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Wireless Networking The Internet Hardware Technology

Cops, Wifi, Treasure Hunts, And More! 109

Posted by timothy from the look-ma-no-cat dept.
Rob Flickenger writes "This month's SeattleWireless TV show reveals how the Yakima County Police have built a wireless infrastructure using Cisco Aironet products. Utilizing omni and directional antennas, they cover 650 sq miles with just 8 access points. There is also a segment on the NzWireless group's wireless treasure hunt, where users roamed around the city plotting hidden access points set up for the hunt." Note the bittorrent link.
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Cops, Wifi, Treasure Hunts, And More! More

Cops, Wifi, Treasure Hunts, And More!

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  • You just want to be netrunners don't you?

    Only teh geeks...
  • I wish to remain stationary at least while I type...

  • hmmmm, where's the info... (Score:4, Informative)

    by H8X55 ( 650339 ) <jason.r.thomasNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @08:05AM (#7844295) Homepage Journal
    This was all I could find on http://www.co.yakima.wa.us is a dead link to Cisco from summer of 2001. http://www.co.yakima.wa.us/ts/news.htm
  • for the first person that posts a frikkin transcript.

    Our media player here at work is out of date apparently, as well is Real Player and the firewall blocks the bittorrent ports so no downloading there.

    Is there no justice in the world? I need to at least kill >1 hour when I first get to work!

  • Oh, i forgot, bring the phone! (Score:3, Funny)

    by H8X55 ( 650339 ) <jason.r.thomasNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @08:17AM (#7844332) Homepage Journal
    When committing crimes in Yakama County, WA make sure to carry your 2.4GHz phone.

  • donuts? (Score:4, Funny)

    by powlow ( 197142 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {wolwop}> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @08:28AM (#7844406) Homepage Journal
    what do they use it for? to order donuts? handheld donut ordering device! brilliant!
  • Why else would the cops make a network available, if not to catch roving laptop users who are doing "illegal" things? Not that the real crimes like bribing politicians ever get punished, but of course fighting real crime is not the COPS' jobs....grumble mutter...
    • if i understand your tone correct, then here goes. if not, then i apologize.

      if half of us slashdot readers knew exactly what cops go through day in and day out, we might respect them a little more. i've got two friends who are cops and the shit they have gone through while on their 12 hour shifts that rotate on a determined cycle. dont attack the enforcers, attack the lawmakers. they're just doing their job.

      and to answer your question, its a communications system. its my understanding that most police off

      • some people act like all cops are crooked and dishonest

        I have a lot of respect for cops -- I'm related to several. I'll agree that most cops are decent, hard-working folks doing a shitty job

        However, there are a significant number of cops who are crooked, dishonest, and/or lazy. Police Officers are given a huge amount of trust, power, and leeway. Some of them abuse thier position. Even otherwise honest and competent cops often feel as though they are above the law, and not without a certian amount

      • You sensed correctly, I have found cops irritating.

        I've seen cops lie to avoid being punished for doing illegal things.

        I've seen cops treat women badly; and non-white cops are often racist against white people.

        I've seen cops gleefully follow orders when the local power structure decides it's going to do unethical things in the open.

        Cops are not to be admired. They lie, they cheat, they victimize the powerless and they love, oh how they love, to serve whoever has power.

  • I thought I'd get great speeds using this torrent. Where is everyone? Here is the bittorrent link: A HREF="http://tv.seattlewireless.net/shows/December 2003.mpg.torrent">http://tv.seattlewireless.net/sh ows/December2003.mpg.torrent

  • Quick! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Start a crime wave while the county is slashdotted!

  • If my memory serves correctly here, 650 acres is just over a one square mile area. (640 acres is one section = square mile). That should give some frame of reference here- pretty impressive amount of coverage. (maybe they say this in the movie- BitTorrent is still doing its thing right now, so I can't tell just yet...)

  • Phased arrays for better range, density, security (Score:4, Informative)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @09:16AM (#7844669)
    The big problem with widely scattered access points is user density (you can't have too many simultaneous users with so few APs) and physical alignment of the directional antennas. But you can use phased array antenna technologies to simultaneously increase the range, number of users, and security of access point installations. By electronically forming a narrow beam, the range increases, interference is reduced, and interception is more difficult. As a side "benefit" a phased array antenna could be used to track the bearing angle to each user and create directional lockouts to prohibit parking lot war drivers.

    We've discussed this before here [slashdot.org] and here [slashdot.org] about products from Vivato [vivato.net].

  • Details? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Quixote ( 154172 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @09:29AM (#7844744) Homepage Journal
    Talk about being skimpy on the details. Why did /. accept this story?

    Assuming no overlap between the 8 base stations (i.e., maximal coverage), this works out to each AP having a range of 5 miles. That is a heck of a lot in an urban setting.

    I, for one, welc^H^H^H^H would love to know the technical details behind this.

    • I seriously doubt that this design would offer "continous" coverage over 650 sqaure miles - as the parent post mentioned thats like a 5 mile range on each AP - to get that kind of range would require directional gain antennas AND/OR illegal linear power amplifiers - the multipath effects would be terrible in an urban environemnt especially at the overlap regions between AP's. And Lord help you if someone fires up a microwave oven or a cordless phone :-)
  • A cop who is watching porn and checking his email is a cop who is not paying attention to me. This could be good, and this could be bad...

  • Easy (Score:2)

    by sammyo ( 166904 )
    Easy in any given desolate arid desert. Really I'm not kidding, the eastern side of the'evergreen state' is flat flat flat, rural and dry. None of those pesky buildings, a few apple trees but no real hills even. Plains of Gondor folks. :-)
    • You have obviously never been to Yakima county. The city of Yakima is flat, but we are talking about the county here. There are several bluffs ranges and canyons. I wouldn't call the area flat.
    • Dude, It ain't that flat. Try moving a convoy over Umptanum ridge at the firing center.

