System Watch II & Possible Illegit User

[fireradio]

All,

I've got what I think to be an illegitimate user showing up on a smartzone system, but I wanted to check here to see if you all might know of anything else it could be.

On the System Watch II terminal, at regular intervals of 1-5 minutes and anywhere in between, the following line appears on the system activity screen:

REJECT RADIO 7XXXXX RADIO ANALOG, GROUP ASTRO

The radio ID in question is a valid ID used by a dedicated alerting radio at one of our fire stations. The ID is entered into the zone manager as analog only.

I'm guessing that someone has programmed up a radio with this ID, didn't turn off/disable auto affiliate (or they are using a 5000 - so they can't), and are trying to listen to a digital talkgroup.

Unfortunately, the System Watch terminal does not give me any more information than the line I posted above.

I am also running UniTrunker. I examined the control channel log and found many entries that indicate:

"Radio XXXX, Unknown Sub-Code 0056" (where XXXX is the hex equivalent of the ID in question).

So, my question is, do you think this is in fact a rouge radio, or, could it just be a glitch with System Watch and/or some other system function that System Watch is not interpreting correctly?

[xmo]

Assign a new ID to the legit alerting radio & reprogram it. If the Systemwatch messages for the old ID continue - well, you know what to do next...

[Cowboy]

Assign a new ID to the legit alerting radio & reprogram it. If the Systemwatch messages for the old ID continue - well, you know what to do next...

xmo hit the nail on the head...

Divide and conquer - change the variables you can control (the alerting radio at the station, etc)...

We're 8 months in to our 700 MHz P25 system deployment and have already encountered 3 rogue radios, all from a certain county medical unit, all purchased off of eBay from the same vendor.

All 3 radios now reside in an evidence vault awaiting destruction after the criminal trial is completed.

[d119]

All 3 radios now reside in an evidence vault awaiting destruction after the criminal trial is completed.

Certainly the responsible party can be charged with computer crimes/theft of service, but what right has the arresting authority to DESTROY equipment?

Unless the owner turned it over to them as some part of a deal...

[Cowboy]

All 3 radios now reside in an evidence vault awaiting destruction after the criminal trial is completed.

Certainly the responsible party can be charged with computer crimes/theft of service, but what right has the arresting authority to DESTROY equipment?

Unless the owner turned it over to them as some part of a deal...

The majority of the details I can't exactly go in to as it is still a pending investigation, however, I can say without a doubt, the radios will not find themselves in the possession of anyone outside of the prosecuting agency in one piece.

[Jim202]

Sounds like your a little pissed off about this. However as someone else said, your destruction or
damaging of the property that doesn't belong to you could cause you and your department some
rather undesired legal problems in the long run. This starts to fall under the Federal laws and I
don't think you want to have to go there.

I would even wonder about the legal ability to confiscate the radios to start with. Unless your
working for the feds, you may be on some soft grounds in just doing this. It may make you mad,
but the local authority has restrictions on just how long your arms are and what type of
items that can be confiscated. Sure you can prosecute for the unauthorized radios being on the system.

Jim

All 3 radios now reside in an evidence vault awaiting destruction after the criminal trial is completed.

Certainly the responsible party can be charged with computer crimes/theft of service, but what right has the arresting authority to DESTROY equipment?

Unless the owner turned it over to them as some part of a deal...

The majority of the details I can't exactly go in to as it is still a pending investigation, however, I can say without a doubt, the radios will not find themselves in the possession of anyone outside of the prosecuting agency in one piece.[/quote]

[akardam]

Let's keep this on topic, gents.

[N4DES]

I use the Genesis package and track not only that but illegal affiliations as well.
My record is a good solid 4 inhibits a month of illegal users that are doing things they aren't supposed to.

A third party told me that I made an expensive doorstop of a XTS5K to the south of me a few months ago. All I can say is "he should of bought a scanner".

[fireradio]

I've got the Genesis GenSZAI NetVista package, and I do think it is a powerful tool, but I also find it limited in it's reporting abilities. For example, i'd like to run a report to see air time for private calls, sorted by ID - in other words, a report showing me who spends the most time yakking on PC. No big deal, but a little more customizability would be nice

Thanks for everyone's input!

[Hightower]

Assign a new ID to the legit alerting radio & reprogram it. If the Systemwatch messages for the old ID continue - well, you know what to do next...

Why not just call the legit user up and tell them to turn off their radio for a few mins while you whack the other radio when it shows up as affiliated?

On another note, XTS5K can be programmed to monitor only for 3600 systems - just use TX inhibit.

[N4DES]

I've got the Genesis GenSZAI NetVista package, and I do think it is a powerful tool, but I also find it limited in it's reporting abilities. For example, i'd like to run a report to see air time for private calls, sorted by ID - in other words, a report showing me who spends the most time yakking on PC. No big deal, but a little more customizability would be nice

Thanks for everyone's input!

Just call them and ask them to see if they can develop it. When I received my package I had the need to calculate system-wide ERLANG and they did it within a week at no charge.
I also wrote some SQL Query strings to search the database seperately and I use this when I have to look up something quick like an affilaition/de-affiliation report, how much time a specific user utilizes on the radio in a group call, or like I said earlier a rejection report.

Here is an example of a rejection report:

I729022 2008-11-03 11:41:56.700 64 Requester subs record not available
I729022 2008-11-03 11:41:59.900 64 Requester subs record not available
I729022 2008-11-03 11:42:04.600 64 Requester subs record not available
I739896 2008-11-01 00:19:50.600 64 Requester subs record not available
I729022 2008-11-03 08:04:00.300 64 Requester subs record not available

We don't use PC so I don't have anything developed to help you, but I'm sure a custom query string could be written for that.

Mark