Advances in police tactical communications: Headgear and encryption devices lead.
During the period of the notorious gangs in the ’20s and ’30s, the police rejected the then “newfangled” technology of two-way radios as being somehow outside the realm of established procedures. The gangs, however, were not hung up by such bureaucratic considerations, and in many cases used the new technology to run circles around the police.
Well, the police have long since learned their lesson and have eagerly embraced the most up-to-date technologies. Two of the hottest areas of tactical police communication are headgear and encryption.
Headgear Tactical communications headgear is a specialized area; only a few manufacturers make these devices. One is Television Equipment Associates (TEA), South Salem, NY. This company’s product line represents the general trend in how some of the most advanced gear is deployed in this tactical communications.
TEA’s LASH headset was specifically designed for the Los Angeles police special weapons and tactics (SWAT) division, said TEA President Bill Pegler. The headset has a strap, which goes around the neck, and inside the strap is a nozzle module near the voice box.
“Because the nozzle is near the voice box, it’s impervious to any other noise,” explained Pegler. “You can stand directly under a helicopter and the person at the other end will hear you, but not the helicopter.”
The radio signal is received at a module in the strap and is directed to the ear through a small coiled plastic waveguide, similar to the familiar devices worn by actors playing Secret Service agents in movies. The PTT switch, about the size of a silver dollar, is clipped onto the chest.
“You can key the radio ‘on’ with your underarm, elbow or wrist,” said Pegler. “You don’t have to grope around.”
A separate PTT switch can be fitted to the stock of a sniper’s rifle.
“It looks like a flat, string bean, finger-tip button on the end of a cable,” Pegler said. “Typically, both hands are on the weapon, but one finger can easily reach this button.” The sniper button is redundant to the chest clip-on switch.
In the LASH headpiece, the coiled tube is held to the ear by a skeleton ear mold. In another headset, however, called TASC, a thin earphone, less than 0.5″ thick, fits over the left ear and beneath the ballistic helmet.
“In the side of this little earphone there are holes, the purpose of which is to accommodate peripheral hearing,” Pegler said. “Because in close-quarter battle, the person needs to hear out of both ears and have all of his senses alert.”
Pegler added that the skeleton ear mold in the LASH accomplishes the same function as peripheral hearing. The TASC has the same PTT arrangements as LASH, but differs in that it has an adjustable boom microphone, which locates at the corner of the mouth.
The newest TEA headset is LITE, which was developed for the military Special Forces. It looks like a second cousin to the TASC, with a similar thin earphone.
“The difference is that on the back end of the boom arm is a socket which allows you to plug in either a throat mike or a mask mike,” Pegler said. “The point here is that this product is a combination of both LASH and TASC, for we attempted to give the best advantages of both.”
Pegler explained that the TASC boom arm provides the best possible sounding microphone, but that will not do you much good if you have to put on a gas mask that covers your mouth. In a military or riot situation, the LASH throat microphone, on the throat rather than the face, is more suitable. The headset allows the wearer to use the boom arm until gas is deployed, then the boom is disconnected to allow for the mask mic that plugs into the voice emitter of the gas mask.
Another TEA headest is Collar Set III, which Pegler said was designed not as a SWAT headset, but rather as a surveillance headset. Even SWAT police spend most of their time on surveillance or protection activities. The collar set is often chosen by departments as a more general-purpose unit.
The unit is also “lower tech” and less expensive. The radio can reside on either the body or belt, and just a single wire can be routed underneath the clothing, terminating in a flat 0.5″x2″ device that can be worn under a shirt, positioned over the collarbone. The talk switch can be in your hand-held or placed on the belt.
“When you want to talk, you just press a button and don’t have to talk into the microphone,” Pegler said. “Since the microphone is under the shirt, you can communicate without seeming to be using a radio.” Headgear radios range from about $400 to about $700, with Collar Set the least expensive and LITE the most expensive.
Encryption “Public safety in general, and SWAT teams in particular, are looking for higher levels of security in their communications,” said Jeff Good, director of analog sales, RELM Communications, West Melbourne, FL.
Good explained that there are three main types of encryption products on the market, all of which are sold by his company.
The first is the traditional analog type, which, has, nevertheless, grown more sophisticated over recent years.
“These started out with several voice-inversion encryption scramblings, which then evolved into rolling code, which basically changes the length of time of a frequency duration and, secondarily, masks the tone over the conversion frequency,” Good said.
The next level is digital encryption, several varieties of which are available on the market. The most common is data encryption standard (DES). DES was developed by NASA and then refined by the National Bureau of Standards.
The third type of encryption is spread spectrum or frequency-hopping.
“If I’m a criminal and have a scanner and hear someone talking, I may not hear what is being said if it’s encrypted, but I do know there is an operation in the area,” Good said. “But with a frequency-hopping device, he would not pick up the signal at all, so I would have a silent footprint.”
Analog is the least expensive, while DES and frequency-hopping are about the same stepped-up cost.
“Usually the question is not so much price as the level of security that is required,” Good said. “Frequency-hopping is the least susceptible to jamming and interception, so should be the most secure.”
Jeffery Fuller, president of Trancrypt International, Lincoln, NE, said that an interesting new hybrid combines analog and digital technologies. The reason is that the majority of systems’ infrastructure is still analog, and is not likely to be displaced soon by digital. Analog radio frequency (RF) equipment is much less complicated and less expensive than digital. However, Fuller explained, it is possible to use digital encryption techniques and algorithms on analog.
“There will still be a high demand for high-level analog encryption until the world catches up with digital,” Fuller said.
The overall need for security is increasing every day, especially since more and more information is being shared among departments, agencies, and even different governments, through wireless and computer data. Fuller said that the prices for upper-level technology stay high because of the ongoing advances, while the prices are falling for the lower, less advanced levels.
Another driving force behind the ever-improving, higher-level technologies is that criminals have access to the same technology. They challenge the existing protections, which, in turn, challenges law enforcement agencies to innovate anew.
“It’s been mostly quid pro quo. We haven’t gained, but they haven’t either,” Fuller said.
Privacy issues are also driving the need for more and better encryption devices.
“If someone hears an arrest warrant being issued and somebody publishes it, that can be a lawsuit,” Fuller said.
Paradoxically, the necessity to communicate quickly is being accompanied by a corresponding necessity to make that same message “incommunicable.”
The fight for spectrum “None of the new headset, encryption, or other technologies will work without spectrum, and public safety is in dire need of spectrum, both for tactical and administrative purposes,” said John Ramsey, deputy executive director, Association of Public Safety Communications Officials-International (APCO).
For this reason, Ramsey explained, one of APCO’s main priorities is for spectrum. Video and high-speed data equipment require a broader spectrum, and new narrowband channels are coming to the forefront. “We are fighting for all of them,” Ramsey said.
The battle is not necessarily a losing one. For instance, as the result of the introduction of digital TV, UHF television broadcasting channels are being refarmed back into the radio pool.
“Currently we have none of those channels, but we have asked for 24, and it looks as thought the FCC is going to give them to us,” Ramsey said at the beginning of the year. “The reason is that FCC has been mandated to do so by Congress, for we were successful in convincing Congress that protecting property and savings citizens’ lives was a public priority. If we had not fought for these channels, we would very likely have gotten nothing.”