The Descending Blue Curtain: Silencing The Public’s Right To Know

Like most stories of its type these days this one involves a congressman, a lot of money, a proposal drafted in a way that made it sound really, really good, and buy-in from city governments eager to trim costs and meet a federal obligation.

When Congressman Mark DeSaulnier announced that Walnut Creek had been awarded nearly a million dollars in federal funds for police communications, it was billed as a victory for public safety. The Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Technology and Equipment Program (TEP) provided the money, earmarked to help WCPD replace its aging portable radios with modern, encrypted units.

On paper, it looked great: new radios meant enhanced officer safety, better communications with regional agencies. In practice, however, they came with a hidden cost – a chance for police departments to cut off radio traffic previously available to press and public once and for all. Such a move, critics pointed out, would allow departments choosing encryption to operate in complete secrecy – without the media or members of the public able to listen in.

Driving the push toward encryption was a state Department of Justice policy recommendation addressing broadcast of personally identifiable information (PII) over police radios. In 2020, State DOJ recommended that local police adopt encryption plans limiting PII transmissions to prevent their interception and use in potential identity theft cases. (We’re unaware of any such cases ever being brought, but would be open to hearing about one, if true).

In November 2024, the Walnut Creek City Council accepted the funds, and by December the department had authorized the purchase of 130 encrypted Motorola APX N70 radios at a cost of just over $1 million. Council documents note that $919,530 of that purchase would be covered by the federal grant (Walnut Creek City Council, Agenda Reports, Nov. 19 and Dec. 17, 2024).

For city and police administrators, this was a win-win. The federal money Congressman DeSaulnier obtained offset the considerable expense purchase of the radios would normally have had on local budgets. But for journalists and the public, the decision by some local agencies to deploy blanket encryption meant the loss of a critical transparency tool as one-by-one, often without public input and despite alternatives to outright encryption, public access to police transmissions began to wink out one by one.

A couple of cities, namely San Francisco and Berkeley, opted to maintain their commitment to departmental transparency and keep one channel open to the public while encrypting channels handling criminal justice or PII information, thus meeting the DOJ guideline while ensuring continued public access to basic police transmissions.

Other cities, like Oakland, opted for full encryption and “went dark,” with Walnut Creek apparently ready to follow suit. Others are lining up to do the same while some local media outlets began to protest, suddenly cut off from a primary source of local news. Across the country, media organizations, civil-rights groups, legislators, and academics are all recognizing — and in some cases legislating against — the erosion of transparency posed by blanket radio encryption.

By now, some of you may be asking: “What’s so wrong with encryption?” For one, it raises the brutal irony of a public agency entrusted with conducting “the peoples business” while “keeping it secret from the people.” We mean, going dark is counter to all those catchy community policing slogans they have all over their SUVs.

With total encryption, gone is any future chance of the public knowing about the barricaded subject popping off AR-15 rounds into his neighborhood; the former policeman peppering an armored vehicle with a shotgun; the evacuations underway as a wildfire advances on a community. So drastic would the impact of encryption be that this site undertook to build a citizen-based tip service designed to pick up where muted dispatch centers left off. With thousands of users this service may prove to be a worthy alternative to traditional police communications in the future.

While we have singled out Walnut Creek’s move towards encryption the city is by no means alone. Across California, departments large and small have increasingly cited cost and staffing limitations as reasons for cutting off scanner access. Some argue they cannot afford to staff Public Information Officer (PIO) positions around the clock, and that encryption is a necessary step towards modernization.

This argument makes no sense to us, as you might expect. Taxpayer dollars are now being used to underwrite police encryption while leaving newsrooms — and the communities they serve — without access to real-time information unless they field it themselves. Simultaneously, departments openly admit they cannot provide timely updates through official PIO channels – with that information coming days late or not at all.

And this, to us, is the irony before us as public agencies routinely spouting off about their commitment to transparency now appear to be dedicating more money and resources to hiding public information than they do seeing it disseminated.

And that, in our opinion, is just plain wrong.