Cloud Hosting

Sign up for our amNewYork email newsletter to get news, updates, and local insights delivered straight to your inbox!

New York lawmakers have until Friday to vote on the Keep Police Radio Public Act to prevent the NYPD and other police departments from shutting the press out of police radio access amid encryption efforts.

The legislation would provide credentialed media access to encrypted police radio channels, and compel the NYPD to allow access to New York City media that have listened to police radio channels as a source of news.

The bill, introduced in the state Senate by Mike Gianaris of Queens and picked up in the Assembly by Karines Reyes of the Bronx, must be passed by both houses on Friday, the end of the current legislative session in Albany. If it doesnt pass, it will have to be reintroduced next year.

Reyes expressed cautious optimism that the bill would move forward.

We are trying to get it through the Assembly, but it never came out of committee. We are trying to reference it to rules, she said. It may be moving in Senate, but the Senate committee had questions on the bill. We tried to get them answers. We believed it to be straightforward, but there must be a willingness to move it.

NYPD officials have opposed the bill; in the past, they have questioned the vetting of journalists credentialed by the Mayors Office of Media and Entertainment, and police officials were seeking a delay in radio transmissions.

The NYPD has yet to provide a plan for keeping the media in the loop to maintain transparency, despite their billion-dollar radio upgrade being in its sixth year. NYPD officials said they planned to have a plan after the encryption program is completed, by late 2025.

In the meantime, seven more precincts in Brooklyn were encrypted last week encompassing much of Brooklyn South areas. All eight Brooklyn North precincts were encrypted in July 2023, and four Staten Island precincts went dark back in March.

Mayor Eric Adams, while not saying he is opposed to the bill, expressed reservations at a press conference on Tuesday at City Hall.

My biggest concern, Ive said this over and over again, bad guys get access to this information. You know, bad guys that commit crimes, Mayor Adams said. This technology, if not used properly, it could be harmful. If you know [that] a police officer is responding, how they responded, how they communicated, we need to get it right. I think we can find the right balance. The New York City Police Department is going to do that.

Recently, members of the News Guild, part of the Communications Workers of America, proclaimed support for the bill, citing transparency and press access. They joined a chorus of support that includes the New York Media Consortium, a group made up of eight press organizations. However, some Guild members have expressed dismay that only the press, not the public, would get radio access in the bill.

Diane Kennedy, president of the New York News Publishers Association has been at the forefront of the effort.

As encryption of police radio communications spreads across New York City, the number of city residents losing access to real-time independent reporting on breaking news events is rising, Kennedy said. Legislation by Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris and Assembly Member Karines Reyes could roll back NYPDs work to bring 90 years of journalists ability to monitor police communications to a halt, but only if the state Legislature passes the bill before adjourning later this week.

Bruce Cotler, president of the New York Press Photographers Association also expressed hope that the bill would pass muster.

More and more, police precincts are going dark, leaving the media who depend upon the ability to know what goes on in the city, in the hands of the NYPD, Cotler said. The NYPD then controls the narrative, and then will be able to decide what is news and what is not. That was our job. We must have transparency or checks and balances will be gone.

The New York Media Consortium has sought out help from the City Council, including Speaker Adrienne Adams, who was critical of the NYPD for dragging their feet on including members of the media in communications.

At an NYPD budget hearing, Chief of Information Technology Ruben Beltran said there were operational reasons and real concerns for security that require the radio transmissions to be encrypted. He told the Council that the NYPD made 55 arrests in 2023 for unlawful possession of radio devices, and read off a list of arrested suspects. None of those were members of the media.

The Speaker was asked whether she or the council plan on taking up the issue should the legislation fail. She did not comment when asked about the issue on Tuesday.

During the March budget hearing, Speaker Adams said, There should be a happy medium herethan throwing the baby out with bathwater. However, the Council has still not taken any action to maintain transparency even as the NYPD came to the Council seeking an additional $81 million for more radios.

