Wednesday 25^th July 2001

 Supposedly secure radio transmissions in the Government’s new Emergency Services communications network can be monitored by anyone with a lap-top computer and a relatively inexpensive scanner, Ian Gilfillan told State Parliament today.

"Police communications are as readily accessible as CFS, ambulance or any other emergency services agency to anyone who has a $600 radio scanner and a lap-top, onto which they have downloaded the de-coding software, free of charge, from the internet"

"While the new system is robust and may be reliable in the field, if its security can be readily compromised, then that problem will have to be fixed."

"We can’t have eavesdroppers knowing when the police are on their way to a drug raid or criminals listening in to see if the coast is clear before they stage their hold up, or someone’s private medical data being unintentionally disclosed in an ambulance transmission.

"The web sites I have visited today explain everything a person needs to do to put together a simple lap-top scanner link and then just choose the radio channel they want to listen to.

"In fact, one of the sites offers the software necessary to decode and listen into the system used by the Parliamentary telephone pager network.

"The technology used in the new SA-Government Radio Network is now ten years old and computer hackers have had plenty of time to figure out how it works and how to gain easy access to it. But now they don’t even have to search for it. The SA Government serves it up to them on a website plate.