BUFFSCAN
Dammit Loudlabsnyc - NO!
11/24/2023
As people - finally - wake up to the reality of public safety radio encryption, they inevitably begin processing a solution that can sometimes look like a policy compromise.
One of the most likely to emerge in any discussion of, is the idea of giving the "credentialed media" access to freshly encrypted systems through some program that maybe involves something like programming radios for media access (that the media houses purchase).
This was something like the policy I once prompted in the mid-90s the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Department in Florida to institute. With the crucial distinction being that they would do it for any public person (who purchased such a radio). The policy wouldn't be limited to just perceived members of the media.
It's important to me that such a distinction is never made. The battle is getting public safety offices to keep access to their radio traffic for everyone, not simply those composed enough to come off as a "valid media" operation.
I don't regard profit-seeking media operations as somehow sanctimonious: They are profit-driven and now more than ever we see they are more functionally engineered to spread conflict via their established editorial components, than meaningful intellectual debate -- all while of course reporting on the building fire that validates their front. But the reality is, they aren't any different than you or I or any other business, except they are powerful, and often work together with politicians and law enforcement to develop and fuel useful narratives. Some we can appreciate, some we would be appalled to learn of.
Social media and more broadly the Internet and World Wide Web has nearly pushed local newspapers and TV news stations out of business, and they are lethally thirsty for a solution. Giving them exclusive access to public safety radio traffic gives them every reason to modify the debate to their pecuniary advantage.
This means that even when your local newspaper or TV station gives any ink or air to the encryption debate, it's only to blackmail themselves into being the eventual exception.
They aren't thinking about BuffScan, Tonowanda Fire Alert, WNY Fire Alerts, and so on -- none of the real people really interested in capturing and disseminating news, and whom which the MSM considers a form of competition that has been part and parcel of draining their power gradually over the past decade.
Loudlabsnyc is an Instagram account that remarked (as poorly exhibited above I regret) "that all we ask [of public safety], provide only credentialed press with access."
Well, I could not disagree more.
Loudlabsnyc is a particularly nuanced party in the issue. It operates as a company, but relies on social media and the web independently of printing presses or expensive TV transmitters. It is in effect, one of us, operationally speaking. Yet, it equates the power of the profit process, to the extent that it monetizes, with exceptinal legitimacy over something like BuffScan, that so far does not organize around that principle.
It is bad enough we have to hope that corporate media doesn't succeed in its blackmailing agenda and actually accelerate encryption, but that now we have to worry whether or not those in the pure digital community who know how to monetize, might do the same.
By BuffScan for BuffScan.
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