The main reason is interoperability - look up the "Incident Command System" and the "National Incident Management System" (ICS and NIMS). One HUGE problem with working with other departments is that "10 codes" do NOT mean the same thing everywhere - plus, even in the same area, different goups can have different "10 codes" NYC as an example - the 10 codes for Fire, Police, and Transit are not the same - now picture you respond to a fire in the subway - when the train dispatcher uses a 10 code, it can mean 3 different things to 3 different people!!
Honestly, in this day and age I'd think encryption would be an absolute necessity anyway. If the bad guys were smart, they could cause a great deal of trouble simply by hopping on the local emergency responder frequency and transmitting bogus commands and/or disinformation in the midst of a crisis. (Might not work in a small town where all the emergency responders know one another's voices, but in a big city . . . ?) Or, come to think of it, they could simply hold down the transmit key and effectively jam the good guys' communications. (Used to do this to my Marines during drills all the time. They hated it.) So I guess frequency-hopping capability would also be a good idea.
4 comments:
The pursestrings...
Yep. The article indicates that it's a spending power thing: You have to play ball to get federal emergency management money.
Yep - purse strings
The main reason is interoperability - look up the "Incident Command System" and the "National Incident Management System" (ICS and NIMS). One HUGE problem with working with other departments is that "10 codes" do NOT mean the same thing everywhere - plus, even in the same area, different goups can have different "10 codes" NYC as an example - the 10 codes for Fire, Police, and Transit are not the same - now picture you respond to a fire in the subway - when the train dispatcher uses a 10 code, it can mean 3 different things to 3 different people!!
Honestly, in this day and age I'd think encryption would be an absolute necessity anyway. If the bad guys were smart, they could cause a great deal of trouble simply by hopping on the local emergency responder frequency and transmitting bogus commands and/or disinformation in the midst of a crisis. (Might not work in a small town where all the emergency responders know one another's voices, but in a big city . . . ?) Or, come to think of it, they could simply hold down the transmit key and effectively jam the good guys' communications. (Used to do this to my Marines during drills all the time. They hated it.) So I guess frequency-hopping capability would also be a good idea.
Perhaps I'm getting carried away . . .
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