A spokesperson for the City Council issued a statement Wednesday:

We support the state legislature advancing a solution to maintain the transparency that is being threatened by efforts to encrypt all radio communication, which would have a negative impact on volunteer first responders, accountability and public safety.

In the past two weeks, 9,000 new radios arrived from Motorola in a no-bid contract.

The legislation would affect other police agencies who have already encrypted their radios, including the Nassau County Police who have been encrypted for several years, leaving Long Island media in the dark. In the meantime, the NYPD currently informs the press of breaking news hours after occurrence, or not at all.

Should the bill fail, Kennedy noted, it will be difficult to resurrect and give the press a lifeline into police communications.

Once the radios go dark, it will be hard to reopen them again, she said.

Mickey Osterriecher, chief counsel for the National Press Photographers Association said a failure to pass the legislation will have a negative national effect as other departments evaluate their encryption policies.

Other major cities are looking to New York to see what happens here if the NYPD is able to encrypt all radios, without any consideration for transparency or accountability, that is only going to encourage other cities to do the same, Osterriecher said. Whats unfortunate, is news organizations can care less and we cant make them do anything.

Read this article:
Over and out? Keep Police Radio Public Act faces uncertain future as NYPD encryption moves ahead - amNY

The block diagrams of voice encryptiondecryption using the new hyperchaotic process are demonstrated in Fig.8 and Fig.9 respectively.

The voice encryption scheme using the new hyperchaotic system.

The voice decryption scheme using the new hyperchaotic system.

As displayed in Fig.8, the encryption process contains two levels: scrambling level and masking level, where both levels depend on the sequence generated by the proposed scheme. Chaotic scrambling is the process of transforming the original voice signal based on a particular algorithm28,29,30. This transformation can be achieved through various techniques, including mathematical transformations, encryption algorithms, or chaotic systems. In our system, the voice signal is scrambled using the x, y, z, and w sequences generated by the new hyperchaotic system according to the following equation:

$${V}_{s}=vleft(tright)+scramblingStrength*({s}_{1}* xleft(tright){.}^{p}+ {s}_{2} * y{left(tright).}^{p2}+{s}_{3}* z{left(tright).}^{p3} + {s}_{4} * wleft(tright){.}^{p4})$$

(8)

The scrambling equation introduces a more sophisticated algorithm by integrating chaos and nonlinearity into the scrambling process. Where Vs is the scrambled voice signal, v(t) is the original voice signal s1, s2, s3, and s4 represent coefficients, and p1, p2, p3, and p4, represent the power terms associated with each state variable w(t), z(t), y(t), and x(t). The power terms add an element of nonlinearity to the scrambling process, making it more complex and potentially enhancing the algorithms security. Adjusting the power terms allows for fine-tuning the scrambling strength and the degree of nonlinearity introduced into the signal. Where the scrambling strength is set to 0.9, and the values of p1 =p2=p3 =p4 =1. The secret keys used in the encryption process are s1 =s2 =s3 =s4 =1.

Then, to add a complexity to the encrypted signal, the resulted scrambled signal Vs(t) is further masked using the state variables generated from the new scheme producing the encrypted voice signal Ve(t) as follows:

$${V}_{e}left(tright)={V}_{s}left(tright)+(xleft(tright)+yleft(tright)+zleft(tright)+wleft(tright))$$

(9)

In masking level, the complete state variables are used for masking the signal to increase the security level of the proposed system.

