news releases or social media posts for information that may or may not come in a timely fashion.

Brand new TMR radios are on the radar as a five-figure capital purchase in the years ahead, but MacPhee believes the replacement will be piecemeal to lessen the budget pressure.