VoIP Police Communications

Keeping on the cutting edge: No doubt, given its history of staying on the cutting edge, the Bayonne Police Department will make sure that its communications system continues to keep up with the latest technology like using VOIP Police Communications. It’s nice to know that, until that time, by choosing Zetron public safety equipment they’ve ensured themselves of the reliability to deal with the demands of today, and the flexibility to change with the times.

Bayonne PD Sets 70 Year Record of Innovation: The Bayonne, New Jersey Police Department has always been on the cutting edge when it comes to communications. In fact, the department is credited with operating the first two-way mobile police communications system in the country back in 1933. While other municipalities had receiving radio sets installed in patrol cars, only Bayonne had mobile radio equipment capable of both receiving and transmitting voice messages. Although mobile two-way radio is taken for granted nowadays, this technology was a big step forward from the old “calling all cars” broadcast days. In the mid-1960’s the Bayonne Police Department established another milestone by being the first police force in the nation to equip its officers with walkie-talkies.

Looking for a better solution using VOIP Police Communications: After securing the necessary funding, Captain Hansson and a team consisting of Dispatch Supervisor Father John Fencik, Technical Services Unit Lieutenant Drew Niekrasz, and Office Mike Ponik contacted and received proposals from various equipment manufacturers.

Unlike their predecessors back in 1933, however, the current generation of Bayonne Police communications experts had a different set of technical challenges to contend with—the biggest of which was a lack of available radio spectrum. Bayonne is right across the bay from New York City and lower Manhattan. Consequently, this is one of the busiest radio environments in the world. Frequencies are congested and competition for available spectrum is fierce. “We did our research,” Captain Hansson explains. “We looked at VOIP Police Communications and digital trunked systems, but we couldn’t use them due to lack of frequency. We visited the Passaic, New Jersey 9-1-1 dispatch, which had Zetron equipment. We were impressed and felt that Zetron offered the Cadillac of dispatch consoles.”

Similarly, there are other stories of use of VOIP Police Communications. The city of San Jose will receive nearly $3.7 million in a federal grant aimed at helping the police department buy communications equipment that will operate on the same frequency with other agencies during a time of crisis such as a terrorist attack. Los Angeles will receive $6 million for the same purpose.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the awarding of $66.5 million in grants for police communications systems late 2003 in Kansas City.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, says she secured $55 million of the grant money through an amendment to the war and homeland security supplemental security appropriations bill that was approved by Congress in April. The remaining $11.5 million came from other funds that Congress provided the Justice Department. All this lead the implementation of latest technologies like VOIP Police Communications.

There have been few recent developments in the field of VOIP Police Communications. A far-reaching proposal from the FBI, made public on Friday 12 March, 2004, would require all US broadband Internet providers, including cable modem and DSL companies, to rewire their networks to support easy wiretapping by police. The FBI’s request to the Federal Communications Commission aims to give police ready access to any form of Internet-based communications. If approved as drafted, the proposal could dramatically expand the scope of the agency’s wiretap powers, raise costs for cable broadband companies and complicate Internet product development.

Legal experts said the 85-page filing includes language that could be interpreted as forcing companies to build back doors into everything from instant messaging and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) programs to Microsoft’s Xbox Live game service. The introduction of new services that did not support a back door for police would be outlawed, and companies would be given 15 months to make sure that existing services comply.

Some Internet phone-service providers say they’re willing to cooperate with police seeking to wiretap conversations — but they can’t because of technical limitations. Jeff Pulver, founder of Free World Dialup, said that if law enforcement officials asked him to wiretap one of his subscribers’ Internet phone calls he would need a “few months science project” to see if it could be done. Meanwhile, Niklas Zennstrom, founder of Skype, also a free Internet phone service, said that even if his company could tackle the arduous task of pulling a Skype call from the Internet, police would “only hear gibberish” because the data bits are encrypted.

The two providers are prime examples of a problem that the Federal Communications Commission now faces after voting to investigate whether Internet phone providers should rewire their networks to government specifications to provide police with guaranteed access for wiretaps along with VOIP Police Communications.

While many voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers are more than willing to hand over whatever information they can about subscribers, they can’t reliably, if at all, get what police really want: the content of the calls they make. Difficulties lie in gathering the millions of bits of information that represent a voice call as well as the fact that there is no standardized way for distinguishing voice calls from the terabits of other data on the Internet.

The issue affects a broad range of VoIP providers, including FWD and Skype, and commercial services such as Vonage and 8×8 that offer calls to traditional phone lines. Many of these commercial services say a sizable percentage of their calls never touch the traditional phone network and, as a result, cannot be tapped.