The decryption procedure is the vice versa of the encryption procedure, it involves generating an unmask signal by subtracting the same state variables from the encrypted signal producing the signal Vd(t) as follows:

$${V}_{d}left(tright)={V}_{e}left(tright)-(xleft(tright)+yleft(tright)+zleft(tright)+wleft(tright)$$

(10)

The produced signal is then unscrambled according to the following equation:

$${V}_{r}={V}_{d}left(tright)-scramblingStrength*({s}_{1}*xleft(tright){.}^{p}+{s}_{2}*y{left(tright).}^{p2}+{s}_{3}*z{left(tright).}^{p3}+{s}_{4} *wleft(tright){.}^{p4})$$

(11)

The resulting signal Vr(t), represents the recovered voice signal. Assuming that the hyperchaotic systems in both the encryption and decryption systems are identical, have the same initial condition, and synchronized. The recovered signal Vr(t) is like the original voice signal v(t). In our system the values of coefficients terms are 0.1 for s1, s2, and s3, and 1 for s4. While the values of the power terms are 1 for p1, p2, p3, and p4, and 0.5 for the scrambling strength term.

MATLAB program was used to acquire the simulation results. The suggested systems effectiveness and security were evaluated using various tests, including waveform analysis, PRD, SNR, and correlation measurements. The voice signals use eight quantization bits at 8000Hz.

The waveforms obtained from the proposed encryption system are illustrated in Fig.10, the recovered, encrypted, and original voice signals, where the original voice transmission is entirely altered by the encrypted signal. Meanwhile, the recovered and original signals are identical.

Waveform plots for the encrypted, recovered, and original voice signals.

Figure11 depicts the histograms of the encrypted, original, and recovered voice signals. The distributed histogram indicates the randomness of the encrypted voice signal, a stark contrast to the histogram of the original and recovered voice signals, which exhibits a normal distribution, rendering it susceptible to attacks. The analysis reveals that our proposed algorithm provides robust security against various statistical attacks, affirming its efficacy in safeguarding voice communication.

The histograms for the encrypted, recovered, and original voice signals.

The Percentage Residual Deviation (PRD), Signal Noise Ratio (SNR), and Correlation Coefficient (CC) are employed to analyse the proposed schemes immunity against statistical intruders31,32,33. Table 2 displays the values that were computed for various voice signals. The (PRD) is a statistical tool used to measure the deviation between encrypted and original audio signals. Low PRD values suggest a similarity between encrypted and original signals, indicating high fidelity and minimal distortion. Conversely, high PRD values imply significant differences, potentially indicating a decline in signal integrity and increased distortion. Table 2 provides the computed percent residual deviation values for a range of original and encrypted voice signals.

One of the widely considered objective metrics for assessing the strength of the original audio signal is the signalnoise ratio (SNR). The measurements of the SNR in Table 2 are highly negative, indicating an enormous quality of the encrypted speech signals. The correlation coefficient is a numerical correlation measure between -1 and 1. Table 2 provides the calculation for various speech signals. The small value of the (CC) obtained demonstrates how severely jumbled the encrypted signal is in comparison to the original voice signal. The higher PRD values suggest a significant deviation between the encrypted and original signals. The large negative SNR value indicates that the noise power is higher than the signal power, which makes it difficult to detect. On the other hand, near-zero correlation values imply a reduced similarity between the encrypted and original signals.

A keysensitivity analysis has been conducted to assess the responsiveness of the new encryption scheme to slight variations in the key values. A small change in one key, for example, the initial value of the x state variable is changed by 0.000000000000001, will entirely deviate the decrypted signal, as shown in Fig.12, which reflects the immunity of the proposed encryption system against attacks.

Decrypted speech signal with a bit of change in the initial values0.

Utilizing the NIST 80022 test package, which is provided by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, we examined the randomness of the encrypted speech signal in this test. This research primarily aimsto test the randomness of encrypted and original voice signals. As indicated in Table 3, the tests were used to investigate the degree of randomness ofeach signal. The bit-stream of the original speech signal passed only 2 of the NIST tests. The results also suggest that the encrypted voice signal performs favorably in several statistical tests, meeting the criteria for randomness and passing certain NIST assessments.

Continue reading here:
A comprehensive study of the novel 4D hyperchaotic system with self-exited multistability and application in the voice ... - Nature.com