[109684] in Cypherpunks
(fwd) Motorola's MDC-4800 Police Data Terminal
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sunder)
Thu Apr 1 12:47:29 1999
Date: Thu, 01 Apr 1999 12:30:43 -0500
From: Sunder <sunder@brainlink.com>
To: cypherpunks@algebra.com
Reply-To: Sunder <sunder@brainlink.com>
(I didn't see this on the CDR, nor from Coderpunks... not sure where this was
posted to, but it showed up on the SpyKing list...)
1) From: Bruce Schneier <schneier@counterpane.com>
Subject: Motorola's MDC-4800 Police Data Terminal
There's a Windows program that decodes the police car mobile data terminal
transmissions. If you thought listening in on police radio frequencies was
interesting, you should see what comes over on those data transcripts.
Motorola's "encryption" wasn't designed for privacy, it's more like a
checksum for transmission integrity. Basically, it's XOR.
The software is free, although there is this helpful notice on the Web
site: "Decoding MDT transmissions may be illegal in some countries, you
may want to check the laws for your country before using this program."
<http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Facility/7646/>
