Police update radios to stop eavesdroppers

Police are rejigging their radio communications to prevent them being snooped on by criminals, boy racers, and anyone else with a $175 scanner.

An encrypted digital radio system will be launched in Wellington next month, then extended to Christchurch and Auckland by November 2010.

Other districts will be added over the next four years.

Eventually, the digital technology will enable 1.7 million messages to be sent on a network of over 300 radio sites to 2500 vehicles and 3000 handheld radios.

Police said it would make effective encryption easier so that people would no longer be able to track their activities with scanners.

While listening to a scanner was not illegal, acting on information obtained from one was.

Police have been keenly awaiting the technology to beat the scanners, Police Association president Greg O'Connor said.

"Everyone, including the local burglar, is sitting at home with these things."

In small towns, where there were only one or two police vehicles on patrol, scanners could tell criminals where police were working, he said.

And in Christchurch, area commander Malcolm Johnston complained in February that 300 thuggish boy racers screaming out "kill the pig, box him in", apparently used scanners to target Sergeant Nigel Armstrong in suburban Wigram.

"They knew that there was only one car coming at that stage," he said. "The whole thing was an orchestrated ambush."

In July 2007 police awarded Tait Communications a $6 million tender for Apco P25 digital equipment for specialist groups such as the armed offenders squad, special tactics group and investigators.

The American Apco standard was used after "performance issues" meant an order for digital trunked radio running on the European Tetra standard for the 1999 Apec conference in Auckland was axed.

The new standard allowed other agencies such as fire, ambulance, fisheries and customs services to eventually migrate to the new service, while still using their old analog radios.

- NZPA