  • Cisco Press Release (Score:4, Informative)

    by siamSam ( 637132 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @10:26AM (#7845188)
    http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/witc/ao340a p/profiles/lnfyc_cp.htm

    Company Profile
    Wireless Network Helps
    Yakima County Protect Community
    The Lower Valley Wireless Public Safety Network, employing Cisco Aironet(R) technology, is giving law-enforcement agencies in Yakima County, Washington, a high-tech edge in crime prevention and resolution.

    Yakima County is the second-largest land area and the seventh-largest population area in Washington state. It ranks first in the nation in the number of fruit trees, was recently ranked the 25th most-livable city in the United States and has also been designated a high-impact drug trafficking area. That inauspicious development was, in part, behind the creation in 2000 of the Lower Valley Wireless Public Safety Network.

    The network consists of a series of antennas and radios arranged in a line-of-sight pattern that transmits and receives encrypted signals. These signals travel from the county courthouse in the city of Yakima southward through the Yakima Valley. The radio signals contain data from a central location that law-enforcement and public-safety agencies can access. This allows the agencies to share information and track lawbreakers throughout the lower valley in real time. The upper valley will be added to the network in the near future.

    With five backbone sites in place overlooking the valley, the network reaches police departments in six lower valley communities: Wapato, Toppenish, Zillah, Grandview, Sunnyside, and Granger. County offices of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) are also on the wireless network, and the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are among several other law-enforcement agencies that have expressed interest.

    The network's nodes are linked via nearly 30 Cisco Aironet 340 Series wireless bridges. Designed to ensure high-speed, long-range point-to-point and point-to-multipoint wireless connections between Ethernet networks, these bridges are not deterred by physical barriers or inclement weather, making them ideal for the Pacific Northwest's weather and terrain. Direct sequence spread spectrum technology enables a data rate of 11 Mbps, comparable to that of Category 3 cable.

    High Costs Deflated Original Plan
    Yakima County Technology Services originally designed a frame-relay-based solution but found it would cost thousands of dollars per month, according to George Helton, Director of Technology Services. "Then we came up with a design operating in the 2.4 GHz band. We engineered a wireless network emanating from the Yakima courthouse and using point-to-point aerials and radios to reach 80 miles down the valley. This lets us deliver data to police and other law-enforcement agencies, and it preserves all those thousands of dollars we would otherwise be spending for data circuits," he said.

    "As we were implementing this, our radio engineer suggested that we could possibly make our data available to mobile users if we used an omni-antenna at each major backbone site. We did so and have created a wireless network where you can drive at 70 mph while still communicating on the network at 11 Mbps," Helton said. Officers can rapidly access traffic records, police files and other data through links with state and federal agencies. "We also are able to conduct video surveillance, hold network meetings, train Web cameras on officers during stops, and handle all sorts of data applications. The sky's the limit: Anything you can do in your office, you can do at your car."

    Access for Mobile Officers
    Not all law-enforcement agencies on the Lower Valley Wireless Public Safety Network have extended the wireless network to their vehicles. For some, the network is used exclusively for office work, but most plan to add vehicular capability eventually. Those who have made the network mobile did so by installing Cisco Aironet 340 Series wireless bridges in their patrol cars. The bridges allow officers to ac

  • this is not good (Score:3, Insightful)

    by penguin7of9 ( 697383 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @11:19AM (#7845676)
    WiFi was never intended to allow people to cover huge areas--there simply isn't the bandwidth allocation for it. It gets even worse when a small number of access points are used to cover a large area. If all police departments started doing this, you'd probably not be able to use WiFi for anything else anymore, or your WiFi nodes would interfere with police operations.

    Let's hope that this will cause the US government to release much larger chunks of spectrum for WiFi-like use, some regulated and some unregulated. And some bands should really be reserved for private use only--no businesses or government entities should be allowed to touch such parts of the spectrum for any purpose.
    • If you watched the segment, you would know that there is something called Project 25. http://www.tiaonline.org/standards/project_25/ It's a new spectrum allocation for Public Safety Data Networks. In talking to the folks in Yakima, they are mindful that they are using unregulated spectrum and act to be good citizens with the resources. Peter

  • I live in Yakima... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    and frankly this scares the hell out of me.

    I have played with these. First of all, they are simply locked down so they will work with almost any [coffer.com] Cisco MAC address. Other than that they are completely open.

    Once you connect to the AP, you can either telnet directly to the DB server and pull any records you wany, or you can connect to any other PD in Washington State (AFAIK). Atleast all the ones around here. It's basicly a huge private IP network using T1s, fractional T1s, and ISDN lines, all linking back
  • C'mon guys..... don't go to the Yakima County website! I need that bandwidth to keep surfing slashdot!

    Sincerly,
    The poor little sysadmin from their ISP.

  • Yakima police. (Score:1, Informative)

    by mortalic ( 534464 )
    That's ok, I used to live in yakima, actually still live fairly close, I went back for the holiday's I noticed red light camera's all over the place too. There was a big controversy a while back when the ypd put two officers on duty strictly for traffic infractions. Their orders were to issue as many traffic citations as possible and nothing else, and now there are several more of them. Figure in the traffic cops, the redlight camera's, (revenue, and revenue) and then the wireless network either is for a
  • heh, my cisco aironet service in Yakima thru a local isp was unreliable, slow and not ready for prime time. Let's hope the constabulary doesn't throw out those walkie talkies yet. And those cameras on the traffic lights - they are supposed to trigger the green/red cycle, but the locals all know how well they work (camera to light: here comes a car, shine red dude!).
  • what's the 'treasure'?

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