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The Good and Bad of police radio encryption

l3wis November 4, 2023 14Comments

For the record, it’s mostly bad.

At the beginning of October a South DaCola foot soldier informs me that the SFPD and Rapid City PD would be encrypting ALL police radio traffic on scanners. This was one of my better sources who is usually spot on with city hall tidbits. I do a little research on my own and found this has been a trend across the country and has been abused by some local government entities so badly states like California have been passing additional legislation that stops them from encrypting all calls.

I was getting nowhere with others in local government to verify this was the case (the council was likely left in the dark on this decision). I passed it on to a trusted local journalist but they were unable to put a story together before the SFPD made an announcement yesterday. I have been openly talking to people about the encryption over the past couple of weeks seeing if anyone knew more, so I am sure that made it up the chain of command that others in town were talking about it and unlike the dead animal blowup, they better announce this before the media does.

While the mayor has the right and the duty according to charter to manage the police department, the city council has the power to create policy and ordinances that the SFPD must enforce.

In other words, the mayor has the right to direct the SFPD to do this, and the council is powerless in directly managing the police department, but they CAN create an ordinance that pulls back the encryption guidelines. They would likely have to do this in coordination with the Lincoln and Minnehaha County Commissions.

I know, a big lift, but I do think there are some councilors and commissioners that would be willing to sponsor such legislation.

Originally created by the FEDS, the encryption is allowed for many reasons, mostly for sensitive medical situations or sting operations, but many local governments decided to just encrypt all calls, mostly out of laziness and in the name of closed government.

Called Project 25, it has been an effort for switching police radios from analog to digital which basically makes encrypting as easy as pressing a button, so the argument that it is just easier to encrypt ALL calls is about as pathetic and lazy as you can get.

I do understand that there are probably many reasons you would want to encrypt a police call, as I mentioned above, but like most new technologies, criminals will be ahead of the curve, and keeping valuable information from the general public so you can catch a couple of bad guys just doesn’t cut it for me.

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” – Ben Franklin

This is about keeping information from the media and the public and little else and just another example of the slow (fast) degradation of open government in Sioux Falls. While I don’t need to know if Gladys Johnson fell down in her shower on North Duluth Avenue, it would be nice to know when a man-made disaster is happening in real time.

I have a feeling the ACLU or a similar civil liberties organization will be challenging this decision, but it is sticky.

At first glance, I think SF and RC have the legal authority to do this, BUT like most open government laws in our state, it gives local governments wide authority to abuse their power.

Unless the counties, the cities involved and the state change laws and ordinances, it looks like next month we will experience radio silence.

I wonder if they are also encrypting the tornado sirens?

The Charter Revision Commission reveals our childcare crisis in Sioux Falls

l3wis November 1, 2023 5Comments

I am sure you are expecting that the CRC got a proposal at their meeting today that would aid in combatting our childcare crisis in Sioux Falls. You would be wrong. What they got was a whole bunch of folks that need childcare (elder care) and I am not talking about the constituent’s proposals but the response from the commission itself.

I encourage you to watch how the chair was eager to kill a proposal and one member was confused by the authoritarian nature of the mayor’s office asking ‘What is the issue?’

IDK, Dictatorships are bad?

Commission Member Larry Long to the rescue who moved to have all proposals moved to the last meeting for approval instead of killing them several months before the election.

Let’s make it clear, the people making the proposals know they will be killed by the CRC, the funny part to watch is how the CRC plans to kill them eloquently. So far it looks like the He Man Woman Hater’s Club has been convening instead of a commission that’s duty is to recommend ballot questions.

Thought I would never say it, but can we please have Justin Smith back as chair? Pretty Please? He seemed to be awake and engaged in the meetings. Is that to much to ask from a volunteer?

I have felt for awhile there is an underground tow to change our city charter, not sure who is going to bare that fruit, but I think it is coming sooner rather than later, and these clowns on the CRC can kill, kill, kill, all they want, but at the end of the day, it is the people who rule.

Why is transparency so hard?

l3wis November 1, 2023 4Comments

Patrick Lalley did a great article on the lack of transparency in Sioux Falls and State government;

When you’re spending several hundred million, justified though it may be, answering a few taxpayer questions (a.k.a. transparency) seems a wise expression of freedom.

Silence infers the opposite.

I often wonder if Noem knows the definition of Freedom and Liberty;

First of all, let us look at official definitions. Liberty is defined by the Oxford dictionary as “The state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behaviour, or political views.”, while freedom is defined as “The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants.”. These two concepts evidently seem to go hand in hand and overly mean being unconstrained – not restricted, forced and bound to obligations implied by authorities and hierarchies. 

As a Democratic Republic we cannot be free unless we are provided the information that makes us FREE. We own the institutions.

We have an image problem in Downtown Sioux Falls

l3wis October 31, 2023 6Comments

People think the ‘image’ problem we have Downtown is from the homeless and panhandlers, when it’s really something we can’t see! The stench from the packing plant and the train whistles.

Last week while riding through the Cherapa and Sioux Steel District projects at night I was astonished by how incredibly bad it smelled as I stood in front of the Northside condos at Cherapa facing 6th street which are less then a mile from the packing plant. I can’t image having a patio on the Northside of that building and having to smell that every night and morning?

“Hey babe! Fire up the Keurig, I’m going to have a cup of coffee on our new patio. What flavor would you like dear? Pork Belly Cafe’ or Hot Dog Slurry?”

Bet it would go good with a maple bacon topped donut.

That was one of the biggest issues with the Railroad Redevelopment project, it never did anything to mitigate two of the biggest problems we have with redeveloping downtown; train traffic (whistles) and the stench from the manure factory.

Of all the projects that the former mayor screwed up, this was colossal. We had millions of Federal dollars to transform DTSF and we did nothing but hand over a gigantic check to Warren Buffet. I think we should have moved the train switching yard to the Arena/EC site and built the EC and new convention center where the current Cherapa II is located, in fact, the developer was banking on it.

Joe Kirby writes a great article about the lack of transparency surrounding the new prison. I have purposely tried not to write about it, because the lack of transparency is predictable with these folks and is beginning to sound like a broken record that has been playing in Pierre for over 50 years of one party rule.

The old prison will likely remain. A state legislator recently mentioned on the TDS podcast that the state just spent $6 million on the Jameson Annex medical facilities, which tells her that the facility will continue to be used for low security inmates after the new prison opens.

What about Smithfields? I think the Feds and the State and even the city had an opportunity here to pressure the closure of the facility for good during the pandemic. But my understanding of the situation was the Feds had to keep it open due to critical infrastructure (food production) even though a large percentage of pork produced at the facility likely goes to China (you know, because they like own the place.)

Let’s just say that bulldozing the current pen, Smithfields and every fricking train crossing in DTSF would be a very heavy lift considering two of the problems are controlled by Federal easements, etc. You would think having the 3rd most powerful person in the Senate being from our state we could get some movement on at least the train issue?

This town passes up opportunities like this quite consistently. Both Mayors Hanson and Munson toyed with a new east/west route thru the country club properties and were shot down. I still think you could arrange a 5 lane thoroughfare thru the center of the courses without disrupting most of the property. The amount of traffic that would be diverted would be monumental and would cut a lot of commutes in half mileage wise.

I’m still not sure where Veteran’s Parkway goes? I joked this summer when I had to drive on it going to Brandon that they replaced Huset’s Speedway with the Veteran’s Speedway.

Maybe there is a less valuable and less controversial location available. Or maybe this Lincoln County site is the best one available. It’s hard to know without more transparency.

And Kirby points out the crux of our problems, it’s not ugly old prisons and a stinky noisy downtown that is hampering development, it’s government’s lack of sunshine.

And when it comes to open government, as the panhandler’s sign says, ‘Anything Helps!’

It’s all Sioux to Yioux!

l3wis October 30, 2023 4Comments

The irony of this video is that when most presidential candidates have visited Sioux Falls they have called it Sioux City, leave it to the orange nightmare to do the exact opposite;